NOTE: This is a continuation of posts started on "Black ABS" but it quickly became about Pet+.
Tell me something about 'pet+'. It's not on my radar. Is it printable by a traditional RepRap configured printer? I'll have to go research it.
Printable View
NOTE: This is a continuation of posts started on "Black ABS" but it quickly became about Pet+.
Tell me something about 'pet+'. It's not on my radar. Is it printable by a traditional RepRap configured printer? I'll have to go research it.
yes you can print it on anything. its about the easiest printing filament there is. prints as easy as pla, has temp resistance closer to abs and its more durable and flexible than abs. to be honest i have no idea why the 3d printing community, with a lack of heated build chambers, has adopted abs. with pet it really doesnt make much sense. there are a few brands out there. www.madesolid.com has the nicest stuff imo. the extrusion is perfect and prints so easy. colorfabb has another good one but only avail in clear. taulman tglase is good but they seem to have extrusion consistency issues that have yet to get resolved plus it prints just a hair more difficult than the others but still fairly easily. its a bit on the expensive side but i have figured in all the failed abs prints i have here and wasted filament and printer time and energy for those fails and it comes out to be close to a wash. once i got my settings dialed in for it i have yet to have a failure due to the plastic. the stuff is really bad ass.
Thanks Jim. That's great info. I'm going to order some asap.
my settings file for the makergear m2 is posted on madesolid's website. it might not be on the money for your exact printer but it will give you someplace to start anyway. when you get it if you have any questions or need pointers just shoot me a pm.
I need to get some in and test. My only question is can you smooth it? I have two reasons for liking smoothing. 1. it's an aesthetic improvement and 2. I've found that smoothing ABS is a really good way to protect it from layer separation.
I've had several UNsmoothed ABS parts separate between layers and fail. I've never had a Smoothed ABS part fail due to layer separation.
Edit: Just ordered a roll via AmazonPrime. $35 with free shipping. I look forward to testing it. Thanks for putting it on my radar Jim...
rob, you can smooth it but not with acetone. you use methylene chloride. abs can tend to separate from the internal stress it develops during the printing process. since the pet+ has a super low thermal expansion rate it doesnt layer crack or warp. actually it can warp a little. its about the same as pla. its a very strong plastic. in many ways it reminds me of nylon. flexibility is about the same as taulman 618.
Methylene Chloride is pretty nasty stuff. I see that it vaporizes at 104F so vapor smoothing it would be easy in a double boiler with hot tap water. I think more carcinogenic than Acetone so I'd guess it's best to only smooth outside with an organic respirator on. I see that it vaporizes at 104F so vapor smoothing it would be easy in a double boiler with hot tap water. I guess you could to a quick dip technique and not be too risky.
I'd guess that most people Acetone smooth and don't use a respirator. We've gotten so used to smelling Acetone when our wives do their nails that we've subconsciously convinced ourselves that it's not dangerous.
I have a spool coming. I look forward to using it. Does Pet+ put off any dangerous fumes when printing?
yes meth chloride is really bad for you. its mostly used as paint stripper and solvent adhesive for polycarbonate, acrylic and pet. a little hard to come by in its pure form. a well ventilated area is a must. acetone or the meth should really be done outside. the fumes are both explosive. as for printing fumes....no. there is no odor at all. its also flame resistant, food and medical safe.
rob here is a video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpFZEl-cXv4
I think I'm in love. What's not to like about the stuff? Foodsafe too! RIP ABS and PLA.
I'll have my roll on Monday. Can't wait to try it.
Thanks Jim.
Great info guys!
here are some i did. there is another vase on their website that imo is nicer than mine. similar type though done in clear. if you go on there you'll see it.
Attachment 863Attachment 864Attachment 862
Nice looking prints. Was the webbed looking thing printed without supports?
yes rob. i popped it off the bed exactly as you see it. was printed with no supports. that was what i originally printed with it to tune my retraction settings. figured that would be a good one lol. those were all done at .15 layer height and a .35 nozzle. with any clear filament, they get clearer the higher the height and the larger dia nozzle you use. the banana is done in their black filament then i did a light cast iron faux finish on it.
You've given me a good challenge now. I would not have thought that could be printed without some support. Most all of what I print is pretty practical and rectilinear. Sadly, the most interesting things I've printed were a few torture tests in the beginning and once those printed well, I just printed what I needed to and stopped pushing the envelope as much as I should have. It's interesting how we get stuck doing the same old thing sometimes and forget to do some "blue sky" experimenting. I need to do more of that kind of stuff I guess. I get so busy that I don't really start problem solving until I get something to print that doesn't work well on the first pass. It's then that I find I begin to start tweaking, but not until something has gone wrong. If nothing goes wrong then I don't do much tweaking. It's a vicious circle.
I did do some bridge torture tests and got some nice 40mm bridges but I need to try to print something like that sphere or vase (whatever it is). That will be a good test as I tune the Pet+ I'll be receiving on Monday. Thanks for the setting hints.
Geoff i havent noticed a difference in clarity and speed but as i said in the other post you can increase layer height. The higher the clearer. Also if you have a larger nozzle avail that will give you clearer prints as well. I know some guys that print clear stuff with a .5 nozzle at .3-.45 layer heights and the print dont look nearly as white as mine. The more squished your lines are the more cloudy. Temps will affect this as clarity as well. You want the lowest you can while still getting good layer adhesion. All this will apply to pet and any clear type filament
Jim, where did you find that vase? You sort of implied Makesolid but I don't see it there or on Thingiverse. I'd like to print it for two reasons, 1. to compare it to your print and 2. because it looks cool and I'll give it to my wife who thinks I spend too much time with this 3d printer thing.
FYI, my Pet+ just came in and I'm printing a torture test as I write.
rob here you go
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:104694
I'm sorry, I should have been more specific. It's the other one that I was interested in. This is the one I could not believe you printed without support.
http://3dprintboard.com/attachment.p...3&d=1396659346
ahhh yes thats the cellular thing. here you go. this is a real popular item on thingiverse. believe it or not i dont think anyone prints it with support no matter what plastic they are using.
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:19104
I see, it's a lamp. No wonder I couldn't find it when I searched vases... Thanks.
First print was rough and separating. When I lifted it off of the glass it unzipped the bottom layer like spooling line out of a box. I'm printing again at higher temp (245C) instead of (230C) to see if the layers stick better. I think I jumped to fast on the temp as it looks globby. I think I'll knock the temp back to 240C. I need to fine tune my retraction too. That's off. But, all in all, it's going OK. I just need to tweak. This stuff has no odor at all. I think I'm going to like it.
yeah rob once you get your setting right it will print great every time. it needs alot of retraction. print and temp settings are very similar to nylon. did you get clear or one of the opaque colors?
I actually got white. I have some uses in mind for my boat and white is the standard nautical plastic color.
I printed an open vase thingy that's about 5cm tall. It's actually about 10cm tall but I stopped it as not to waste more plastic. Here are a few prints. As you can see, I have some tweaking to do. The 1st layer looks nice as the bottom is great. It's just globby and messy.
Attachment 871 Attachment 872 Attachment 873
yeah from what i can tell you have 2 things going on there. the main thing is with doing something tiny like that your going to get the part very heat soaked. each layer doesnt have enough cooling time. are you using your bed fan? you should use it same as with pla....atleast on small stuff like that. it looks like your pumping out alot of plastic, however this could just be that the model is too hot. nothing to do with the blobs but looks like that 1st layer could be printed just hair closer to the bed. i have found that the opaque colors, atleast the black needs more retraction that the clear stuff. i am running some black right now and here are my settings:
retraction 4.40mm
coasting distance 2.8mm
temp 245. (this is a block style hot end, actual nozzle temp is 225)
be sure to measure the filament and set that right. that could give you lots of blobbing due to over extrusion. i would try a more simple model first to atleast get the stuff extruding correctly then work on the tricky stuff. maybe start with some calibration objects. cubes, cylinders. there is tons of that stuff on thingi.
i do know a thing or two about boats. #1, i hate them, #2 i was a marine mechanic for some years then worked for viking yacht co for quite a few more as both a service tech, engineer and about everything else at that place :) of course #1 is a result of #2
Great feedback. Firstly, boats. I hate them and love them, but, love them more. I have become a marine mechanic out of necessity. I actually delivered a sailboat up the Chesapeake Bay today. It was nice to get out. We've had such a horrific winter. Viking makes some nice large motor yachts. I like how clean and minimalistic the designs are. I can imagine how #1 was a result of #2. I do sailboats and can't get on the water enough and luckily I only have one.
I read on another forum to NOT use a fan so I'll try your suggestion TO use a fan. My extrusion feed is perfect. If I extrude 20mm of filament, it moves 20.03mm. I think that's close enough so I'll need to look at other causes of blobs. I'll also check my nozzle height so I can smush that first layer in a bit more. It might have risen a bit. I'll go back to a simple calibration model like you mention. I was jumping the gun. I actually did print one of my favorite torture/calibration tests first and it looked pretty good. You can see the retraction is off but for the most part the layers look good and the little 6mm diameter towers look good except for the retraction bits.
I'll do a new print now and copy your settings as a starting point. I've also posted the same torture test from the same machine with black ABS. So, you can see the machine is capable of very clean prints.
What slicer are you using? I haven't see 'coasting distance' in any of the ones I use (Slic3r, Cura, Kisslicer).
Attachment 874 Attachment 875 Attachment 876
i use simplify3d. i dont know if the coast setting translates over to any of the other slicers. as for the filament, the fact that it moves 20mm when you have it set to move 20mm is right and that is generally set in the firmware but it can still put out too much on the model it printing. thats all adjusted buy setting your filament diameter and extrusion multiplier. your torture test in the middle does look much better though. it could have been just from the heat. you just need to bump up your retraction. you can see the strings still there. bump your multiplier down a little at a time as well.
Yea, it took me 2 weeks to get ABS dialed in so I was being overly optimistic about this new material. But, that was with a new machine I all of that time was just initial calibration stuff. I'm not too far off right now. I know, baby steps.
What I'm seeing now is what I call "out of focus." Each successive layer is not on top of the one before it. I think I'll try a different slicer and see if it's the machine or the slicer. Here are a few photos of the issue:
Edit: I can't figure this forum out in regards to photos. Some will display the size I want them to and other are tiny. These are displaying too small to really see what I'm saying. I'll attach them again. Sorry if they are duplicated.
Attachment 884 Attachment 886 Attachment 887
Edit #2: I think I figured out the photo thing. You have to use .jpg files to get proper display. If you use .png files they get reduced. So far that's the fix.
Looks to be a cost issue... looks to be twice the price of PLA or ABS. 1LB of PET+ vs 2.2LB of PLA for $35.
I don't see it as an issue as much as just an acknowledgement. Yea, it is more expensive, but it's all relative. But if you put it in perspective, all of these plastics are really cheap. I mean, a part that cost $.65 to print (using the prices you quote) with ABS is now $1.30. Not too bad really as long as the benefits outweigh the small cost increase.
It's the thing I have to explain to my clients sometimes. We'll settle on a price of say $275 for a particular illustration. That's a fair price for any illustrator who might work 3 or 4 hours on it. And they think so too, but all of a sudden when they need 30 of the same kind of illustration, the total cost is now $8,250. That sometimes scares the crap out of them until they back up and look at the reasonable cost each.
It's the same here. If you print 25 items out of 1lb of filament that's still just $1.40 each. Especially if you print your coveted phone case that Apple wants $29.95 for. I don't think that's prohibitive. If the parts jumped in price due to filament cost to say $5.00 each, then I think that might scare some people away, but again, that's still cheap too if you keep it in prespective. As long as filament is as cheap as it is, I really don't worry about it too much. It's like saying one gumball is $.10 and another is $.30. That's three times as expensive, but, it's still only $.30. It's all about perspective.
I think it was a mistake to say issue, because no, I agree with what you're saying. What I should have said, was that it's probably the reason it's not used primarily in place of ABS or PLA. Many seem to be printing for fun... little knick knacks here and there, and just making random fun little objects in order to play with their printers... so it makes sense to go with the filament that's half the cost. Why burn through expensive filament when there's no need? Even when it comes to prototyping something that won't really be used.
For parts, I think it looks great. I'll probably be picking some up once I've assembled my printer and have had a chance to get comfortable with ABS / PLA.
I have some tests now and I'm finding that slicers make a big difference. I was using Cura 14.03 for my initial prints and they weren't looking very good. I tried Slic3r in Pronterface and I'm zeroing in on it now. Even comparing apples to apples, the left image is Cura and the middle image is Slic3r with the same settings. What a difference. The right image is even better as I pulled the Slic3r 'Extrusion multiplier' back to .97 from 1.0. That cleaned up some of what was overshoot on the material as Jim was suspicious of. I'm still getting random odd areas. The funky area under the end of the hands is really sloppy but that could be partly due to the fact that it want some support and I didn't use any to see what would happen. The green arrows point out really nice resolution and extrusion while the red arrow point out problems that need some attention.
But, based on these tests right now, I'll have to say that I like Pet+. I think I'll keep it in my arsenal. I want to print some bars with ABS, PLA and Pet+ and do some bend tests to see how they each fail but Pet+ seems to be a nice material.
Attachment 888
I'm also getting the random brown or burned looking spots that make a temporary defect and then it goes away. That happens no matter what slicer I'm using. I'm not sure what that is. It almost seems like some filament is getting trapped in the hot end and burning and then at some point it gets pushed out and makes a flaw. Not sure about that.
Attachment 889
atoff, I totally agree with what you are saying. That's part of the fun is that we have so many filaments to pick from to be used for the most appropriate purpose. You are correct though, if you have both ABS and Pet+ and it's something that you don't need to waste your good stuff on, then there's not need to.
What excites me is that when I bought my Makerfarm i3 last year it was listed as only being able to print ABS and PLA and one of the hot ends would not even print PLA. So, I ordered a 2nd one that could. With the same hot end I'm now printing ABS, PLA, Pet+ and Nylon. All are printing well. I look forward to getting some Filaflex or one of the other flexible filaments next.
atoff, no matter what product in this world we are using there are 2 prices for it. a price to buy it and a price to use it. 99% of the public sees one thing...price to buy it. unfortunately the price to buy something makes no difference. its what it cost to use it that makes a difference. i have a trash can here full of failed abs prints from warping or something else over the last 6mos. since i got my settings all tweaked for the pet+ i have not had a single failure. so the price difference of the pet+ to abs is about a wash if you take all that into acct plus the wasted energy the printer uses, etc. with all that said though, if you dont use the items you print and they are just little knick knacks that sit on a shelf or some other static object then print it with pla. that would definately be cheaper. all my items are functional to some degree so i never print pla. it has always been abs. now i have basically just totally switched to pet and the overall cost hasnt changed much. i will still use abs on occasion if i am looking for a specific color or property that abs can give me.
rob, still looks like a bit too much material. your gettin there though. just keep adjusting and running test prints to see what works. some of that stuff as you said could be from too much overhang with no support. i have not tried the white. i have a roll on the way and will probably be here tomorrow. black and clear i can print flawlessly. i will try the white with the same black settings i use and let you know if its the same.
Yea Jim I look forward to that comparison of black to white. I'm having strange issues. It dialed my 'Extrusion multiplier' back far enough that the first layers don't touch now so there is too little material flowing but I'm getting globs. I'll do more diagnosing. I am curious how the white prints for you.
I've checked over everything. Belts are tight, machine is sound, extruder good (when I code a 20mm extrusion, I extrude 20.3mm...so that's good). Fans are going and everything looks good. I keep making small tweaks. I'll eventually get it.
yeah you'll get it. i wish i could be more help but im not familiar with slic3r or any of the other software out there. i have always used s3d since that is what most of the makergear community uses. you can slowly bump your temp down 5deg at a time. i really dont know what kind of ooze control parameters slic3r has to tell you to tweak. from a comparison its oozy like nylon so if your have ver printed nylon, try to mimic those settings. there are alot of guys on the makergear google group using the pet+. let me see if any of them are using slic3r and ill get back to you.
I think I've gotten about as good as I can get for now. I think I have a roll of filament with an amount of contamination. I keep getting these "burnouts" in every print. It's like there is a rogue material in the filament that melts at a much lower temperature and when in the hotend it scorches. Then when it is extruded it has much different properties and color and makes a globby, swollen, brown bad spot. I'm going to see if the manufacturer agrees and will replace it.
Here is a photo of the good results I'm getting so far. This image is also a good demonstration of how "Layer Height" affects resolution.
Attachment 907
Here is a photo of my "burnout" problem. Each of these shots was taken from a different print so it's happening consistently.
Attachment 908
keep in mind rob this can be prior material in you hot end that is coming out and now that you say that, it does look like it. when we switch plastics in our extruders they dont always mix well together. if you have abs in there and there is a nice coating on the inside of the brass feed tube. when you put a new plastic in that abs is still coating the walls of the tube. as you print that abs sits there cooking for hours on end and it will also harden which makes the hot end tight. it can eventually get tight enough where you get clicking or feed problems. occasionally some dislodges and comes out with the new plastic which is what your seeing there and why it looks all burnt. i switch plastics alot and i do have to clean out my hot end and nozzle often. if you have never cleaned it then im sure your due. before you do anything, pull the nozzle and brass tube off the machine and soak it in a little paint stripper. the methylene chloride will dissolve, pla, pet and abs. basically everything except nylon. let it sit a few hours then rinse, blow out, run a pipe cleaner through the tube, etc.
Will do Jim. Great suggestion. I don't change filament much but have on occasion over the past few months. I've had no issues like this so I assumed that after a few meters whatever residual old plastic that was in the hotend was pushed out. I didn't realize it could stick around and cook. I'll definitely clean my head and see if I still get the issue. If I do what a newly cleaned head then I know it's the filament.
yes rob most definitely. a few meters wont push it all out all the time. it really depends on the plastic. i even have some issues with a couple rolls of abs here i have. when i go from this one specific color to another of abs and its from the same manufacturer, i will have a problem. really though its just good housekeeping to occasionally clean the hot end. what i am going to do here as soon as makergear releases their new hot end is order one for each plastic type so i can swap real quick.
just goto home depot and get some zip-strip to soak the metal parts in. no plastic in that please :)