Printing Flex Filament with the Flashforge

[Geoff]

Hey guys,

I am not sure if any of you have gotten into other types of filament, me personally the toughest time I ever had with any was the wood filament, and the ONLY time I have needed blue painters tape, as it just will not stick to kapton to save my life.. but that's another story.


Flexible Filament.. Yep it's being sold pretty commonly now, and I sort of took a punt on buying a cheap roll from China. It cost me $80 for a 1kg roll, and when I say cheap for the Tolerance this has (super super low, can print at 0.1) this is cheap for 1kg. Their wood filament is also $70 for 1kg, which is VERY cheap compared to 250gms of Laywoo d3 for $40!!! Ordered on a Friday, I watched DHL ship it from Hong Kong to my door by Monday.
*** Update - Sadly, there is a reason Laywoo D3 is $40 for 250 grams, its GOOD!. I have now 1kg of wood filament here that will not stick to aluminum, kapton, blue tape, yellow tape, hairspray, abs slurry.. you name it. Argh.

Now, the first issue that got to me when trying Flexible filament was the extruder. It would not feed. Tried everything, tried feeding it with the fan off, different temperatures etc, nothing anyone suggested worked, and the manufacturer gave me incorrect temperature settings.

My original extruders for my Flashforge 3D were stock, they had no spring load, just a bearing and gear. Now, while these suck for ABS and PLA as they slip alot more, they are GREAT for flexible filament, in fact I could not use flex filament at all with the spring loaded extruder. Picture below explains how my experience went.



Since my original extruders had issues with the nozzles, I was lucky and had spares - I understand you may not, so I am making a printable version of the above left extruder for you guys, very simple but effective.

You can run it next to your other one at the same time, me personally I use my left extruder for ABS/PLA and my right for Wood and Flex.



Temperatures that worked well:
235c Nozzle
60c Hotbed
Kapton tape


So how did my prints go?

First attempt terrible, second not so bad, Octopus came out well..



Third test print I tried a low poly pokemon.. What did I learn? INFILL INFILL.. INFILL..

If you don't use enough infill the flex sags and you get holes, I suggest 50% or more!!!

RAFTS are VERY easy to remove. Easier than plastic.

Supports AVOID if you can!!!. They are really messy with flex and leave alot of little bits you need to cut off.

Retraction Rate set low, if you are able to. You want a fast retraction so it doesn't leave mess when its travelling fast - or avoid big travel movements.

Printing Speed needs to be 30-40ms feed. Any faster and it gets messy.





So to print very nice Flex/rubber prints, follow the above and you should be ok to go!


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I am testing the printable extruder for Flex filament, give me a couple of days, need to make it pretty solid.
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