Printing Nylon - no cardboard - very good adherence
Posted by PulsedMedia
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Printing Nylon - no cardboard - very good adherence July 06, 2014 07:16PM |
Nylon has become my favorite material 
It's easy to work with given certain precautions and extra steps.
Here's my guide to good Nylon printing!
Pre-requisites:
* All Metal Hotend
* Access to oven you can freely use for most of the day at a time
* Glass print bed
* Dishwashing soap
* Black & white newspaper
* PVA Glue (white wood glue)
* Glass jar, or empty PVA glue bottle with cap intact or something of the sort
Preparation
Put the Nylon you are about to use to oven at 90C. Each 100gr will require an hour or two. Drier the better.
My method is to spool into a spare reel a few hundred grams of the filament, and day 1 dry in oven for ~10hrs in 90c, day 2 is the print day, so dry it another couple hours @ 90C. About 30-60mins before printing time turn the oven off but leave the filament in there.
Mix a very strong PVA Glue + Water mixture into the glass jar, i use something like 33% of PVA. put some water into the jar, and pour the glue in, close the lid and shake strongly.
Wash the glass print bed with dishwashing soap, liquid hand dishwashing soap to be precise. I use a brand called "fairy", it's darkish green and doesn't flow good, a drop or two is enough.
Wash the glass with a sponge, reaaally rub it if it's a new piece or a diry one, and wash it twice. On second wash when rinsing touch only the edges, from now on your fingers are NOT allowed to touch the print surface.
Rinse it really well and then shake a bit to get most water out. Take a page of the b&w newspaper, fold it over twice and then dry the glass with it, really rubbing it in, almost like polishing something.
Fix the glass with some clips on your printer.
Take a piece of paper towel or well used rag, something which doesn't leave much particles away. Make part of it damp with the PVA glue and spread the glue:water mix on your glass, a nice and thick layer, you want it to turn almost completely white.
put the hotend heating up (i'm assuming no filament is in) and turn on your cooling fan, pointing to the bed (to make the glue dry faster). You may at this point put heatbed upto 45c to make the glue dry up faster.
Get the filament from oven, you might need to use mittens and put the reel on your spool stand and start feeding it into your hotend.
If you put hot bed on, it's time to turn it off.
Once the print surface looks "frosty", extrude 5-15mm to get the nylon flowing.
Press print and watch an awesome nylon object come out!
Printing settings
Whatever works for you in ABS, is prone to work even better with Nylon. Whatever speed, whatever retract etc. just start with the same settings
Retract you might want to turn lower infact.
Bed adherence for larger objects
For large objects prone to warping PVA glue might not be enough.
My favorite is a very strong ABS juice mixture. My ABS Juice is actually more like ABS+PLA+Nylon. I just keep on putting some scrap pieces into the acetone, and i make it fairly strong.
If putting directly on the glue rub it in, as the glue would otherwise remain under the abs juice layer and ruin adherence, this way the PVA gets mixed out and you get pure abs juice touching the glass.
*WARNING* Adherence might become with this ABS Juice *so* strong that you might actually break the glass surface in just a few prints. I've managed to make a print surface fail after a handfull of prints due to over adherence.
For Nylon if you want to use heat, 40-70c is the sweet spot. With heat bare glass can work, tho i rarely use it.
Bare glass printing
Bare glass printing requires it to be always extremely pure clean, even dust specles can ruin your adherence, any tiniest amount of oil etc. So i much prefer ABS Juice and PVA Glue methods.
After the initial wash of the glass i barely ever need to wash the glass again and i can even touch it with my fingers (tho i do not recommend) without ruining adherence. This convenience is why i prefer ABS Juice or PVA glue.
Tho super clean glass, just spot on right temperature, and the newspaper drying trick you can again make so good adherence that you might break the glass, but that's a very rare occurence.
Bottomline
At the end of the day, Nylon only adds the drying compared to ABS or PLA prints i do. It's very easy to work with, and print quality goes way up.
Never mind, it's so cheap
However, because of it's softer nature it doesn't work for objects which need rigidity, that's where i choose between PLA and ABS depending upon application. Throwaway applications PLA is suitable. ABS for longer term usage.
It's easy to work with given certain precautions and extra steps.
Here's my guide to good Nylon printing!
Pre-requisites:
* All Metal Hotend
* Access to oven you can freely use for most of the day at a time
* Glass print bed
* Dishwashing soap
* Black & white newspaper
* PVA Glue (white wood glue)
* Glass jar, or empty PVA glue bottle with cap intact or something of the sort
Preparation
Put the Nylon you are about to use to oven at 90C. Each 100gr will require an hour or two. Drier the better.
My method is to spool into a spare reel a few hundred grams of the filament, and day 1 dry in oven for ~10hrs in 90c, day 2 is the print day, so dry it another couple hours @ 90C. About 30-60mins before printing time turn the oven off but leave the filament in there.
Mix a very strong PVA Glue + Water mixture into the glass jar, i use something like 33% of PVA. put some water into the jar, and pour the glue in, close the lid and shake strongly.
Wash the glass print bed with dishwashing soap, liquid hand dishwashing soap to be precise. I use a brand called "fairy", it's darkish green and doesn't flow good, a drop or two is enough.
Wash the glass with a sponge, reaaally rub it if it's a new piece or a diry one, and wash it twice. On second wash when rinsing touch only the edges, from now on your fingers are NOT allowed to touch the print surface.
Rinse it really well and then shake a bit to get most water out. Take a page of the b&w newspaper, fold it over twice and then dry the glass with it, really rubbing it in, almost like polishing something.
Fix the glass with some clips on your printer.
Take a piece of paper towel or well used rag, something which doesn't leave much particles away. Make part of it damp with the PVA glue and spread the glue:water mix on your glass, a nice and thick layer, you want it to turn almost completely white.
put the hotend heating up (i'm assuming no filament is in) and turn on your cooling fan, pointing to the bed (to make the glue dry faster). You may at this point put heatbed upto 45c to make the glue dry up faster.
Get the filament from oven, you might need to use mittens and put the reel on your spool stand and start feeding it into your hotend.
If you put hot bed on, it's time to turn it off.
Once the print surface looks "frosty", extrude 5-15mm to get the nylon flowing.
Press print and watch an awesome nylon object come out!
Printing settings
Whatever works for you in ABS, is prone to work even better with Nylon. Whatever speed, whatever retract etc. just start with the same settings
Retract you might want to turn lower infact.
Bed adherence for larger objects
For large objects prone to warping PVA glue might not be enough.
My favorite is a very strong ABS juice mixture. My ABS Juice is actually more like ABS+PLA+Nylon. I just keep on putting some scrap pieces into the acetone, and i make it fairly strong.
If putting directly on the glue rub it in, as the glue would otherwise remain under the abs juice layer and ruin adherence, this way the PVA gets mixed out and you get pure abs juice touching the glass.
*WARNING* Adherence might become with this ABS Juice *so* strong that you might actually break the glass surface in just a few prints. I've managed to make a print surface fail after a handfull of prints due to over adherence.
For Nylon if you want to use heat, 40-70c is the sweet spot. With heat bare glass can work, tho i rarely use it.
Bare glass printing
Bare glass printing requires it to be always extremely pure clean, even dust specles can ruin your adherence, any tiniest amount of oil etc. So i much prefer ABS Juice and PVA Glue methods.
After the initial wash of the glass i barely ever need to wash the glass again and i can even touch it with my fingers (tho i do not recommend) without ruining adherence. This convenience is why i prefer ABS Juice or PVA glue.
Tho super clean glass, just spot on right temperature, and the newspaper drying trick you can again make so good adherence that you might break the glass, but that's a very rare occurence.
Bottomline
At the end of the day, Nylon only adds the drying compared to ABS or PLA prints i do. It's very easy to work with, and print quality goes way up.
Never mind, it's so cheap
However, because of it's softer nature it doesn't work for objects which need rigidity, that's where i choose between PLA and ABS depending upon application. Throwaway applications PLA is suitable. ABS for longer term usage.
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Re: Printing Nylon - no cardboard - very good adherence July 07, 2014 06:46AM |
Quote
waitaki
I don't think I could afford to have the oven on all day - the bloody electric costs a fortune as it is!
I think that you may want to research a solar-powered filament dryer.....
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