A nice filament

I recently came across a filament that seems to deserve to be better known than it is, Proto Pasta Matte Black Fiber HTPLA. This has a granular finish which almost totally hides the layers and ripples in most prints, it can also be treated to give it a higher temperature tolerance than PLA. In addition, it is pretty tough and I have found it easy to print even at 0.15mm layer height with a 0.3mm nozzle.
I came across this when I was designing a lighting array for my stereo microscope as the old ring light is on its last legs. In my first tests I found that a couple of adequately bright LEDs situated close to the objective lens got to over 60°C with 200mA of current - this is a bit much for PLA but HTPLA is quite happy at this temperature. The microscope light is working well and is on [www.thingiverse.com]


To develop the temperature tolerance HTPLA needs to be temperature treated at about 100°C for up to an hour. I found that our kitchen oven was not stable enough at this temperature so I made up an oven with a polystyrene foam box, and unused heated bed and control from a 3D printer. (Top of box not shown)



Mike

Interesting stuff!
It acts like ABS afterwards, but doesn't warp or crack when printed without heated chamber? ( No bad fumes either )
What happens to delicate features on my print in the oven? Will they get soft and loose shape?

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/11/2017 03:26AM by o_lampe.

Quote
o_lampe
Interesting stuff!
It acts like ABS afterwards, but doesn't warp or crack when printed without heated chamber? ( No bad fumes either )
What happens to delicate features on my print in the oven? Will they get soft and loose shape?

There is no warping or de-lamination on any of the parts I have made so far. A small problem is that there is some shrinkage when it is heat treated:- the body of the microscope light shrunk from 68.3mm to 67.4mm after an hour of heating although there was no detectable change in the 17.5mm thickness (across the layers) My parts had fillets on all edges and joins with radii from 1mm to 4mm so there is no fine features to lose.

Mike

what is the best filament from this in you opinion best 3d printing filament

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 11/17/2017 08:45PM by smith59.