danilius

Thanks for that. Will give that a whirl!

'Tiz the only way to get things proper reet... Then you are sorted. With UHU stic if you apply it to a hot bed, you get a nice smooth - but not glass - finish. As it is, when gluing parts together you want a roughish surface anyway, to get a greater surface area for the glue to adhere to. What glue do you use, BTW?

Since you are within reach of ebay UK, give UHU stic a go before spraying muck all over your build plate. Works a charm for me, for all my current filaments (PLA, ABS, Nylon, PETG). Spread it with the plate at around 50C, and print PETG at 75C.

Clearly I live under a rock.

Best idea I have heard in a while!

The weird and the wonderful is what is pushing 3D printing forward a this crazy rate.

Yup, I'm wondering if the resolution of the feeder is capable of dealing with this altogether. Nope. Just jammed for some inexplicable reason. Could be a particle in the plastic itself. I have had that before. Tried that with my other nozzles. It requires exquisite timing, or a stable source of heat at around 120C - 140C, which I don't have. I should have thought of that :( Excuse my utter ignorance, but what is a 2-3ptfe tube? Well that was pretty impressive, thanks!

Yup, you read that correctly: 0.1mm nozzle. I know, crazy, but I got a preview one. And it is bonkers. At first I tried printing a tiny treefrog, around 7mm x 5 mm. In order to eyeball the first layer I printed it with a 20 line brim, at 5mm/sec right at the front of the bed. In hindsight, choosing white PLA was monumentally stupid. First of all I tend to find that white PLA is much more finicky than other colours, and secondly it's almost impossible to see if anything is happening since at such a fine layer thickness (0.05mm) and a width of 0.1mm. The first one failed to print the arms, so I cancelled that one. Scaled up a bit, started again, same problem. On the third attempt the nozzle jammed. Gah! Now how do you clean a 0.1mm nozzle? You can even see the hole it's so small. I will try heating it over a gas flame tomorrow and quenching it in water which will hopefully expel the jammed goo after a few goes. I think the next material to try is PETG which so far seems less prone to jamming than anything I have used so far. There are no pics to show at this stage, so please just picture my frustration instead. This is the toughest printing I have ever done. All advice gratefully received.

No, that's a good idea mind you.

I bought some PETG from amazon UK, 3D Prima brand. It has a glass-like appearance once printed (if you use really fat layers). It is as easy to print as PLA, although at higher temps. I tend to print 0.2mm layers at 30mm/sec for the outers, 45mm.sec for inners and infill at 255C and the bed at 75C, no enclosure required either (although to be honest I don't use one with ABS either). I use UHU stic on glass, works just fine for me. It does not warp like ABS, it does not smell very much, less than PLA. It's greatest strength is its.....strength. Crazy strong compared to PLA and ABS. You can really brutalise the stuff. It is more springy than ABS, and springs will work quite nicely when the same thing will break in ABS or PLA. All in all, it is my go-to filament now. I did have some strange result when destruction testing some prints. 5 pieces went through 200+ degrees bends several times before I could tear the pieces away. 2 shattered, but did not delaminate. I tried to capture the gem-like appearance of this material unsuccessfully. The springs are really strong and I was unable to pull them too far out because the sharp edges of the part were digging into my fingers too much, which should give you a very good idea of the strength of this material. I bet the springs 90 degrees up and down and they still work. I think this stuff is manufactured by the dwarves of the mines Khazad-dûm with Mithril being one of the key components, but that might just be an urban legend.

The idea is pretty good, execution (oh dear, 'orrible pun) is going to be tricky. The drone can't practically be flown using a VR headset at any speed in a crowded city except by the most experienced of pilots, so will have to use autonav with collision avoidance bla yada bla, you can see why it hasn't exactly gotten off the ground (oh no, another bad pun). What's really preventing this is really good AI. Skynet, we need you.

Have you ever tried plain PETG? I've been using the stuff for parts that are getting a serious walloping, and the results are nothing short of astonishing.

An Ambulance Drone (great idea, silly name - it's a flying defibrillator) which can be seen here: Nice but very brief UM2 shot as well.

Ahh, Shurik, you got everyone excited and then let us down with a bump.

Awesome stuff! How are you printing dual head?

My four year old son was promised a keyring if he behaved nicely at the dentist, and what do you know, he did! I cleaned off the dribbles after I took this shot. The coin is a British 2p, which is 25.9mm in diameter. Printed in Prima 3D PETG, 0.2mm layers, 250C, 30mm/sec outer walls, 45mm/sec everything else, no supports, 10 line brim, bed temp 75C.

Interesting. Will have to give that one a whirl.

I have found that going easy with acetone allows for better results. So, for a weld, keep a very thin gap between the parts when applying the acetone, use a small amount, then shove the parts together really quickly and breathe in the wonderful fumes. For sealing, use several washes rather than dumping in a bucket load. For tight ball joints you might want to consider using a fine abrasive powder. I haven't tried this, but you might want to put some baking soda into a tight ball joint, wiggle it around until smooth (might need several applications) and then wash it out with water. You might have to soak the part a few times in warm water to get all the soda out. Baking soda is mildly abrasive.

Well, what other option was there? Maybe polyurethane varnish, but that takes ages to dry, and I wanted it on the table pronto. The one big advantage that ABS has is the acetone thing. There are so many tricks one can do using acetone, including seamless welds. Aaaaanyway, it has been almost two weeks now, and the flowers are drooping but the vase is still watertight. I expect it is a permanent fix.

Well, the part is fundamentally not designed for FDM printing, because it has no natural flat area. So, you are going to need supports, and fairly close ones as well. Use lines, not grid. You will have to go into expert mode for all this. Also, print as low a temperature as you can go, and no faster than 30mm/sec. Keep the fans blowing all the time at 100%; it's not going to affect anything negatively and can only help. Print the part on its side, with the text facing the front of the UM.

What material are you using? This will make a difference to the answer.

The whole thing was modelled in Blender. There is a plugin to create spiral curves, and then a mesh - in this case the letters - has a Curve modifier attached that distorts it along a curve.

Printed this for the wife - the names of all our family. Printed in ABS with a 0.8mm nozzle and 0.4mm layer height. The printer was left open, no paper or cardboard covering it. Obviously it did not distort or delaminate during the print. It took around 8 hours to print at 60mm/sec and 45mm/sec for outer edges. The only thing that went a bit wrong was that I did not print it solid, so it leaked a little. That was easy to fix, I simply washed the inside with acetone, and minutes later it was dry and waterproof.

It sounds like you are having real trouble printing nylon. I use an ordinary 10-line brim straight to glass, on ABS juice. The bed is at 65C, or sometimes 50C. Either one is fine, and nylon peels off ABS with the slightest tug. Below are (partial) shots of a nylon part. As you can see, it's translucent, and the layers barely show up. It was printed at 0.1mm layer height, in Taulman Bridge.

You can download it from YouMagine here: https://www.youmagine.com/designs/toothy-toothbrush-holder Printed in ABS without any shielding whatsoever. All I do is coat the bed in ABS juice, start printing at 75C and have the TweakAtZ plugin raise the temperature to 110C from the second layer onwards. That way I don't have to wait ages for the bed to warm up. I do use brims, usually 10 or 20 lines depending on the model. In this case I used 20 since the bed contact area is so small. I have printed a few of these, and they take 4 hours with a 0.8mm nozzle, 0.4mm layer height, 5% infill, and around 60mm/s, twice the time obviously at 0.2mm layer height. If any of the moderators are reading this, I won't be using the 3D print upload form until: 1) I am not forced to enter anything, but get to choose what information I supply or don't. It's my model, my effort, and my time. When those requirements have changed and item 2 has been fixed, I will use it again. 2) I'm on Ubuntu 15.04 using Chrome. My pictures won't upload now to the 3D print form. Not having all the time in the world, I tried twice with the same result. So, I abandoned that effort, along with the considerations mentioned in item 1.