Oliveros

Hopefully someone will still be around to answer this. How do the layers come out, it's hard to see on the pictures. I noticed Nylon seems very smooth, hows this compared to Nylon?

I wanted to give you guys an insight into printing with PETG, I know it's hard to get any since I tried myself so I wanted to give you my experience after A LOT of it. First of all, PETG has a fairly high HDT of about 60C or 75C depending on what you get. Realize that there is a point of conductivity in plastic which is much lower than a lot of other materials, it's considered an insulator, so even if you have it going through a hot area for a minute or 2, it may work just fine as the heat transfer won't have enough time to heat the part up beyond it's HDT and warp it. Since my application was a large dishwasher, here's what I found, in my case, it was a snap on application, high temp and somewhat needing strength. PETG is not as flexible as it seems to be advertised. I used a Monoprice Ultimate 2 printer, fully enclosed, 60% fan speed, No bed heat for the first layer, glue stick on blue tape, 230*C nozzle, I tried different settings but this worked the best for me. I also used Monoprice's PETG filament, 1 KG roll, fresh out of the box. If you print the grain of the layers longways, it's less flexible and much easier to snap, if you print them across, it's much more flexible. In my case, the object was printed laying down and installed standing up, if I printed it standing up, it would snap once I tried to get it mounted as I was relying on a snap fit. Kind of like wood, I believe there's a fancy word for it that I don't remember. Depending on the density of the item, it's ability to withstand heat will be affected, BUT if you are using it in a dishwasher with stress on it (in my case ,temps were upwards of 170*F) it will warp the parts with stress, 6MM thick or 1-2MM thick, still warps where the stress was, dense or skinny. It's easy to print otherwise, seems to accept paint really well, I made some other parts that didn't need to be food safe or used in the kitchen and they were painted gray, I enabled Ironing in Cura and the parts came out really, really clean on top, you could barely tell it was 3D printed from looking at the face. All in all, PETG is a good material all around but it is NOT the best filament for high temp application exceeding 150-160*F in my opinion. It is FAR from as flexible and forgiving as nylon is but you CAN get it to snap on as long as you don't flex too far, it seems to always return back to where it started on less it's deformed by heat. There's a lot of other filaments out there, a lot of which are hiding which are much higher HDT and still FDA approved, they are just surprisingly difficult to find. As a note on bed adhesion, my best results was, 230*C nozzle, print with a brim or a raft, whatever you want, but do print something to help with bed adhesion, blue tape and glue I print with a COLD BED. My printer is auto leveling and the glue dries quickly, even faster if the bed is hot, I'm using water washable glue which when wet, return to it's tacky style where stuff will stick to it, so I'll cover my bed with the glue and right before it prints, use a rag with some water on it and just wipe the bed gently where the print will be and it lays it down so it sticks really well. Then i'll either turn the bed heat on later or just leave it off, it seemed to make no difference to me. Hopefully this will help someone else who's trying to print PETG.

Will do. I also tried Kodak's Nylon 6 which was a very interesting material, incredibly flexible I was very impressed. For PETG your design was the solver but it couldn't hold up to the temp. With the Nylon, doing it like the original with the cylinders complete, it works but that's due to Nylon's extreme flexibility. I don't know how ABS will act though.

Owen, I wanted you to know your idea actually ended up being the one that worked. The solid cylinder was simply too unreliable. But your idea worked every time. PETG won't work for me though, it warps due to the temperature so I won't be doing them in PETG, I tried Kodak's Nylon 6 which absorbed a lot of water and so the peg became very flexible, it was pretty weird. Now I'm looking at using this, a food safe ABS https://www.innofil3d.com/product/abs-natural-white-1-75mm-750g/

Yeah, just set infill really low, I would set your walls to 2 or 3 though, give it SOME strength.

Okay, I guess that'll have to be figured out then. It's mainly the 2 cylinders, on their side that are really ugly when they come out, it's essentially not a closed print so water and stuff could get inside. Those 2 cylinders are touching the bottom of the plate, currently blue tape, perhaps I'll try to do it with a 90*C bed just bare glass and see what happens. I like the idea of doing my own supports as well. Thank you.

Yes, I have a Monoprice Ultimate 2 which does have a glass bed, I just put blue tape on it for some unknown reason. Perhaps straight glass would be the answer?

Hey Guys. How do you get the bottom of your print to be like the top? I have Iron enabled in Cura and the top comes out, really, really nice but the bottom that's adhered to the bed does not. Is there a feature or a way to make it come out nicer?

Good to hear it improved, do you have a Z offset for your PETG? Ridgid INK. Matterhackers and some other people highly recommend it, some even require it to print PETG. I haven't done it with my PETG prints but perhaps it would help for you, just offset it by 0.02 MM which will keep the nozzle a little more clear of any already laid down plastic, which in turn should help reduce the blobs.

Interesting, perhaps I should try that. It works great for me to start with a cold bed and glue and once it gets the first layer down, crank the heat up. But I like the idea of a no hassle type printing. Now it seems I got this problem somewhat cracked (pun intended) due to the diameter of the cylinders snapping on, the inside would have a hollow spot and due to how small or slim that hollow spot was, it wouldn't infill it very well SO I increased the wall count from 4 to 6 which then maxes out the walls in that cylinder so it's "solid" which increased the strength of that piece by a chunk, to the point where I need channel locks to snap it onto a rail now. For some reason, when I print the complete part, one side snaps, I've printed 2 different ones now and both had 1 side which snapped, so I tried increasing the I.D of the cylinders to give it a little more room, only by 0.2 MM so hopefully that does something. But it seems like it's getting there, got a whole box filling up of failed prints, lol. One thing I would like to solve is how do I get the same look and feel of the top when it's ironed (Enabled iron in Cura) on the bottom where the brim is? Is there a way to do that? I tried increasing bottom layers and changing the pattern but it doesen't do much, it's still open which I don't like. Thank you for helping me here Geert, I appreciate it.

I'm seeing similar stuff on the PETg I'm printing with. When I'm checking on it, it seems like it's blobbing up on the head, perhaps doing a Z offset would be helpful, I haven't done anything other than increasing retraction distance and speed since it's not a big problem for me, but perhaps that would help.

Interesting. I was running my bed at 80-95*C and it still wouldn't stick well, now I'm running the bed cold with glue and it seems to stick really well. It ran a 3 hour print yesterday and it stuck really well, print also came out really nice so I think i'll go with a cold bed for now. I got blue masking tape on it, nozzle temp is 230-235*C and running the bed at 0*C but it's around 30*C while printing, probably just ambient temp in the box. Put some glue stick on it before it prints and it seems to work good. Better than with a hot bed and the print isn't getting messed up so that's good. You are printing directly onto the glass, with no form of adhesion on the glass? I couldn't get PETG to stick to the blue tape with a 95*C bed and 235*C nozzle, just ran right over it.

Thank you. Got any advice for making PETG stick to the bed? It's driving me nuts when it gets partway through the print and then starts sliding around. On a seperate note, your idea may just be the key, I tried printing a partial object with the full solid piece like it was on the original and it couldn't quite flex far enough without snapping, so now I'm printing one with your idea. One of which just came off the bed so now it's round 2.

Owen, Your idea was great, it lead me onto the right path, after making one of those shapes, I decided to print it standing up to avoid having to brace the sections and it turns out PETG is WAY more flexible when printed across and not lengthwise, like day and night difference. So I tried 3 or 4 different versions of your idea and they are almost too flexible to work, I don't know if they'll stay on the rail but I'm still experimenting.

Hey Guys, I've been running into an issue on and off with my 3D printer, I've had it for a couple of days and been printing pretty much non stop. I left something to print overnight and it went sideways really fast, checked on it in the morning and the objects were all knocked off the platform and the nozzle was covered in plastic, a mess. So I've been doing Monoprice's PETG, printing at 230*C with a bed temp of 80*C and putting glue down on the brownish kapton (I think it is, came on the glass), I'm using a brim as well. I did it like that for a bit and it would print fine sometimes, not at other times. I then tried to clean the plate and I noticed the glue got very tacky again and tried printing again where I wipe it with water right before it prints and it seems to work okay, then sometimes in the middle of the print, the object get's pulled or somehow loosens off the glass and it's all over from there. It seems like it's OK sometimes and sometimes not, I've just been going by experience at this point and I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do with a glass bed but it seemed to work so I just kept doing the same thing. So what should I do?

Hello everyone, I have a post in the Engineering section as well but it seems this forum is more active so I'll post here as well. I'm trying to figure out a way to make a cylindrical shape snap onto a rod. I attached the OBJ file and a picture so you can see what I'm trying to do. So the question is, how do I make it able to snap on without breaking? I tried making the cylindrical section with the keyhole in it thicker, so instead of being 5 MM, it was 7 MM and it snaps about halfway, I then tried making it thinner at 2MM, 1MM and 0.5MM where 2MM looked the most promising but still snapped before it made it all the way on. I'm going to be expanding the hole and size a little bit to see if that helps but any advice you guys have is welcomed. Belt Peg Collared Version 1.2.obj

Hey Owen, That;s not a bad idea, I could give that a shot. I tried making the wall thickness 7 MM, 2MM, 1MM and 0.5MM and the one that seemed the most promising in terms of snapping on was the 2MM thick one. I'm going to keep experimenting today so any advice is helpful and than k you so far.

Okay, will do. Thank you.

Yes, you are correct on the snap opening. I thought about making the keyholes larger but I fear that if I do that, it will unsnap from the rails too easily. Perhaps I can try it and see how it works. Good to see that PETG can survive it better than PLA, this application won't be repetitive snapping and unsnapping, just snap on once and ideally stay there for a long time.

Awesome, I downloaded it, thank you. I'll try it out next chance I get. Does anyone have experience with Monoprice's PETG and what offset works best?

I use Sketchup PRO since I started out with 3D viz type stuff. Blender is a steep learning curve but it's free and very good if you take the time to learn it.

The computer that we use for printing as well as 3D renderings and visualizations is not connected to the internet for security reasons, I have to download it and then transfer it to that computer via a USB. Is there a way to download it without being in Cura?

Okay, I just found one post where they are talking about it, thank you.

Okay, would you mind posting the correct link to download it? I see there's multiple one's so I'm not sure which is the right one.

Hey Owen, I attached a OBJ file of the part I'm trying to do. Ideally I can print it standing up so that I can print more than 2 or 3 at a time and just let it run overnight. Belt Peg Collared Version 1.2.obj