Shrinkage After Printing

[perlguy 0]

I've printed an iPhone holder for my car in PLA.

If the car gets hot in the sun, the holder shrinks quite a bit, to the point where the phone no longer fits into the holder.

I re-printed a larger one, that also shrunk, but the phone still fits in it.

Is there any way to do something to the PLA so that it will not shrink in the heat?

Thanks.

 

[IRobertI 521]

Nope, not that I know of. That's the nature of PLA, it is quite heat sensitive. It has a glass transition temperature of about 60-65C so it doesn't take much for it to start feeling the heat so to speak.

[blecheimer 9]

PLA + Car + Sun = will never work

I developed a phone holder for my Nexus4 and printed it in PLA to test the basic functions. Worked quite well until the outside temperature was about 18°C. After 8 hours the PLA was a little bit twisted so that my phone does not fit anymore.

The last days the temperature was over 30°C. After 8 hours the phone holder was totally bend. It felt like hot cheese and I could deform it to different sculptures with only two fingers.

So, if you want to print something for your car, use ABS. That's what I will try to do next.

 

[gr5 2,229]

I'm not sure if it shrinks so much as melts a bit. Anyway, your only choice really is to use ABS or never leave it in a car.

ABS is a difficult material to work with. You will need to use the "brim" feature as a minimum. You will need to do other things to get it to stick to your bed e.g. (ABS Juice on glass). You might want a heated bed or heated chamber.

[thingster 0]

Instead of ABS you can give Premium PLA 90 from Orbi-Tech a try which has a comparable softening temp to ABS but is easier to handle.