Colorfabb HT Performance

[Oliveros 11]

Hey Guys.

 

I've now gone through PETG, Nylon 6 and Colorfabb HT for my specific application.

 

Most recently, Colorfabb HT which is what I'm using now.

 

From what I can tell, it's very, very similar to PETG in terms of how it performs, when it gets hot and wet, it does not flex very much but it seems to hold it's form very well, I haven't seen any deforming or warping yet. I'm running my parts through a commercial dishwasher with max temps of 190*F and getting showered. Unlike Nylon 6 which becomes extremely flexible, this material seems to remain rigid, though it does become slightly more flexible when hot, but not too much.

 

My printer is acting up, per it's original specs, it can do 250*C print and 100*C bed, after speaking to tech support, they said I can safely run it up to about 280*C and the bed can be upwards of 120-130*C. There was quite some speculation on the bed adhesion and apparently this material can be tricky. For some reason, if I set my nozzle temp to 265*C, it won't get there, it'll get to about 262*C and then back off, BUT if I set it to 260*C it can overshoot all the way up to 270*C so I know it can get there, perhaps some sort of safety is preventing it to do it when I want it to, I'm not sure. I ended up printed at 260*C and getting the bed to 110*C and it works pretty good.

 

From my limited experience, it's not very difficult to get it to stick, much like anything else where I use glue stick, it dries really fast if the bed is hot, I'm starting out with the bed cold, pretty good layer of glue stick, dry or wet, doesen't matter, then once it starts printing, I manually turn the bed up to 110*C and by the time it gets there, the first layer is down and that will help prevent it from warping.

 

My Z offset is calibrated to be close to the bed where if you were to have a piece of paper under the nozzle, it leaves drag marks on the paper, that was per the manufactures recommendation and after doing that, I have much better adhesion across all materials (PLA, PETG, Nylon)

 

I'm not going for clarity of aesthetics with these parts so I'm not using the material in the way it COULD be with the very clear prints, I'm doing 0.3 layer height with a 0.4 MM nozzle and speed is 50MM/S I believe or something of the sort, run it full speed from the get go and it seems to do just fine. I'll probably try to get some crystal clear prints today just to see if I can do it.

 

I did a 13 hour print overnight, 4 of the parts on the bed and it went just fine, nothing got knocked loose, I'll post some pictures of it later.

 

If anybody has any ideas on how to get my nozzle to run hotter, It would be awesome, it's a Monoprice Ultimate 2

[Oliveros 11]

Some pictures

 

On the bed.

 

 

Cleaned up.

 

One problem I'm having is right here, it's not remaining smooth for some reason and is very prone to cracking right in that area.

 

Then there seems to be some sort of layer shift or something but the objects did not move on the bed.

 

Installed

 

Little bit of flex

 

Lots of stringing and the layer shift is a problem I need to solve.

[BiMNrd 11]

Great,

I hate how real printed part dont look anything like the marketing stuff in terms of finish. Maybe also be the "Clear" I am not a fan of that color in FDM printers. 

 

Otherwise this is great info my friend and seems to be a success for you. 

 

[Oliveros 11]

Yeah. I mean I wasn't going for a clear print, I don't care about that part, I needed the HDT and the FDA approval, if it would've been white it would've worked as well for me.

 

I'm sure you CAN get clear prints by printing at the right temp, right layer height and speed and so forth I just didn't bother trying.

 

Well, I tried once and it wasn't clear and my printer won't run much higher than 260*F for some reason so I gave it up.

 

I'll be trying Kodak's Nylon 12 next, I think that'll be the winner.

[BiMNrd 11]

I get it, no bashing. I can wait till my HT arrives next week. I ordered black. Ill post something on there for comparison if you dont mind.

[Oliveros 11]

Haha, no problem.

 

Cool, I'll be curious to see how it works out. I'm sure it could be a very useful material and I'm sure I'll find a use for what I have left... Only about 600 grams of it, lol. 

 

Go for it, I'll be happy to know.

 

I feel there's not enough information on various filaments and applications when it comes to 3D printing so It ends up with people (like me) having to experiment A LOT to get results and see what works and what doesen't so anything I test that's a bit more exotic, like Nylon or this colorfabb, I want to put the information out there so someone else can use it and they avoid having to go through the same process of buying 10 different rolls of material to see what works.

 

So by all means, be my guest and post your results here, the more the merrier. 

[Oliveros 11]

Update.

 

The part lasted about a week or so before it failed, the layers started seperating and I think it's due to me not being able to print it hot enough.

 

Not a good filament for me with the printer I currently have.

[BiMNrd 11]

Oh wow.. 

[johnse 31]

I don’t think you have layer shift happening. I think you have a bit of underextrusion and are printing too fast, especially with a .3mm layer thickness. That fluctuation in part outline corresponding with changes in layer geometry suggests you are at the limits of the rate the material can be melted and pushed out.

 

i would try it at 50-75% speed and 0.15mm layer height. That will likely make it less likely to break.

 

 

[Oliveros 11]

Could be. 

 

Regardless I don't think I'm running it hot enough as it seems the layer adhesion is not too great once I picked up the broken part. 

 

Nylon 12 so far is working much better for me and it prints at 240*C which I can easily do, so I'll probably stick with that.

 

Also, running 0.15MM layer height would double the time it takes to print, currently I can print 4 of these in a night, takes about 13 hours, if I cut the layer height in half, it'll be 24 hours or more.