Strength of Ultimaker Nylon

[dcschooley 9]

Has anyone done any comparisons of the strength of Ultimaker nylon relative to some of the others? There are lots of comparisons of different nylons, but I haven't found one where somebody compared Ultimaker's nylon to the others. The composition Ultimaker nylon appears to be similar to ColorFabb PA Neat and Polymer PolyaMide coPA, both of which have reputations for being good materials. Alloy 910 and the Matterhackers composites are what I'm interested in comparing against. 

[TimonR 18]

Hi @dcschooley, 

 

We are actually in the midst of updating the Ultimaker technical datasheets, so I can help you out a bit with your question.

 

Ultimaker Nylon is a PA6/66 copolymer, like Polymaker's CoPA (also PA6/66). Colorfabb PA neat is mostly PA6 as far as I know.

 

What does that mean for you in terms of mechanical properties?

Stiffness:

Typically PA6/66 is a flexible yet very strong and tough Nylon, with a tensile modulus of about 2300 MPa and flexural modulus of 1900 MPa. The same applies for Ultimaker Nylon as well as Polymaker's CoPA.

 

Strength:

Tensile strength is very high for such materials, typically 60 MPa with yields of about 6%. Also, this nylon will typically elongate up to 120% before it breaks (so double it's length).

Flexural strength is also rather high at 80 MPa. 

 

PA6 (e.g. Colorfabb) is stiffer compared to PA6/66, typically a modulus of about 3000 MPa. Strengths are slightly higher as PA6/66, but it basically doesn't yield but it breaks instead of extending - so it depends a bit on your application.

 

As a side-note, numbers that I just give for Ultimaker Nylon are actually measured on 3D printed parts. Filament suppliers typically just use injection molding values - which are ideal cases. Expect only 80~90% of the reported properties of such TDS (at least in our experience).

 

Hope this helps!

 

[dcschooley 9]

Thank you. Your answer is what I was looking for. I had been indecisive about several materials, but I am going use UM's nylon. One thing I have noticed is that I'm more likely to run into situations where the hobbed gear chews out a bit of the filament and the filament quits moving. It's usually preceded by the material failing to unload from the hot end at the end of the print. This results in the next print not starting properly because the nylon doesn't extrude. The prints where the material fails to unload are fine. I think what is happening is that the nylon is getting slightly stuck in the hot end because it is cooling too much at the end of the print and this causes the hobbed gear to chew up the filament. I clear it up by following the steps on the display, but not really. I let the hot end heat up and then the nylon retracts just fine. I lie to the printer by not actually removing any of the tubing. This is on an S5 with a Material Station. Any ideas?