Print Seals from TPU

[Grant171 0]

Hi all

I have been given an assignment at work to find the viability of printing seals at work.

We are a company the sepcialises in the manufacture of items for water wells as well as down hole applications for oil and gas.

We use a lot of off the shelf seals and o-rings when designing our parts but there are times when we will need to get these specifically made if the shaft or housing diameter doesn't suit a standard size.

I have been playing around at home on my Ender 3 S1 Pro using a couple of TPU variants.

I  have tried to replicate a U-Cup seal we  use in one of our hydraulic cylinders.

I have been getting some good printed results but the seal is not holding pressure when we test it.

We take it up to 1,000 psi but it slowly loses pressure over a few  hours. We can feel the air slowly escaping.

In the attached photo the off the shelf item is on the left (black) and the one I printed is on the left (blue) using Fillamentum Flexfill TPU 92A.

I used as fine as possible settings with 100% infill.

Has anyone tried to print anything similar with any success?

As I am very new to all this I am not familiar with the settings in Cura and not sure how detailed I need to delve to get a workable result.

Are there any other settings that will make the seal air tight or is this type of printing not conducive to making seals?

If this can be done will be looking at purchasing a printing for our workplace.

Thanks

Grant

[Pena 4]

It looks like your print is sheering apart, have you tried slowing the print speed and keeping the filament dry?

[orlin278 14]

We never were able to get a very tight seal when we tried to print it. So we switched and now we print molds and cast silicone. 

 

We had much better results like this, no problem so far, even with some rough chemicals and gases. 

 

Maybe this is also an idea for you

[MariMakes 177]

That's a super great tip @orlin278 🥰

I've seen some great seal solutions that worked exactly like that!

There is even a mold mode in Cura that can help with trying this. 


Good luck  @Grant171

[Pena 4]

You might also research Quality - Layer Height in Cura material settings.