Nylon 618

[aelzayn 1]

Hey guys,

I started to try to print with nylon 618 but I noticed all my prints were not sticking. I tried a variety of temps. I also tried using glue and blue tape and nothing works. How can I fix this?

 

[jonnybischof 60]

Taulman recommends printing on a "Garolite / Tufnol" surface:

 

9. Bonding surface:

Precision Bond = Machinable Garolite (LE) McMaster Carr PN 8474K141, 8474K151, 8474K161, 8474K171

Warning: Keep surface area to the Garolite at a minimum or you will break your part trying to remove it.

 

Source: http://taulman3d.com/618-features.html

McMaster is a US supplier iirc. So you should find it there. I bought a sheet from E3D online, but haven't tested it yet (They sell 4mm thick sheets, cut to size).

From the quote above, it sounds like 618 sticks quite well to the Garolite surface

/Edit:

Just read that Garolite is also referred to as "Bakelite". I've heard that before...

 

[aelzayn 1]

thanks

 

[aelzayn 1]

but no way to do it on glass?

 

[profepaco 0]

but no way to do it on glass?

I tried it...with glue... no success... and it was a small piece.

I have garolite... but no time yet to try it.

 

[SandervG 1,521]

I printed a couple of Ultimaker robots on the Ultimaker 2 with Nylon.

Relatively small footprint as well, and they printed fine.

This is what I used for the print:

Heated bed 95°C

Temp 215°C

Speed 50mm/s

Layer 0.1mm

 

[pm_dude 27]

Thats a pretty high temp for bed! I didnt even thought it could go that high.

I print nylon taulman bridge at 240° and bed at 50° with glue.

[irongland 1]

Bridge behaves much nicer than 618 in my experience (no heated bed, I'm on an original). for bridge I have found the correct glue stick works good straight on cold glass.

If you want to print 618 without a heated bed though I can recommend using the same stuff as seen in http://www.tridimake.com/2013/04/3D-printing-with-cheap-trimmer-line.html

It leaves a poor bottom surface but it will help keep the print stuck. Also give a shot at drying the filament; as I understand it, much of the shrinking/warping is due to water content loss as it prints.

In the end I will probably not purchase 618 over bridge since it's soo much easier to print bridge on an unheated bed. Having said that I have yet to test the mechanical properties of 618 vs bridge.

hope my two cents helps!

 

[pm_dude 27]

@IronGland I recently had issues with getting the print to stick for long on the bed at 50C with glue with my Nylon Bridge. I'll have to try on a cold bed with glue next time.

I ended up doing a huge base of 1 layer (50% of that would have been enough) and I was seing the model pulling on the base until the first line of empty squares

 

[irongland 1]

Looks like it's working fairly well!

here was my general setup

1. cold glass with gluestick (I don't have a heated bed on my UM1). Some gluesticks work better than others, these are the two that I have been using.

 

2. my approximate print settings were Brim 15 (very helpful!), 238 deg c (maybe a little colder even), and 50mm/s and I did fairly thick layers at 0.2mm.

 

 

Your print though looks great!

 

[drato 0]

Hey guys,

I currently test the Taulman Bridge Nylon with my UM2 and am printing the clamp part of this camera mount here http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:29258.%20I%20first%20printed%20it%20with%20ABS%20but%20the%20clamp%20broke%20where%20the%20big%20clamping%20screws%20go%20through%20due%20to%20too%20much%20tension%20when%20clamping%20down.%20Currently%20I%20collect%20my%20timelapse%20video%20data%20with%20a%20super-glue-fixed%20clamp%20that%20hopefully%20lasts%20till%20the%20current%20print%20with%20nylon%20is%20successfully%20finished%20:mrgreen:

I also just use a Gluestick and the print is sticking perfectly to my glass bed. It also seems to print quite nicely (have to wait for the print to finish). For the Taulman Bridge Nylon I print with 240°C, 50mm/s and material Flow at 107% just like ABS. I just use the standard ABS bed temperature of 90°C. My Brim is 30.

I'll add the timelapse video somehow when I'm done.

What worries me is the crackling sound that from time to time occurs. Sounds like bubbles exploding: is this due to the moisture of the filament? I thought that heating the filament at the moist parts creates little airbubbles when the water is expanding by the heat. Am I right with that guess?

How can I efficiently get my Nylon and other materials dry again but not over-dry? And what materials have to be dryed/kept dry (like wood, brick, PVA, Nylon)? I recently bought a tight closing container and reusable desiccant bags for that purpose.

I already read the post on storing materials, they all have different opinions. Is it just sufficient to store water sensitive materials like PVA, Nylon, Wood, Brick in those containers with the bags and they will get dry enough with those bags but not dried out?

Does anyone have any experience with such bubble-popping :shock: problems?

And what about the flexible PLA from the UM Store?

Cheers Drato

 

[pm_dude 27]

@ IronGland I tried with cold bed. If I print at 50mm/s and up it stay well on bed but I get some under extrusion. When I print at about 20mm/s the print warps upward slowly. I tried with no cooling fan too and got the same result.

@Drato I have the crackling sound too... That with some fumes coming out once in a while. I cant say whats the cause but when its cooler it doesn't seems to make as much sound but comes out more transparent.

I'll try with Higher bed temp for a change. Could be the room that has too much ventilation...

 

[eldrick 65]

What worries me is the crackling sound that from time to time occurs. Sounds like bubbles exploding: is this due to the moisture of the filament? I thought that heating the filament at the moist parts creates little airbubbles when the water is expanding by the heat. Am I right with that guess?

Probably - nylon absorbs a lot of moisture, and needs to be kept in a sealed storage container with a desiccant when not printing.

 

[pm_dude 27]

Well according to most articles about bridge. Its not a problem as much as with other Nylon.

"...One of the main problems with previous nylon filament was the moisture issue. Bridge nylon has over-come this and does not suck in moisture, making it easy to print with, durable, ..."

[drato 0]

Ok my print did "finish" because I aborted it, as it allways stops extruding the nylon after several layers of printing, this is purely random. One of my prints it was happening earlier due to the spool getting hooked and the feeder grinding off the material and not transporting anymore. But now it just stopped although I made sure the filament does'nt get stuck somewhere before feeding into the tube and the feeder again did start grinding on the filament.

I also noticed that when I wait a while with the nozzle heated to extrusion temp and my filament close to the nozzle, the first few parts that are close to the nozzle are extracted perfectly clear without any bubbles. After that bubbles startet to form.

I am sure this is a definite sign of humid filament as the parts close to the nozzle had time to demoisture before extrusion, due to the heat arround the nozzle. Then extruding at the same speed the rest that did not have enough time to demoisture because its directly fed through the nozzle is getting the crackling bubbles.

Im gonna try to get the nylon dry with my container and desiccant packs and then try a new print again.

Concerning the feeder suddenly grinding the filament and not feeding anymore, I am not sure, maybe this is linked to bubble producing. As the nylon seems quite flexible there is probably a lot of tension in the feeded filament and the bubbles may give the need for more pressure to get the filament through the nozzle, as the feeder is still constantly pushing the filament in the tension gets higher and higher and suddenly the filament is grinded so much that the feeder cant grab it anymore.

But thats just a guess.

 

[drato 0]

Original Taulmann Bridge Filament

Extruded first part of filament which had enough time to demoisturize and is very clear and strong

Clear part gets more and more bubbles, getting weaker

more bubbles, after this the extruded material gets more white due to lots of bubbles and can be easily torn apart

 

But the print looks overall good, guess I was lucky that the bubbles didnt distort the peace that much, but I guess, stability is not given that much. I tested this by trying to pull the test strings I extruded: the clear first part is hard to tear the bubbly parts are easy to stretch getting very thin and then can be torn apart like silk strings or spider webs.

 

[drato 0]

@pm_dude: hmm probably I got bad samples from the store I bought the filament from, it was just a small test sample.

I already ordered a whole spool.

I'll try another print as soon as it arrives and then compare a second print after I have let the filament sit in my desiccant container for a while.

 

[jonnybischof 60]

I've seen something similar with Colorfabb XT (PET-G filament). By printing a bit hotter and reducing fan speed, I could solve the problems in my case.

Also, I've enclosed my UM1 so that it prints in a heated environment, about 40°C "cold" air temperature.

My guess is that my cooling fan would lead to a cooler temperature than what the sensor measures. After all, the nozzle is made of brass which is a rather slow thermal conductor. So it can well be 10K cooler than the heater block if it is cooled too much by the fan.

PLA is usually not too picky about extrusion temperature, but other filaments (like XT) seem not to like it.

/edit:

According to the taulman "features" page, Bridge shouldn't be as moisture sensitive as their other nylons:

 

Reduced water up-take:

Next was Reduced water up-take from local humidity. While it is not possible to eliminate the water uptake by nylon, it is possible to localize it to the surface through final processing changes. Therefore when printing, rather than water creating a subtle popping that can effect the surface finish, Bridge will hold the water to the outer portion resulting in a slight steam when wet. The result of this is that Bridge needs little or no drying in the winter and just needs to be warmed in the summer months. This is a manufacturing process that our extrusion house developed and added to our existing taulman3D processes.

 

[drato 0]

By printing a bit hotter and reducing fan speed, I could solve the problems in my case.

Also, I've enclosed my UM1 so that it prints in a heated environment, about 40°C "cold" air temperature.

 

I'll also try that as soon as the spool arrives, thanks for the suggestion.

 

[pm_dude 27]

Alright here are some news! Good News!

I printed a piece using Nylon Bridge for a test of "Fabric" I made based on what we can now see being done in fashion/3d printing exploration.

240C/80C & glue stick

30mm/s, 0.1 layers

Material flow at 107%

retraction at 4.5mm, 40mm/s

And most of all, Fans at 50% and I closed the front opening with a panel to remove any potential air flow (except from the top).

No Brim

The top is pretty shitty unfortunately but that was to be expected a bit since there is so many bridging invovled.

Overall I'm happy that it didnt warp/shrink/lift from the bed and it actually work with a FDM printer!

I'll have to retry with a bigger surface like 10 X 10 squares.

Thanks for all the tips everyone

 

[pm_dude 27]

Here is the 10 X 10 version

 

 

8 hours out of 9 through the print I got a power cut :(

 

 

There is sign of under extrusion every where but thats to be expected I guess when you have up to 500 retractions happening per layer.

 

Anyway it did stick very well to the bed

 

[drato 0]

Hey guys,

I have good news too. My Nylon Spool arrived and my clamp printed perfectly, no bubbles at all, smooth surface, even the overhang of the holes where nice and smooth. I also didnt have any issues with grinding.

While printing the new clamp

New Clamp

Left to right: New Nylon Clamp, old ABS Clamp, first failed Nylon print

New Clamp

Old ABS Clamp (the parts at the holes came of and I had to super glue them in place

First failed Nylon Print

The new clamp in use, slightly bendable but strong

EDIT: changed the Video Size for better preview

Printing

 

[Opc150 2]

Sweet clamp.

I've ran 3 - 32 hr prints with nylon bridge 1 @ 100% infill, 1 @25% infill and currently printing 75% infill.

part is aptox 6"x4x4".

On the 100 % fill had alot of warping and print lifted from bed 1/2 way through. 25% had some warping and also barley lifted on inside corner.

My recomendations use ALOT of brim I may be over doing it but I'm at 50-80 on the brim setting in cura, I basically max out the bed w brim (why not? - it helps..).

Printer is UL2 extended.

Print temp is 240-242c

Bed temp at 70c

material flow at 105-110%

Layers @.1/.15/.17

Speed 30-50mm/s

+layer PVA glue stick, straight on glass no tape.

Retraction- 5mm at fastest retract speed and it still leaks like crazy. Prints end up with strings of nylon all over the place... maybe my nozzles to hot?

Anyways I'll post pictures of 3 prints when I get a chance.

also for support I've found that a good 1-1.5mm xy separation, and .3-.45 Z seperation is very helpful for all who only have 1 extruder. The support is rediculously strong (grid).

With regards to fill:

100% fill is like a brick, super strong. (Yet still a little flex)

25% fill is like a sponge, too flexible and soft for this application.

No active cooling (fan) 0% for the whole print.

The nylon sucks up water like a sponge so print it dry or risk poor quality prints. If it's smoking /vaping you should dry it out. little pops here and there I think are inevitable but if you can see smoke/steam, and the print is white not clear, there's too much water.

Hope this helps.