The Most Underrated 3D Printing Filament!

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One thing while printing flexible materials i learned the hard way is to also lower your non-print speeds when printing tall models. Bed slingers tend to cause quite a bit of wobbling and models can get misaligned

4:20 What are you printing there Stefan? 👀

Someone in the Rat Rig Facebook group gave me great advice that really works: When the print finishes rather than tear it off the bed pour a little bit of isopropyl alcohol or similar around its edges. I had trouble with phone cases that kept getting deformed when pulled off the bed. This solved it completely. The alcohol gets under the print I think via some capilarry action and almost releases the print from the bed. The force needed to peel it off the bed is reduced to something that feels like 10% of what it was before. I have tried it with several TPUs that before tended to damage my powder coated PEI sheet and it works beautifully. With G10 smooth surface it works too but a bit slower. After getting it off the bed this way I just have to let it dry out the alcohol from its pores.

I legit allways use TPU when possible. It is basically indesctrucable ! And The Layer adhesion is sooo good. I have 2 Waterbottle holders for my bike printed in TPU, every other material cracked after a while cause of the impacts of the full waterbottle but the tpu one still works just fine!!

Man, I wish there was an ultimate filament properties chart. Where all types and brands can be compared to each other.

4:22 "I can't really wrap my head around what to print with this" Oh I think you already know, judging by what's printing in the background. I'm sure Mrs. Stefan is quite pleased.

your friction tests...the surface finish of the sample has a huge effect on how "sticky" it is, resistant to forward motion. So then the same material but printed with a smooth vs textured surface will perform quite differently. To add complication they will perform differently in wet vs dry conditions. The supersoft material likely deformed during the test, creating more surface area in contact with the ground surface.

Misspelled thumbnail ;) "Thremo"

just print it while drying in a food dryer. 20min heating at 60° is enough, saves a lot of energy.

I actually slightly oil the bed for TPU: Put a drop on the PEI and distribute it. Then wipe it off with a dry cloth. Works great for me. (I use some fine mechanics oil.)

The most important thing I learned after printing with TPU was to take off my 3D printed ski mask when talking to people

... and Every Bourbon is a whiskey, but definitely not every whiskey is a bourbon! The maximum volumetric speed was one of the best discoveries that I've made in 4 years of printing.

17:54 That moment of inertia formula that you used, works for rigid bodies. For a pipe it's only relevant for determining its resistance to buckling, but for comparing the overall stiffness of the pipe you'd want to use a formula where you take the area times the distance to the centroid axis.

For flexibles, I have so many tiny spots where filaments can grab. So, I have to decrease the retraction distance, but usually increase the retract speed to get it out of the way fast. And otherwise avoid retractions when possible.

The current best use for TPU for me personally has been airsoft and cosplay, TPU is fantastic for Absorbing BB's in armor. And the flexability make it super nice to wear aswell

If you despise glue stick like myself you can try spraying IPA on the plate while removing the print or heating the bed to 100C before detaching it - both methods work for me almost always.

I have a Flsun Super Racer, and for those who know it, they will understand that it is difficult to print with TPU (95A shore) because it has a really long bowden tube. However, I managed to create a profile on Cura that allows me to always get "good prints," at the expense of a bit of stringing. The main problem I faced was the retraction speed. I spent days adjusting that value, but nothing seemed to work. So, I solved it simply by removing the retraction. To compensate for the stringing that forms, I raised the Z-hop speed to 200 mm/s and the travel movements to 350 mm/s, thereby reducing the probability of stringing. As for the brand of filament for the TPU, I used ZIRO.

what works best for me is disabling retractions entirely and designing my parts to not require many gaps to cross. the TPE I have is of unspecified kind, only says TPE, but it doesnt like retractions and leaves gaps after the deretracts, so disabling them entirely gives amazing results and speeds up the print a lot

I replaced the broken tires on my luggage with TPU. Works a charm.