Printing with Polypropylene
Posted by clarkwd
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Printing with Polypropylene March 05, 2015 01:53PM |
Registered: 9 years ago Posts: 1 |
Printing with Polypropylene
(from a rookie)
This will report the printing of a water tight vessel made of polypropylene. I have an i3v from Maker Farm and had done a few parts with ABS and PLA. (I can't say enough good about the i3v as it always works and I spend almost no time working on the printer and can concentrate on making the parts.) When I found Gizmo Dorks had polypropylene filament, I did not know any better and thought I'd try to make something with it. If you ever worked with polypropylene, you know that it is tough to glue and it warps great, probably worse than ABS. The best you can do is glue it with hot polypropylene. None of the normal things like hair spray, Kapton or painters tape or acetone are gonna make PP parts stick to the bed. One thing PP will stick to is polyproplyene sheets. One can either bond to polypropylene sheets and make it part of your part, or build on a raft and cut it away. It will also stick to high density polyethelyene, the same stuff cutting boards are made from. Wal Mart sells some small cutting boards for $1.89 that I found worked good. (I'm not sure if they are PP or HDPE). The part I'm making is about four inches long by three inches wide and two inches high and is pretty beefy. A thinner walled part may not warp as much.
PP filaments are really soft and you need to calibrate your extruder. I use slic3r. When you get the calibration number you want, add a line to the custom code start G-code that says M92 E and the new extruder calibration will get used.
If you want what you are printing to be water tight, you need to go to Advanced Print Settings and change Solid infill and Top solid infill to 100%.
My heated bed had a sandwich of the heater, a sheet of glass and either the cutting board (cut to size) or a piece of 1/8 PP sheeting. Both worked. I used at least 6 clips to hold it to the glass and heater.
Unlike printing on glass, my prints were made on plastic sheets, sheets that were only used once, allowing some creativity with the alignment. I printed at 250 degrees for the first pass and 240 for later layers and set the bed temp to 100, although it only warmed to about 90. Thats hot enough so that the 250 degree nozzle can melt the bed if it hits it. I set the height with the bed cold, then checked it again hot. Before I printed, I started a job without any filament in the extruder to be sure the height was good all around. I found the optimum height to be between close to zero and a piece of paper. If the nozzle left a small mark on the bed all around when printing the first loop, it was close enough and was also a good check of the bed to head alignment. I found the first layer must be pushed into the bed if you have a big part to keep it from warping.
Parts were printed three ways. In one method, the PP sheet was machined off the part. In the other, the PP sheet was routed around the part and the sheet was left as a big layer of the part. I also printed on a 5 layer raft and had good success getting the part to dislodge from the raft.
(from a rookie)
This will report the printing of a water tight vessel made of polypropylene. I have an i3v from Maker Farm and had done a few parts with ABS and PLA. (I can't say enough good about the i3v as it always works and I spend almost no time working on the printer and can concentrate on making the parts.) When I found Gizmo Dorks had polypropylene filament, I did not know any better and thought I'd try to make something with it. If you ever worked with polypropylene, you know that it is tough to glue and it warps great, probably worse than ABS. The best you can do is glue it with hot polypropylene. None of the normal things like hair spray, Kapton or painters tape or acetone are gonna make PP parts stick to the bed. One thing PP will stick to is polyproplyene sheets. One can either bond to polypropylene sheets and make it part of your part, or build on a raft and cut it away. It will also stick to high density polyethelyene, the same stuff cutting boards are made from. Wal Mart sells some small cutting boards for $1.89 that I found worked good. (I'm not sure if they are PP or HDPE). The part I'm making is about four inches long by three inches wide and two inches high and is pretty beefy. A thinner walled part may not warp as much.
PP filaments are really soft and you need to calibrate your extruder. I use slic3r. When you get the calibration number you want, add a line to the custom code start G-code that says M92 E and the new extruder calibration will get used.
If you want what you are printing to be water tight, you need to go to Advanced Print Settings and change Solid infill and Top solid infill to 100%.
My heated bed had a sandwich of the heater, a sheet of glass and either the cutting board (cut to size) or a piece of 1/8 PP sheeting. Both worked. I used at least 6 clips to hold it to the glass and heater.
Unlike printing on glass, my prints were made on plastic sheets, sheets that were only used once, allowing some creativity with the alignment. I printed at 250 degrees for the first pass and 240 for later layers and set the bed temp to 100, although it only warmed to about 90. Thats hot enough so that the 250 degree nozzle can melt the bed if it hits it. I set the height with the bed cold, then checked it again hot. Before I printed, I started a job without any filament in the extruder to be sure the height was good all around. I found the optimum height to be between close to zero and a piece of paper. If the nozzle left a small mark on the bed all around when printing the first loop, it was close enough and was also a good check of the bed to head alignment. I found the first layer must be pushed into the bed if you have a big part to keep it from warping.
Parts were printed three ways. In one method, the PP sheet was machined off the part. In the other, the PP sheet was routed around the part and the sheet was left as a big layer of the part. I also printed on a 5 layer raft and had good success getting the part to dislodge from the raft.
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Re: Printing with Polypropylene March 06, 2015 09:27AM |
Registered: 12 years ago Posts: 108 |
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Re: Printing with Polypropylene March 06, 2015 03:12PM |
Registered: 10 years ago Posts: 469 |
I had good luck making a water tight ABS part in the past. It was a shaving cup.
I printed it as follows.
1.5mm Walls
30% infill
Medium density ABS goop poured inside the cup. Rolled it around until the walls were coated. Let it dry for a few hours. Holds water with no leaking or problems. The inside of the cup is a milky color as I used natural abs in the mix of acetone and ABS. I also find the surface is considerably harder on the goop treated part than on the bare ABS portion.
My Personal Blog. Build blog.
[engineerd3d.ddns.net]
Modicum V1 sold on e-bay user jaguarking11
I printed it as follows.
1.5mm Walls
30% infill
Medium density ABS goop poured inside the cup. Rolled it around until the walls were coated. Let it dry for a few hours. Holds water with no leaking or problems. The inside of the cup is a milky color as I used natural abs in the mix of acetone and ABS. I also find the surface is considerably harder on the goop treated part than on the bare ABS portion.
My Personal Blog. Build blog.
[engineerd3d.ddns.net]
Modicum V1 sold on e-bay user jaguarking11
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