Buckyballs - Trimmer Line vs Taulman 645

Trimmer line is:

$16.13 per Kg:

[www.amazon.com]

T645 is $64.35 per Kg:

[taulman3d.com]

[www.thingiverse.com]

Printed with the following specs:

0.3175 layer height.
5 permimeters.
5 top and bottom.
0.05 honeycomb infill.
Solid layer every 50 layers.
Speed 30 perimeter, 45 infill, 15 small perimeter, accel 250.
10mm brim.
Printed on 65% Polyester / 35% cotton fabric glued to glass with 3M Hi Strength 90 spray.
No heated table.
No fan.
No support.
0.4mm nozzle.
0.4445mm extrusion width.



Will run over with car.

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[www.matter-replicator.com]

Leaving this here so people know what they are getting into with printing this mystery filament: [forums.reprap.org]

For the first test, I printed both at 230F. Had a jam with the T645 so the top 1/2 inch or so was missing.

Ran over with Ford Focus - they both split on layers. But it seems like if the layers were to bond better, than they could have survived. So I will try at 5 degree increments up to 250C, and repeat.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/10/2013 02:51PM by rsilvers.

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[www.matter-replicator.com]

Going from 230 to 235C - I ran this over with the Focus with no damage. I then ran it over a second time, to get it on video, and it did split on one layer. But the 230C split on multiple layers the first time. So now I will try 240C.

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[www.matter-replicator.com]

The trimmer line has not been kept in an extremely low humidity condition. In fact, it is saturated with moisture on purpose to allow for greatly increased flexibility. When Weed Eater first came out with the first weed eaters, they had problems with the nylon lines they were using. Because they were too "dry" the lack of moisture on recently produced line made the lines brittle. Their solution was to put the spools of line in a humidifying room that pumped water vapor into the air for several days. Nylon is one of the most hydroscopic plastics there is, it readily absorbs moisture. As an example, in injection molding, nylon requires one of the longest drying times (4 hours - double most dried plastics) with a heated desiccant dryer and insulated hopper, otherwise it simply drools trying to boil out the water vapor trapped in the line. Over time, the 618 lines performance will deteriorate, if you don't keep it in a bag with desiccant.

If they trimmer line were dried, much more than just low room humidity, it's performance would improve drastically.

I dried my line at 180F for ~20 hours, twice.

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[www.matter-replicator.com]

As a side note, I have been interested in purchasing testing equipment for PPM VOC, moisture testing, vapor testing, etc.. I need to find good affordable equipment though, so it takes time. Very few labs have the right equipment, and far fewer have it for sale.

I have a Fisher Scientific fume hood, Instron Tensile tester with load cells specific for testing plastics (although I would like to update it to be more digital), a Blue M Lab oven, drying ovens, and other test equipment. My Instron tester is a bit dated, it uses the old graph charts / ink needles, but it's still worth a $5k trade in on a new machine. I don't know anyone doing testing on the plastics. The filament we use is generally lumped in to "works" or "doesn't work" categories.

Sorry for the unedited video - iMovie was not cooperating.

[www.youtube.com]
[www.youtube.com]

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[www.matter-replicator.com]

The 645 ones have 17% more mass, which had to do with how I calibrated the printer. Notice in the video the white ones lifted the car, whereas the blue ones got compressed more. That may partly be due to the difference in quantity, and possibly the white T645 is just more rigid.

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[www.matter-replicator.com]