Anyone familiar with FDM & Nylon 12??

I am such a newbie that my questions may not be as relevant to you as they seem to me, so please give me the courtesy of an straight forward answer if you can, thanks.

Question #1. After visiting Stratasys I find myself leaning toward FDM & Nylon 12 materials for my product idea. Is anyone here familiar with the strength of those materials? At the Stratasys website they show a pic of a shovel handle and mention the following,

"FDM & Nylon12 Nylon 12 parts built on a Fortus 3D Production System are the toughest in the industry, exhibiting 100-300 percent better elongation at break and superior fatigue resistance over any other additive manufacturing technology. Nylon offers the best Z-axis lamination and highest impact strength of any FDM thermoplastic, as well as excellent chemical resistance."

Hoping that someone or more have had some experience in order to share how strong these materials are. I am trying to achieve close to the tensile strength of .030 stainless in a pulling force. These look like they might come close.

Question #2. Does the cost of these materials and the use of a Fortus 3D Production System reach deep into shallow pockets?

Thank you

The majority of RepRap users on this site are primarily using desktop level printers, which are sub $5000. You are looking at a professional level printer, which is probably going to set you back $50000, unless you are leasing it. Plus you'll need to pay yearly maintenance fees (usually around 10% of the printer) and the material is 3-4x more expensive than what's available for desktop level printers. You do get what you pay for though with ease of use. The pro printers and the software do a lot of the work for you. Dissolvable supports will make your life 1000x easier. The part quality however is not too far off between the desktop and pro FDM printers. Stratasys is definitely more customer friendly than 3D Systems.
Unless you are going to use this machine every week, you might be better off sending your parts to a rapid prototyping vendor. Don't underestimate your engineers blowing through material and wasting $$$. I've seen it firsthand.

If you make your cross section big enough, you can make any plastic as strong as .03 steel. I personally never use 3D printing for anything beyond prototyping since it does not give me the strength I need as a manufacturing alternative.

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Investrite
I am such a newbie that my questions may not be as relevant to you as they seem to me, so please give me the courtesy of an straight forward answer if you can, thanks.

Question #1. After visiting Stratasys I find myself leaning toward FDM & Nylon 12 materials for my product idea. Is anyone here familiar with the strength of those materials? At the Stratasys website they show a pic of a shovel handle and mention the following,

"FDM & Nylon12 Nylon 12 parts built on a Fortus 3D Production System are the toughest in the industry, exhibiting 100-300 percent better elongation at break and superior fatigue resistance over any other additive manufacturing technology. Nylon offers the best Z-axis lamination and highest impact strength of any FDM thermoplastic, as well as excellent chemical resistance."

Hoping that someone or more have had some experience in order to share how strong these materials are. I am trying to achieve close to the tensile strength of .030 stainless in a pulling force. These look like they might come close.

Question #2. Does the cost of these materials and the use of a Fortus 3D Production System reach deep into shallow pockets?

Thank you

Thank you Jersey Girl. What a great and complete answer. I am very early in my research, if you will, so I need to inquire more about FDM printing. I know nothing about dissolvable supports but I'm sure it will become self evident. Thanks for the advice on wasting material.

I do need to ask, if you have the time, about the following statement; "If you make your cross section big enough, you can make any plastic as strong as .03 steel. I personally never use 3D printing for anything beyond prototyping since it does not give me the strength I need as a manufacturing alternative." My finished product would hopeflly only be as thick as 0.03 steel, so how thick might I expect FDM to be in order to acheive that strength? And if you are unsure, do you think it might be twice as thick, 3 times as thick? Just venture a guess if you can.

Man, lots of fail in this thread.

Jerseygirl: You can print Nylon 12 in FDM, on a Reprap or any other consumer printer.

Investrite: No reason to guess.

UTS of ABS is ~40MPa
UTS of Nylon 12 is ~50MPa
UTS of Stainless is ~850MPa

Consider that layer bonds fail before the material does, so expect a little less from FDM than the above strengths.

You need at least 20 times more material in FDM to get the tensile strength (UTS) of stainless.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/02/2014 11:26PM by greenman100.

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greenman100
Man, lots of fail in this thread.

Jerseygirl: You can print Nylon 12 in FDM, on a Reprap or any other consumer printer.

Investrite: No reason to guess.

UTS of ABS is ~40MPa
UTS of Nylon 12 is ~50MPa
UTS of Stainless is ~850MPa

Consider that layer bonds fail before the material does, so expect a little less from FDM than the above strengths.

You need at least 20 times more material in FDM to get the tensile strength (UTS) of stainless.

Taulman nylon is not there yet. I haven't tried Bridge yet so maybe that's an improvement.

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Investrite
Thank you Jersey Girl. What a great and complete answer. I am very early in my research, if you will, so I need to inquire more about FDM printing. I know nothing about dissolvable supports but I'm sure it will become self evident. Thanks for the advice on wasting material.

I do need to ask, if you have the time, about the following statement; "If you make your cross section big enough, you can make any plastic as strong as .03 steel. I personally never use 3D printing for anything beyond prototyping since it does not give me the strength I need as a manufacturing alternative." My finished product would hopeflly only be as thick as 0.03 steel, so how thick might I expect FDM to be in order to acheive that strength? And if you are unsure, do you think it might be twice as thick, 3 times as thick? Just venture a guess if you can.

While SLS parts are sort of brittle, you might want to check out Shapeways and see what metals they have available lately. Email Solid Concepts too. The engineers there might send you some samples.

Jerseygirl, two further questions,

1. let's say my product is 0.03 thick stainless, how do I convert your calcs to a thickness in Nylon 12 assuming a UTS of ~50MPa? I am trying to get a feel for the finished product as a side view of thickness.
2. How do I determine the ft lbs pulling strength that I can understand? ~50MPa = lbs pulling strength?

PM me and I can try to figure out what you are looking for.

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JerseyGirl
Taulman nylon is not there yet. I haven't tried Bridge yet so maybe that's an improvement.

Taulman bridge is so far the by far toughest stuff i ever printed. It is nearly indistructable. The only disadvantage is it's flexibility compared to ABS, PET, HIPS or PLA.

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Srek, thanks it may well be that flexibility would work for my project, if it's capable of withstanding a simple, as I understand the term, uniaxial or normal stress. I am currently holding a conversation with JerseyGirl who is helping me with some basic math uderstanding. Thank you for your input.

Since most people don't want to permanently deform their parts in normal operation, yield strength is usually a better starting point than UTS for comparison. Another consideration is that nylon is quite a bit more stretchy than steel, so modulus of elasticity (MOE) is important to consider. (Ever use a cheap plastic hanger that cheerfully popped back into shape after dropping your coat on the floor? Elasticity in action.) Also, moisture and temperature can affect nylon's properties. In general, if you're replacing a heavily loaded metal part with plastic, expect the plastic part to be shaped/sized quite differently.

Straum3d sells 12-64 nylon that prints very well, and does not absorb moisture.