FFF printing in a viscous medium

Has anyone ever tried FFF printing with the nozzle submerged in a highly viscous medium to enable printing without supports? I just got some 1,000,000 cSt viscosity silicone oil for another project, and it has the consistency of epoxy that is just about to set up. I'm imagining that it might be possible to print a layer into this fluid and have it stay put until the next layer goes down. Or maybe have some really minimal supports like with SLA printing. Any thoughts on the myriad of potential problems? I'd rather get talked out of this before trying a really messy experiment.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/28/2015 10:48PM by LoboCNC.

I say try it and see what happens!

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Ultra MegaMax Dominator 3D printer: [drmrehorst.blogspot.com]

The heat transfer into the fluid will be massive. You´d have to insulate the whole hotend and nozzle.

Better try to eliminate gravity
-Olaf

it's an interesting idea, I was also wanting to try something like that... maybe a foam of some type? a gel? you could insulate the tip of the nozzle with kapton or ceramic paper... FDM definitely needs a better support medium. You should be able to start printing on this material, not just hold up a filament. Let us know your results!

The other though I've mulled over for a long time is printing submerged in a bed of glass microspheres. This would actually result in even less heat loss than an extruder in air. However, they may actually hold in too much heat in the already extruded material. They are also a bit of a nightmare to work with because they float everywhere, and are also an inhalation hazard.

If you don't use 100% infill won't the oil get stuck inside the print?

Check out these earlier discussions on the topic:

Oil Bath (Oct 2007)
Extruding in a liquid (Apr 2008)
Concept for negative-Z 3d pritner (Mar 2010)
Water-bath printing (Apr 2010)
Under Water Printing (Sep 2012)
"Heated Chamber" idea for delta robot (Oct 2012)
Lava Bot (Sep 2013)

Quote
MattMoses
Check out these earlier discussions on the topic:

Oil Bath (Oct 2007)
Extruding in a liquid (Apr 2008)
Concept for negative-Z 3d pritner (Mar 2010)
Water-bath printing (Apr 2010)
Under Water Printing (Sep 2012)
"Heated Chamber" idea for delta robot (Oct 2012)
Lava Bot (Sep 2013)

Thanks! these are the sorts of discussions I was looking for.

My favorite idea is depositing powder (ie fine sand) as a support fill from a second 'extruder'.

You'd probably need a 5-sided box (either FFM extruded per-layer or part of the machine) in which to hold the powder.

The idea would be that you first do the FFM portion of the layer, then 'extrude' the powder support material in the void space of the layer where support is needed (keeping in mind minimum slope angle of your powder, etc).

Repeat as needed, then depowder.

... and extending that to a neutrally buoyant fluid:

1. Start with an empty chamber or a mesh stage above the fluid tank
2. Deposit FFM material for the layer (must be neutrally buoyant w/respect to the 'fill' fluid)
3. Either add fill fluid to the tank, or lower the mesh stage into the tank
4. Go to 2 for all layer.