SEMI-FLEX Filament

[Graeme Bennett]

Hey folks, I just tested the new Semi-Flex filament from Seacans and it's awesome. I paid $21.99 (plus $10 flat rate shipping for any size order) for 500g of it and it works perfectly and prints very cleanly at 190-220C with an unmodified Replicator 2 or, I expect, pretty much any printer with a direct-drive extruder. (Thor3D sells a similar but more expensive product called SemiFlex that costs $58 for 500g.)

Seacans describes its flex resistance as "comparable to bending 20 pages in a book". Details at Seacans.com.

I haven't tried it on a bowden-type extruder, but I don't expect it would work as well. But if you want bendable filament that's not as rubbery (and tricky to print with) as NinjaFlex, this is worth trying.

[Graeme Bennett]

Caveat: "works perfectly" and "prints cleanly" depends on the model and settings you are using, of course. Emmett's stretchy bracelet printed perfectly with no stringing, and resulted in an impressively flexible object. However, being a flexible filament, Semi-Flex will of course have trouble with very tall thin objects. As a torture test, I tried printing the Gyro Air (http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:653085). It printed the bottom halves quite well, but with more stringiness that usually seen with PLA. The top halves got increasingly shaky as the nozzle pushed the tall "arms" to and fro until the outermost one failed entirely. (Still, four out of five was quite impressive, I thought, considering how thin and complex that model is.) Also, raft is difficult (but not impossible) to get off. Print at 30mm/sec or slower on blue tape for best results. A heated bed is not required.

[Kimball Andersen]

On their site it says it is water soluble.  have you tried dissolving it?  Curious what the actual material is.

Also curious, have you tried their POM material?

http://seacans.com/collections/all/pom

Sounds like it could be interesting, especially for gears/bushes and other mechanical parts.

K

[Graeme Bennett]

Excellent idea. Solubility testing is underway.

[Graeme Bennett]

Re: POM. No, I will buy some next time. 

POM, for those who don't know, is also known as Delrin or Acetal. It is a strong, rigid thermoplastic with excellent wear resistance and very low friction. Here's a link to more info: http://umforum.ultimaker.com/index.php?/topic/2646-3d-printing-in-acetal/ 

On Saturday, February 21, 2015 at 2:45:55 PM UTC-8, Kimball Andersen wrote:

[Graeme Bennett]

After three days, there is still no visible change to my submerged sample. Even the super-thin "angel hairs" I deliberately left on there are still completely intact. So, it's not very water-soluble, at least at room temperature.

On Saturday, February 21, 2015 at 2:45:55 PM UTC-8, Kimball Andersen wrote: