Printing with PET+

[Scottbee]

We've been talking a little about this over on another thread, and I figured it was worthy of its own topic.  Couldn't find any other references, so here it is.

JimC had made a recommendation that those of us who are looking for durable production parts without warpage should look at the PET+ filament from MadeSolid.  Since we're working on using 2X's in a production environment, making components for our machines, I thought I'd give the stuff a try.

The filament arrived today (quick shipping, I believe I ordered it 2 days ago from Amazon and it wasn't Prime).  I received the black and "clear" filament, although I have only printed with the black so-far.

Per some recommendations and baseline information, I cranked the extrusion temperature up to 250C and set my HBP to 70.  Other than that I used a pretty much standard and canned ABS profile in Simplify3D.  I should note that I am printing on a fiberglass (PCB) build plate surface, which has pretty much become my go-to surface for production ABS.

Right out of the box the PET+ printed quite nicely.  Good BP adhesion, nice layers, good detail definition, and excellent layer-to-layer adhesion.  There was no readily apparent warping (and this was a large, flat piece) and I had no corner-pop from the build surface.  I am showing about .5% shrinkage.

There are clearly some parameters that I will need to play with.  It has a tendency to "drool" and "string", so I will tinker with retract and other anti-drool parameters.  I also need to run a calibration cube because it appears that there might be a little bit of under-extruding (the filament diameter is a solid 1.75mm).  

The material properties are interesting.  It is clearly a "tougher" material and will endure a lot deformation before breaking (with no "whitening" of the bend location).  It is a bit more flexible than the ABS (I believe there are hard numbers for Young's Modulus and other parameters on the MadeSolid web site) and a lower coefficient of friction (when tested against mill-finish extruded aluminum).  I'd probably put it halfway between ABS and nylon.

It's pricey when compared to ABS, but I can see why folks might opt for this material.  With less warpage and good adhesion to a non-heated (or lower temp) BP you can probably expect higher overall yields (less scrap and wasted prints).  

Anyway.... I figured this would be the place where others can discuss this material and compare notes (MBI-permitting).

[Jimc]

thats great scott. its better that you started with the black. its easier to see what you have going on so you can tune your settings. clear filaments are a little trippy and hard to see what the hell is happening. for the drooling, you want to get your ooze control settings similar to nylon. once you get it the ooze is actually very easy to control. i dont get anything anymore. once i had my settings tuned i figured i would try the print in the pic below, the cellular thing. i figured it would be the ultimate test to see if i got stringing under control. i pulled this off the bed just as you see it with no cleanup. to give others a durability idea, i can take that print and bounce it on my hardwood floor like a basket ball with cracking or breaking. here is a vase for some 3d printed roses i did for the wife. the roses were abs but the vase i did in the pet+ and used creators single wall corkscrew feature printed at .15mm. came out super clean. so far since i have had my profile set i havent had a failed print yet.

 

[Jimc]

btw if your a little too drooly lower your temp a bit. try 230 and see what that gets you. my actual nozzle temp is 225-230.

[Ryan Carlyle]

I've been considering PET-type filaments (PET+ or Taulman's PETT) for acetone+heat service, such as elements inside an acetone polishing unit. 

Have you tried anything water-tight yet? I'm curious if it's an easier food-safe option than nylon.

[Jimc]

well ive printed 618 nylon and my god pet+ is soooo much easier. not that nylon is hard as far as printing goes but the warping of nylon is a pia. to be honest i have not tried to put water in the vase. its only one layer so i imagine it would have a drip or two.

[Ryan Carlyle]

Done any dualstrusion with other materials? Any idea how the adhesion is to ABS/PLA/Ninjaflex/Nylon?

[Jimc]

i have not since i only have 1 extruder. i run an m2. i havent heard of anyone using pet in a dual situation with another plastic so im not sure. 

[Scottbee]

I've been told that it melds quite well with ABS, but I haven't tried it yet.

[happyman]

Have tried printing ABS and PET+, they fused quite well together but not good enough to use as support material for ABS. The only draw back that I am still trying to find a solution is when printing with support, it is so hard to break away the model and support - almost like PLA but harder.

[Scottbee]

Just curious... why would you want to use PET+ as a support material?

When I have to use support I use HIPS, which can be dissolved away with Limonene.....

[happyman]

It was just for an experiment. Seeing that it has almost no warp with good bonding between layers, so want to try to print without heat bed to see the outcome by using PET+ as raft base for ABS print. But it fails nonetheless :)

[Jay]

Been a while since I pulled out my T-Glase...so I printed a 40mm air guard I was running today in PLA. 

.20 / 2 wall / 10% fill

240* C

printed using T-Glase PETT 1.75mm filament on a Rep 2

Cheers!

Jay

[Ryan Carlyle]

Shiny!

[Jay]

Here's a goblet I just finished...not as clear but I had bumped temp to 245*C....might lower it back to 240*C and see if that clears it up any.

Man...once I put PETT on I start playing...not like I don't have enough on my dance card to do...

Cheers

Jay

On Sunday, February 16, 2014 5:26:04 PM UTC-5, Ryan Carlyle wrote:

Shiny!

[Have Blue]

What are people finding regarding print speeds for PET?  I've been playing with CX-Glass from Coex lately (http://coex3d.com/product/cx-glass/) and I just can't get good layer adhesion no matter how high I crank up the temperature (and at 295 it starts drooling pretty bad).  Other people are having good results, and the key seems to be running the print speed pretty slow.  My Stratasys is already pretty slow, but I can't adjust it to slow down any further...

[Jay]

Have Blue

 

Standard speed of 90mm/s. For PETT all I have to do is change filament and temp. I pretty much run it like it's PLA.

Jay

[Jimc]

I have a spool of the cxglass here. My impression on it is its terrible. Im not sure exactly what the stuff is but its not like any other pet. It shrinks alot so it warps terrible. It seems to be very weak as well. The owner of the place said to me it needs to be printed at high temps. I have it extruding no problem at 245 but apparently thats not high enough and i do t want to go higher without an all metal hot end. Even if you could get the warping under control and layer adhesion right the stuff is still weak compared to regular pet. When it breaks it seems like there are fibers in it. Overall its just a very strange material and its not really suited for 3d printing. With the other pet's out there that work and print so easily there is really no reason to even mess and struggle with it.

[Have Blue]

Hmmm, I didn't see any warp issues with CX-Glass, but then again I have a 70C heated chamber.  It does get clearer as the printing temperature goes up, so it may have applications for custom printed light pipes.

[Jimc]

well if you have a hot chamber like that then thats a whole different ballgame. only the pro machines have such a device so it might work for those machines. the stuff wont be good for any consumer lvl printer. 

[Ryan Carlyle]

Just curious, is this something you built or do you have a nicer printer than the rest of us? I'm working my R2x up to 70C with various upgrades -- running around 50C right now.

[Have Blue]

Nothing I built - it's an old Stratasys machine (FDM 1600).

[Scottbee]

I saw a similar vase printed in PET+ over on a different forum so I just had to give it a try.

This was done on my 2X using S3D and the "spiral perimeter".  I did it with .29mm layers and shrunk the model to 50%.  Three base layers.  Extruder at 250 and the HBP at 70.

Learned the hard way that I can't print this material on my 2X with the door closed and the hood on.  I'll get an extruder jam each and every time, somewhere between 25% and 75% along.

This vase is water-tight.  But if you'll look closely you'll see that where the vase curved out at the top the material wouldn't "bridge" and there are spider-web gaps.  They're uniform, and frankly they look kinda cool.... but they are voids none-the-less.

[Jimc]

thats a nice print scott. the spiral setting on s3d is pretty cool. i have found limited uses for it but when you do the print comes out great. as you found the drawback is its limited to 1 wall so if it steps over too far you get gaps. the one i did was watertight on the side walls but where it met the base it leaked. cool none the less. 

[Scottbee]

Since this is also my first "clear" filament, I find myself screwing around a bit more than I probably should.

This is also PET+,  my daughter done using the slick 2D->3D add-in for SImplify3D:

[Joseph Chiu]

On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 12:38 PM, Scottbee <scott.e...@gmail.com> wrote:

Learned the hard way that I can't print this material on my 2X with the door closed and the hood on.  I'll get an extruder jam each and every time, somewhere between 25% and 75% along.

This.  Yes.  Exactly what I have been going through with the 2X when I was using it with ABS on a friend's machine that I was nursing back to health. 

[Scottbee]

I certainly don't have that problem with ABS.  As a matter of fact, printing large ABS models with the hood off and the door open is the kiss of death.

And the black PET+ printed just fine with the hood on and door closed.  It was just the clear that gave me the grief.  My guess is that the clear material softens at a lower temperature, and the heat soak working its way back up the thermal tube finally got to the point where the PET was too soft at the extruder wheel.

[Jimc]

yeah scott the guys at madesolid said that the colors were even easier to print with. pet does have a slightly lower glass transition temp than abs which is why you probably got the feed issue. i am assuming the 2x can get a little hot in the extruder drive area? i just ordered 3 rolls of the black stuff.

the pic of your daughter came out really cool. i have never used that feature of creator.  

[Daniel Quaroni]

I got my PET+ last week and tried a couple prints on my plastic carriage rep2.  I dared to go up to 240 and it still had adhesion issues.  My impression of the PET+ was that it was consistent diameter between 1.71 and 1.73mm and the filament seems more flexible than PLA.  I've ordered an alucarriage so I can go hotter.  I'm excited for the possibilities of printing with materials that can stand up to sitting in a hot car.

[Jay]

Daniel,

I found the 'raw' filament PET to be no more or less flexible than PLA...once printed it's more but don't expect it to be like ninjaflex (rubberized filament)....it will still crack and crush. 

You don't HAVE to have the alucarriage to do one or two high temp prints....it's only over several sessions you start seeing deformation. Molded nylon's operating temps are around 110*C or so. It's hard to measure in that area but I was getting an induced heat of 80*C so for a few runs you shouldn't have a problem. I can get PET to print well in the 240-245*C.

Cheers!

Jay

[Scottbee]

I don't know about the "raw filament PET", but the PET+ that I bought from MadeSolid is certainly more flexible than my ABS.  And you can deform it repeatedly (plastic deformation) without it cracking or "going white".

[Scottbee]

I'm working on a quick little project so a friend can mount his mini MP3 player on the handlebars of his Harley.  A nice thing about the PET+ is that I can put the living hinge right into the clamp....  something that I can't do with ABS.

This is the part I made to make sure we have the handlebar sizing correct:

[Jay]

Bad phrasing...

What I meant is it's just as rigid as PLA when you are loading it...that it's not rubbery like ninjaflex. Somewhere between my hands and brain I got off...

Jay

[Bonekollector]

Im running my first print with the Madesolid white on my Rep 2 running @ 247c on glass with hairspray. first try is going flawlessly (so far).

[Bonekollector]

accidentally had rafts on, parts pealed away from the raft about 20% in.  redid slice w/o rafts & worked out pretty well. a little minor bridging issue, but pretty happy with my first non-pla print experiment.

 

[Rich Olson]

Just got some PET+ black.  After some tweaks - I now get very strong prints of good quality with my Replicator 2.

In short - it's trickier to work with than PLA - but it seems much less problematic than nylon (but not as strong) once you get a few things sorted.

Print settings make a HUGE difference.  It seems people starting with ABS settings are having good luck - those using PLA settings have less good luck. I experimented a bit - and here's what I've figured out.

Print Temperature

260-270c - less than that you'll get adhesion issues (both to platform and between layers)

PLA / Cooling Fan

Turn this off!  Having the cooling fan on seems to cause serious delamination issues.  There is some trade-off in loss of bridging / overhang ability.  If you go 270c having fan on is OK - but you'll lose strength (maybe printing slower might overcome).

Filament Diameter / Feedstock Multiplier

My filament measured 1.65mm round - well smaller than the MakerWare 1.77 default.  Correcting this seemed to help delamination.

Further - changing to the  Feedstock Multiplier from PLA default (.93) to ABS (.85) further improved interlayer strength. 

Between these to setting changes I significantly increased the amount of filament extruded - and results improved a bunch.

I think a lot of people having problems are extruding too little filament

Build Plate Adhesion

Black PET+ seems to stick very lightly to blue tape (cleaned with alcohol).  That said - it doesn't curl / shrink too much - so many prints seem to go fine.

I found when I had adhesion problems - applying a thin layer of glue stick glue fully solved them (residue can be cleaned off part with alcohol). 

Infill

I had some problems with "roofs" caving in with the default 10% hexagonal infill.  Now using 20% linear infill with good results.

If you need a tool to help manage MakerWare profiles - check out my tool - ProfTweak:

http://nothinglabs.blogspot.com/2013/09/introducing-proftweak-makerware-profile.html

-Rich

On Friday, February 14, 2014 3:22:48 PM UTC-8, Scottbee wrote:

We've been talking a little about this over on another thread, and I figured it was worthy of its own topic.  Couldn't find any other references, so here it is.

JimC had made a recommendation that those of us who are looking for durable production parts without warpage should look at the PET+ filament from MadeSolid.  Since we're working on using 2X's in a production environment, making components for our machines, I thought I'd give the stuff a try.

The filament arrived today (quick shipping, I believe I ordered it 2 days ago from Amazon and it wasn't Prime).  I received the black and "clear" filament, although I have only printed with the black so-far.

Per some recommendations and baseline information, I cranked the extrusion temperature up to 250C and set my HBP to 70.  Other than that I used a pretty much standard and canned ABS profile in Simplify3D.  I should note that I am printing on a fiberglass (PCB) build plate surface, which has pretty much become my go-to surface for production ABS.

Right out of the box the PET+ printed quite nicely.  Good BP adhesion, nice layers, good detail definition, and excellent layer-to-layer adhesion.  There was no readily apparent warping (and this was a large, flat piece) and I had no corner-pop from the build surface.  I am showing about .5% shrinkage.

There are clearly some parameters that I will need to play with.  It has a tendency to "drool" and "string", so I will tinker with retract and other anti-drool parameters.  I also need to run a calibration cube because it appears that there might be a little bit of under-extruding (the filament diameter is a solid 1.75mm).  

The material properties are interesting.  It is clearly a "tougher" material and will endure a lot deformation before breaking (with no "whitening" of the bend location).  It is a bit more flexible than the ABS (I believe there are hard numbers for Young's Modulus and other parameters on the MadeSolid web site) and a lower coefficient of friction (when tested against mill-finish extruded aluminum).  I'd probably put it halfway between ABS and nylon.

It's pricey when compared to ABS, but I can see why folks might opt for this material.  With less warpage and good adhesion to a non-heated (or lower temp) BP you can probably expect higher overall yields (less scrap and wasted prints).  

Anyway.... I figured this would be the place where others can discuss this material and compare notes (MBI-permitting).