Extruding with nylon?

[Brent Crosby]

My wife has mistaken the ABS filament for weed trimmer line. That got
me to thinking, could we use nylon weed trimer line as the filament in
a MakerBot?

It looks like the melting point of nylon might be quite a bit higher.

Comments? Just a thought.

[Dion Burgoyne]

As with anything like this there are a lot of different nylon
materials, I know that some of them melt at around 212c so that's
right in the ballpark... in my experience nylon tends to get very
brittle after being heated up, and has a bit of a sickening smell at
high temps. Not sure the makerbot extruder is the best choice for it

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[Thomas Charron]

Pretty sure that something like Nylon 6/6 has a melting point around
240 degrees C, which isn't that much higher then we're using with ABS.

--
-- Thomas

[Nick Ames]

Thomas Charron wrote:
> Pretty sure that something like Nylon 6/6 has a melting point around
> 240 degrees C, which isn't that much higher then we're using with ABS.

It is, however, very close to the temperature at which the teflon
insulator starts off gassing.

Nylon has been tried/discussed several times by people on the reprap forums:
http://forums.reprap.org/read.php?1,40394,40394#msg-40394
http://forums.reprap.org/read.php?184,40291,40291#msg-40291
http://forums.reprap.org/read.php?4,27658,27658#msg-27658
http://forums.reprap.org/read.php?1,20565,20565#msg-20565
http://forums.reprap.org/read.php?70,11121,11121#msg-11121
http://forums.reprap.org/read.php?70,7527,7527#msg-7527
http://forums.reprap.org/read.php?1,2409,2409#msg-2409

A potentially more useful way to use nylon is to exploit the fact that
it can be made by mixing two chemicals, allowing deposition using inkjet
print heads, which would give higher resolution.

[beak90]

Remember that usually you have to extrude at a higher temperature than
the melting point of the plastic to get a good flow. This could be a
problem if the melting point is already that high.

On May 30, 4:08 am, Nick Ames <nick.scwerll...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Thomas Charron wrote:
> >   Pretty sure that something like Nylon 6/6 has a melting point around
> > 240 degrees C, which isn't that much higher then we're using with ABS.
>
> It is, however, very close to the temperature at which the teflon
> insulator starts off gassing.
>

> Nylon has been tried/discussed several times by people on the reprap forums:http://forums.reprap.org/read.php?1,40394,40394#msg-40394http://forums.reprap.org/read.php?184,40291,40291#msg-40291http://forums.reprap.org/read.php?4,27658,27658#msg-27658http://forums.reprap.org/read.php?1,20565,20565#msg-20565http://forums.reprap.org/read.php?70,11121,11121#msg-11121http://forums.reprap.org/read.php?70,7527,7527#msg-7527http://forums.reprap.org/read.php?1,2409,2409#msg-2409

[Brent Crosby]

Thanks for the RepRap links. Coming in late, I often forget that
MakerBot is a recent offshoot of the larger community.

Looks like it would be problematic at best,

[Eighty]

I didn't read all those links, but please don't try weedeater line.  It has all sorts of crap in it that will do harm to your bot.  Just buy the Taulman 618 if you want to print nylon.