Material Suggestions for daily use (consumer products)

[BigBadBry]

Hey guys,

I just finished building and testing my M2; and so far; am loving it. I picked it up as a value-added service to my consumer product design and development business because it just makes sense to have that ability in house; as opposed to sending everything out to expensive service providers. Nearly all of my products are intended for the consumer or medical market, and most commonly my CAD is directly developed for injection molding. Most of the parts I design for injection molding have a 1.75-2.5mm wall thickness (nice and consistent, drafted for ejection, etc) and I very typically call out ABS-PC (good moldability and super toughness), PC (super tough, clear options), HDPE / PP (for stuff that needs living hinges or will truly taking a beating), and Nylon (for extreme temps and top-notch impact strength; at the expensive of finish and color)

Id like to offer a way for my clients to use their prototype casing for more than fit-and-finish checking; and maybe even sell their parts while they establish demand for injection tooling (which is very expensive). That said, the parts needs to to be pretty tough against real world use and without substantial changes to the design (IE increasing wall thickness etc). In a nutshell, I want to find the materials that are most closely aligned to production-grade plastic as possible. I wonder if you guys don't mind weighing on with your experience on some of these selections, and possibly offering any I might have missed. I'm new to this stuff so its pretty likely I have the wrong idea of more than just a couple of these; please help set me straight where ever needed.


PLA: easy to extrude but cant tolerate heat at all, (I'm in AZ, so this is bad); Also, it seems somewhat brittle and might not tolerate impact so well.
ABS: Much tougher than PLA but as I understand it, somewhat tough to extrude. Therefore repeat-ability might be tricky
ABS-PC: This is my go-to choice for injection molding but I can imagine its pretty difficult (like 'ABS') to set up and use in an FDM machine. Still might be worth exploring
PLA-CarbonFiber: I think this is a little gimmicky, because people LOVE the words "carbon fiber" I would imagine it suffers the same shortcomings as PLA alone
ABS-Carbon Fiber: Again, Might be a little gimmicky and probably much harder to extrude than PLA-Carbon Fiber
XT: I believe this is a polyester type of material, which isnt familiar for me in the injection world. The descriptions cite 'tough' and 'durable' but I cant determine if its rigid enough to work in an electronics enclosure type product.
PETG: I think this is the same thing as listed above. A few of you guys seems to really like this stuff, but again, is it a rigid plastic or a flexible when wall thickness is around 2.5mm?
Ninjaflex: This I believe is a rubber-like material, probably a good substitute for santoprene or neoprene ('TPE' to the molders). I'm not sure if its easy or hard to work with, but I do occasionally need to make rubber molded plugs etc,
PET+: The sales material looks great on this ("stronger than ABS, easier to FDM than PLA"). It sounds like the perfect material to use for electronics enclosures... is it overstated?
T-Glase: This one is a mystery to me, sounds like a material similar to PC, which would be great, but its really hard to find any reviews on it
Nylon: Nylon is the wonder plastic in the injection molding world, but its got limited color options and I understand might be really hard to use in FDM. correct me if I am wrong




Guys, I cant thank you enough for the insight. I need to get educated fast on this stuff and I cant think of a better group to poll; so I'm really excited to hear your feedback.

[insta]

You're pretty close.

PLA is a Staples easy-button for 3D printing, but as you found it's pretty short on the usable spectrum. PLA parts will melt in the dishwasher and slump in the car, but honestly ... most parts don't sit in the car or get washed in the dishwasher. PLA is great for trophies, models, pen holders, parts mockups, and such.

ABS is the easy-button with a thumbtack taped obviously in the middle. If you pay the slightest bit of attention you can get the easy prints without the trouble. Certain models (a large starfish shape, for instance) are never going to work without some kind of sacrifices to the deities, but those parts are rare.

ABS-PC is a pain in the ass to print with. The materials are too dissimilar and they form defects in the parts rather than the pressure-compacted plastic granite you get with injection molding. It doesn't stop people from selling ABS-PC filament and other people from trying to use it though.

PLA-CF is just impact-tolerant PLA.
ABS-CF is just impact-tolerant ABS. In both cases (PLA & ABS) the weakness of the part (by about an order of magnitude) is between the layers, where the CF fibers aren't going to bridge anyway, so the extra strength is mostly moot.

XT -- no experience, no comment Hopefully somebody else can chime in with more. I know the polyester resins are used in the BronzeFill / Laywood specialty filaments.

PETG / PET+ / T-Glase are all PET (soda bottles). It's more temperature resistant than PLA, and has stronger inter-layer bonding than ABS, so it's a good blend between them. The plastic is more ductile than polycarbonate and is stronger in some applications. It is optically translucent and would indeed make good enclosures.

NinjaFlex reminds me of urethane O-ring material. It's very, very soft (you can tie the raw filament into a tight knot), and will tolerate a lot of abuse before breaking. It makes good gripper pads and gaskets, and can be printed airtight pretty easily.

Nylon is a bitch to print with, because it makes goopy parts due to the moisture absorption. The spools it's sold on have a lower melting point than the plastic itself, so it's very difficult to bake the moisture out in the oven. The printed parts are some of the strongest I've ever worked with though, I can see why you injection molders love it The filament can be dyed pre-printing with standard fabric dye, so Nylon itself is sold as natural color.

[benavery]

I really liked PET+. It adheres to the bed better than ABS (or at least, doesn't warp and pull itself off). Doesn't shrink like ABS does, so I'm not constantly second guessing about how over/undersize to model things. I haven't tested the temperature resistance, but I doubt the companies are lying it given its easily proven.

As for bend/impact resistance - you probably need to get some and try it yourself to really determine if its suitable, but I have zero concerns with it.

The only downsides really is the slightly increased cost, but at only ~$5/roll more than ABS, its worth is for not having to re-print things due to warpage or bad part tolerances.

[jimc]

xt is petg so same as the others. pet+ is also in the same family but a unique formulation. all have the same basic properties though. i rarely even touch abs anymore. pet has pretty much completely taken its spot as a primary workhorse filament.

[BigBadBry]

This is exactly the info I was hoping for, thank you guys.

Thanks for the warning on Nylon, Its actually not all that easy to mold either so it doesn't surprise me to hear a similar story with FDM

So is PETg and PET+ the same thing (generally)?


I think I need to order some and get to testing... Is there a source here in the US with a brand that works well in the M2?

Also, since I don't have a preset for PETg or PET+ in Simplify3d, what temperatures and speeds and glass-prep should I plan to use?


And on a related topic...
For the rubberized type parts, what do you guys recommend? I know NinjaFlex is pretty popular but I've read mixed reviews about it when used on the M2. It's not often I need to make rubber parts but I should have something on hand for when the request comes in.

[BigBadBry]

OH, and on the comment about carbon fiber begin a moot quality, I cant agree enough. I always explain to customers that regardless of how fantastic the material looks on paper, those specs never take into consideration the grain in the parts due to the layering process. X and Y will be tough but Z wont hold up nearly as well, no matter how great the material is. Most of them smile and continue rambling how we'l be eating 3D printed food by next year (rolls eyes).

[benavery]

I think there is only 1 place to get each. PETG is by Intoservo, search these forums, they have a 10% off code. PET+ is by MadeSolid. Both are available on Amazon too. PET+ has many more colors (and opaques) available.
Not sure about PETG settings, but there is a PET+ S3D profile specifically for the M2 available on the Madesolid website. I made two tweaks to it though, upped extrusion temp from 235-245 for opaque filament, and added back in some infill-overlap (from 0% to 15%). For the most part it prints very similar to ABS.

Also, lower bed temps - yay - waiting for the bed to hit 90C to print ABS, and then trying to keep my cabinet cool with to the 90C heater running inside, makes me always annoyed at ABS.

[insta]

This is exactly the info I was hoping for, thank you guys.

Thanks for the warning on Nylon, Its actually not all that easy to mold either so it doesn't surprise me to hear a similar story with FDM

So is PETg and PET+ the same thing (generally)?


I think I need to order some and get to testing... Is there a source here in the US with a brand that works well in the M2?

Also, since I don't have a preset for PETg or PET+ in Simplify3d, what temperatures and speeds and glass-prep should I plan to use?


And on a related topic...
For the rubberized type parts, what do you guys recommend? I know NinjaFlex is pretty popular but I've read mixed reviews about it when used on the M2. It's not often I need to make rubber parts but I should have something on hand for when the request comes in.

I'm going to go sticky that NinjaFlex thread right now.

[jimc]

pet+ is from madesolid
petg is available from: intservo.com which carries esun, colorfabb xt which can be had from printedsolid.com, taulman-tglase, reprapper.com, winbo brand from china which can be had on ebay.

the esun brand is really good as well as colorfabb. esun is cheaper though and will have more colors mid march sometime. or prefreed vendor for that is will from intservo. we did a group buy a while back. he treats the makergear community really well. pet+ is very good also. pricy and it is slightly different than petg. a little more flexi while petg is a little harder, but still not brittle at all.

[benavery]

Ah yeah you are right - PET+ is $35/lb, not per kilo, so its twice as expensive as ABS/PETG.
(I was wondering how my spool looked so empty so soon.. it started that way !)