MakerGear Forum

the printing temps for this are listed as the same for their PLA so I tried using my PLA temps and it just wont stop binding in my extruder. I've tried going all the way up to 250C and pushing it through by hand but it has a TON of resistance. when I first warm it up it goes through eagerly and then it gets sluggish.

Any suggestions, or better yet has anyone tried this stuff??

Jeremy.

i had some samples of it. it was enough for me to get the feel of it but not enough to really know its ins and outs. i had no issues with it though. it extruded great through my e3d. its more like a flexible plastic than a rubber like ninjaflex is. you can print it a little faster without the jamming. what is your print speed? i was using my ecoflex profile which is 235c at 2600mm/min. generally with any material, if you heat up the printer and start it printing and 5-10 min later the feeding slows or stops it is usually heat creeping up the hot end. the lower temp materials are more sensitive to this.

That is the problem with samples. You really need 1lb of something to be useful.

I havent actually tried printing, just purging the PLA from the nozzle it was going great then started to slow and bind.

ahhh. have you only printed pla in your machine? id you print abs or alot of other plastics did you clean the hot end out? if not then run some cleaning filament or nylon through it. i assume your still running a v3b? also if you just jogging the extruder to push the filament through, check out your jog speed. s3d is usually around 300mm/min for jog. this is too high for flex filaments. drop it down to 100-150 then, clean the hot end and try again.

excellent advice Jim! now how would I go about adjusting the jog speed? and the only filament I have printed with is PLA, actually only the PLA that came with the printer so far. I have a freshly cleaned hot end, should I just dedicate that for flex and be done with it??

EDIT: right after I asked how to edit the job speed I noticed it was as obvious as it could possibly be lol

if you plan on messing with flexibles then i would say yes and dedicate a hotend for it. depending on the brand and type of flex will depend on how much a pia it is to switch back and forth from plastic to the soft stuff.

I got a roll of this as well to test out my newly designed extruders for the e3d. I designed the extruder so that the PTFE tube was nearly continuous from the roll to the hotend with a small section missing where the gear is.
I had great success printing several hollow 40x40 test cubes without tops at full speed with out any problems. Then I started to see random damning and so I slowed it down but it just kept getting worse. I finally gave up in frustration after it would not even put down the first layer . I did not do anything with the printer for a while and when I needed to print something else I switched out the plastic, don't recall at the moment if I moved to the PETG or PLA but I could not get it to work at all. I finally tore down the e3d hotend and cleaned it out. Walla I could print again . I have not yet gone back to the flex to see if it will do a repeat performance. I found my sample of cleaning filament after that so I may try it again at some point.

This stuff is brutal to use. I managed to get it to print the calibration box, albeit not that great. Once that was done I tried a full print and it jammed, I cleared the jam, extruded some filament, began the print again, JAMMED again. If anyone can tell me that ninjaflex is easier to print with I will put this shit in a drawer and forget about the $50 I paid to use 2' of it.

Print slower, and only print parts that don't need retraction.

Set your outer perimeter speed to 30mm/sec and all other speeds at 100%, print at 240C.