MakerGear Forum

With the previous extruder I was never able to get Ninjaflex to feed - it jammed in the drive gear really tight. Tonight I had the nerve to try feeding Ninjaflex to the left side of the dual and it fed just fine and is printing now.

I'm really curious if it's possible to print something with Ninjaflex and either PLA or ABS so that you could end up with a single part which has rigid and flexible regions - maybe a shock absorbing mount for a camera on a drone. The big question is whether the dissimilar plastics will bond together when hot.

Nice! Even if they don't bond, you could design the pieces to be mechanically joined - such as dovetailing into one another. Because its printed as one piece, there would be zero tolerances for the fit should stay tight - depends on exactly how spongey the ninjaflex is though I suppose.

Thanks for letting us know this. This is one thing I wanted to try with it.
I just got back into town and I should be able to install my kit this weekend!

There is a guy online doing this now.. look on youtube for xRobots.

Just came across this: http://www.instructables.com/id/Make-Fl ... D-Printer/

It seems that Ninjaflex sticks to copper and can be used to 3D print etch resist for circuit boards, even flexible ones.

sprior wrote:With the previous extruder I was never able to get Ninjaflex to feed - it jammed in the drive gear really tight. Tonight I had the nerve to try feeding Ninjaflex to the left side of the dual and it fed just fine and is printing now.

I'm really curious if it's possible to print something with Ninjaflex and either PLA or ABS so that you could end up with a single part which has rigid and flexible regions - maybe a shock absorbing mount for a camera on a drone. The big question is whether the dissimilar plastics will bond together when hot.

What temp did you use? Heated bed? Bed prep ?

I used the same temps in the ABS profile which was 245 and the bed at 110. I prep the bed with Elmers glue stick for everything. The only other change was to slow the pruning speed way down to 1200 I think (however many zeros that were there with 12 in front).

sprior wrote:I used the same temps in the ABS profile which was 245 and the bed at 110. I prep the bed with Elmers glue stick for everything. The only other change was to slow the pruning speed way down to 1200 I think (however many zeros that were there with 12 in front).

Thanks for the info I will give it a shot.

https://learn.adafruit.com/3d-printed-w ... d-printing

For the goggle part in this project, they stop the print and switch out the starter filament to Ninjaflex, then keep printing. Apparently it adheres to the other filament just fine.

Yeah, I also saw that and was very encouraged. Last night I was going to try a simple test - a small block with a letter on it which I previously did in 2 colors of PLA, and try it with the block in ABS and the letter in Ninjaflex, convenient since both ABS and Ninjaflex print in the same temperature. Unfortunately I was not able to get the Ninjaflex to extrude this time and I tried in both the left and right sides and it wouldn't get through either nozzle.

This might be due to something I tried - to get the 0.06" distance between both nozzles and the bed I set the Z stop as closely as I could, then put a feeler gauge between the nozzle tips and the bed, loosened the hot end retaining screws and let them fall to the feeler gauge, the tightened them. This actually worked very well and solved the problem I previously had with the right nozzle dragging slightly on what the left nozzle printed, but just maybe it left a little too much of a gap between the top of the hot end and the bottom of the extruder drive for the Ninjaflex to deal with. Hopefully I'll get to investigate this more soon.