Flexible filament on Kickstarter

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Toby
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Flexible filament on Kickstarter

Post by Toby » Fri Jul 11, 2014 5:09 pm

Here's a project I just backed, claiming 40-50 mm/sec feed rates. I didn't do any research beyond the kickstarter page. Anyway there are still some 1kg spools for $30 available. Shipping only to US though.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ze ... g-filament

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sthone
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Re: Flexible filament on Kickstarter

Post by sthone » Fri Jul 11, 2014 7:14 pm

I haven't bought a printer yet but this looks like it would be cool for printing tank treads like they show. I'll be keeping an eye on this one so when I do get a printer finally this will be on the list of things to try.

-Steve
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Dave K
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Re: Flexible filament on Kickstarter

Post by Dave K » Sat Jul 12, 2014 3:00 am

I've got three spools of Polymakr filament from a Kickstarter campaign coming soon...hopefully...including flexible. The Zen filament is tempting too. Seems like there has been an explosion of different FFF filament types and manufacturers over the last 6 months or so.

Toby
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Re: Flexible filament on Kickstarter

Post by Toby » Sat Jul 12, 2014 3:14 am

Dave K wrote:I've got three spools of Polymakr filament from a Kickstarter campaign coming soon...hopefully...including flexible. The Zen filament is tempting too. Seems like there has been an explosion of different FFF filament types and manufacturers over the last 6 months or so.
Yeah, not to mention a new sub $400 3D printer every other day on Kickstarter or Indiegogo. Except in that case they all seem to be hiding performance problems.

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Tim
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Re: Flexible filament on Kickstarter

Post by Tim » Sat Jul 12, 2014 3:59 am

It's not clear to me from the Kickstarter page why this filament might be better than ecoflex or ninjaflex. On the face of it, it's just another manufacturer making flexible filament. Maybe I didn't read in-depth enough. There was a really interesting page on what sort of filament drives are good for printing flexible filament, with the strong suggestion that you should have a spring-loaded filament drive (they have pictures) that will keep a constant pressure on the filament. I'm not sure how much practical difference there is between a spring-loaded feed and a tensioner screw, but they seem to think it makes a big difference. E3D, on the other hand, seems to think that the key is to keep the filament in a teflon tube including having a second piece of tubing going from the bottom of the extruder gear down into the top of the hot-end. At any rate, I'm doubtful that you'll get any faster printing out of this filament than any other flexible filament on whatever extruder setup you have. Although that reminds me that I was going to get some ecoflex or ninjaflex and see how it works with the E3Dv6 hot-end. . .

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sthone
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Re: Flexible filament on Kickstarter

Post by sthone » Thu Oct 30, 2014 3:47 am

Zenflex-001.jpg
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My Zen Toolworks Flexible Filament showed up too day from the Kickstarter campaign it came with a few extra samples too. A Dark Wood Filament, a Conductive Black ABS, and a Temperature Sensitive ABS. (not sure what I'll do with these besides the wood but might be fun to play with.)

Zenflex-002.jpg
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I don't know much about this stuff, I actually bought this off KS before I even had a printer. Anxious to try this flex stuff out I drew up a quick wheel/tank thread thingamabob to see how this worked. Besides the note to run this stuff at about 240 I just used the PLA medium setting in S3D and after a quick search of what works with Ninjaflex I ran the bed at 40 degrees and printed on blue painters tape. As flexible as this was off the reel I fully expected this stuff to give me feed issues or just clog my nozzle but figured what the hell let see what happens. If fed right into the extruder without any problems and the first layer went down just fine.

Zenflex-003.jpg
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15 minutes in and its not looking too bad.

Zenflex-004.jpg
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The finished print came out better than I would have ever expected for a first try. (I still can't believe how awesome and easy the M2 is to use.)

Zenflex-006.jpg
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I wasn't sure what to expect only printing with PLA and ABS but the finished product is pretty flexible, I think with a few tweaks and some practice it will work for tank tracks and other bendable like things like belts too. This definitely opens up some cool possibilities. Thanks Toby for originally posting this.

-Steve
Last edited by sthone on Thu Oct 30, 2014 3:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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jimc
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Re: Flexible filament on Kickstarter

Post by jimc » Thu Oct 30, 2014 3:55 am

thats cool. did it have any indication that it wanted to start curling or peeling up? i use ecoflex and its the same thing where i have never had a feed issue but it does like to shrink as it cools so it like to peel up in corners.

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sthone
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Re: Flexible filament on Kickstarter

Post by sthone » Thu Oct 30, 2014 3:07 pm

I didn't see any indications of it trying to peel but that might just be because it was a pretty simple part to try and print. I really didn't have a need for this stuff when I bought it but it looked cool so I wanted to try it, hopefully this weekend I will find some other parts to try and print to really test this stuff out.

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sthone
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Re: Flexible filament on Kickstarter

Post by sthone » Wed Nov 19, 2014 2:00 am

RackCaps-1.jpg
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Just another quick update if anyone is interested. These are simple caps for the ladder rack mounts on my truck I wanted to try something with a flat surface this time. I still didn't see any indications of the corners trying to peel up but I did have some feed troubles this time. Initially the filament kept wanting to wrap around the extruder drive gear so I ended up having to remove it from the motor at least 3 times before I finally got frustrated and just feed it through both holes in the extruder and then stuck it back onto the motor. After that it worked perfect again.

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