1

Any chance to have a 220°C (centigrade) resistant printed part with Ultimaker?

We need to create an injection mold with great heat resistance. Any help appreciated.

2

Hey Luca,

I’m sure you know that 220°C is the standard printing temperature of many day-to-day filaments. The temperatures at which those plastics are usable will be quite a lot lower than that, more or less up to or around the glass transition temperature. Once you start looking at thermoplastics with an extremely high Tg, you are getting into some scary territory, both because of the resulting printing temperatures (which an Ultimaker will not handle) and the names of the chemicals involved. PEEK for instance, the paragon of thermoplastics in my opinion, has a Tg of around 150°C, is printed at around 350°C and will cost you an arm and several legs if you are looking to create even a small mould out of it. Past that I doubt you will find a supplier that will make filaments out of, for instance, Polyethersulphone. The printability of these materials is even more questionable, since you will usually need a heated bed (+ a heated print chamber at this point) that can reach up to the Tg of the plastic you are trying to use. So I would recommend to forget about printing the mould directly on a stock Ultimaker. You will either not be able to generate the required temperatures, burn your house down in the process or not have any usable results.

What I would recommend, is to print the positives of the parts you are trying to produce. Then use some high-temperature silicone (maybe with some metal reinforcements inside) or other temperature resistant mould material to cast the moulds around the positives. And if that doesn’t work, there is always the dark side of the force, subtractive manufacturing…

Let us know, if you succeeded. This is an interesting problem that I haven’t heard anyone else attempt yet.

Sincerely,

Jonas

3

Maybe try/checkout Polycarbonate, I print this at 310-315 celsius, seems to flow around 280 c, different mixtures of this, try a purer one WithOut PLA or ABS mixed in.