Last monday the Rotterdam community held a meetup at Het Lyceum/Het Lab in Rotterdam!
We had a visited from Manuel Delgado from Advanc3D Materials. He shared a lot of knowledge on filaments. We learned quality filament has various properties that will allow for better and safer printing. The filaments from Advanc3D Materials are ROHS certified. Which means this company pays a lot of attention to reduce toxics in the filaments.
After the presentation we had some food and drinks, and lots of time to share knowledge about everything 3d printing!
Thanks everyone for a good meetup. See you next time? And please don’t hesitate to bring your printer with you!
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is it possible to organise a meeting during the weekends, onle than is it possible for me to join.
Thanks for the advice! Anything else we should be on the lookout when buying filaments, besides the ROHS certification?
ROHS is probably not the holy grail on reduction of toxic instances in filaments… To be really sure you need to take a look at the Material Safety Data Sheet so you know exactly what’s going on. However I’m a hobbyist and not a chemist. So probably best is to have proper ventilation. There is a lot to watch out for. My personal advise is when you find a filament that works well for you ‘stick’ with it. However I find it fun to try printing with difficult filaments…
A plastic/polymer has a lot of parameters or properties that determine the behavior in the nozzle. And the properties when cooled down in the printed object. Also colors change behavior Different colors from the same brand can behave very differently in the nozzle! Which can sometimes be disappointing… yesterday it printed well and today it’s a mess… I have several white filaments that really behave like ketcup in a bottle. The ‘banding’ effect: the thickness of the layers seem to vary all over the print.
A good quality filament has long chains of polymers. When recycling , the chain length will be shorter resulting in lower qualities. However a quality is subjective. A short chain can be totally acceptable depending on the goal you are looking for…
One of the properties we talked about monday is stiffness. Some filaments tend to break easier than others. When I print parts for a quadcopter, I want the bottom plate to be a bit flexible. And it’s ok if it breaks because this will absorb energy when the quad falls from the air. And the real expensive parts will remain intact. So in this case PLA could be a better material to print with than ABS or XT.
Another thing is the diameter of the filament. It can increase a bit due to moisture in the air. I didn’t know about that. And I’m not sure if this is something to worry about. I took some measurements with my calipers. Old spools from ColorFabb still measure an exact 2.85mm… So I guess I’m fine.
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Hello Everyone!
It was a pleasure giving this talk to you and two presente our company.
As previously commented, we offer ROHS certificate for all our filaments that we can supply upon request. Still, it is always recommendable to print in a ventilated room in terms of fresh air, not because of it being technically dangerous, but also because of the not pleasant smell such as ABS.
Regarding what else a filament can offer, in my opinion, also the flexibility grade before printing. It is important filament are flexible (this is easy to check, always pre-print, try to break it with your hand) but it should not be too flexible, this is, it should have a reachable breaking point. Extremely flexible filament (such as TPU based) tend to complicate prints very, very much. They also force you print at a very slow speed, which can be counterproductive at times.
Finally, regarding the diameter, well, all PLA filaments (by its very own nature) are very susceptible to modify their diameter based on the conditions they are stored. Specially humidity affects very intensively with can make it crack in very long feeder tubes, since it has long it’s original diameter. When a PLA is no longer susceptible to these environmental changes, it’s probable because the manufacturer has added some other components into the product which very likely means, is no longer as bio product as advertised.
Please write here your comments and points of interested!
Thanks for your time back at Rotterdam,
Manuel.
