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Any ideas?

Are there any alternative materials to PVA (dissolvable with a bio-friendly solvent) or PLA (bio-friendly plastic)?

Oli

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@James_2 @Modellus @Pot8oSH3D do you have any filament suggestions for Oli?

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Hey there, Oli. There are a great many materials in addition to PLA and PVA. For instance ABS, HIPS and PET. Whether you’ll be able to print with them at 20uM will depend on which printer you’re using and your setup. Probably best to let us know what you’ve got and what you want to do. Cheers! AndyL

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@ozolm

why do you want alternatives?

quality of printing depeds on the printer - less so on the filament.

PLA can also be disolved in Limonene

Pla is not really bio friendly - made from corn products yes, but biodegradable in 00s of years :slight_smile:

So is your question - how do I print in 20 micron, or what filament should i use?

James

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what kind of printer would you have in mind when you think about 20µ resolution? As far as i know all FDM “consumer” printers currently available don’t go under 50µ in the Z-axis, and with a 300µ nozzle beeing the smallest you usually get for these machines it’s pretty much impossible to get anywhere near 20µ. The only machine i know of that gets into that range of precision/resolution and is still “affordable” would probably be the OWL MC-1 and MC-2 (http://oldworldlabs.com/). But in that range of precision all the printers i know of are based on powders or photopolymer (SLA/SLS).

I can’t really tell you what kind of plastic formulations there are for these fields of applications, i just know there are A LOT of different materials with all kinds of uses and applications. My first question would be, is there a reason behind your statement that PLA is “bio-friendly”? Do you write that because it is to some extent “biodegradable”, more bio-friendly (skin contact, emissions…) or more that it is made from biological source materials (corn starch)?

And the second question again would be, what kind of printer you want to use, because not every printer that is capable of reaching these resolutions can work with every kind of resin/photopolymer/powder there is.