We are looking at buying a Makergear 2 to augment our Stratasys uPrint. We are interested in the Ninjaflex material. Has anyone printed using Makergear 2 with Ninjaflex?
I own both a makergear, and have printed my fair share of Ninjaflex. I have the single 3b nozzle, and doing supports is not easy at all. The only way to supplement this is just getting the dual nozzle. Dual nozzles make life easier, much easier.
I have not but I’m interested to hear from others as well.
I have printed several things with Ninjaflex, and I agree with CreativeDex in that it requires some patience and trial and error. My extruder is setup for 1.75mm Filament, but if you were to install the optional 3.00mm filament drive it might eliminate most of the problems.
The 1.75mm Ninjaflex is soft and thin causing it to bunch up in the standard M2 filament drive. I haven’t tried the 3.00mm filament drive/Ninjaflex filament, but if I was printing with flexible filaments more often I would.
The MakerGear M2 is an excellent printer. I have one but I never printed with that material, only PLA. The MakerGear M2 has been my only printer until this week when I got a Fusion3 F306. I will be selling my MakerGear M2 now as In switch over everything to the F306. If you are in the Chicago area and are interested in an M2 let me know. info@markheller3d.com
I have not printed with Ninjaflex but I have printed with TPU flexible filament which works very well with the Makergear M2. I have printed iPhone case which turned out great. I believe Ninjaflex is a little more softer than TPU. Hope this helps .
I tried a flexible filament in my Makergear M2 with some success. It was not ninjaflex though. I had to run it at 25 mm/s and I had to feed it directly from the spool (didn’t use the tube) to prevent constant jams. Even so it jammed enough that a large print would have been impossible. It often peeled off the bed during printing. I can’t remember the brand I used and I don’t know if it is better or worse than ninjaflex.
Thanks for all the great feedback. It is really appreciated.
It prints… but its a ton of trial and error… 220 to 255 degrees is the range depending on your situation, thus you probably should get the v4 extruder on it. The v4 bunches up less but if you just get a v3b I had to redesign the extruder to get it to work. Ninja flex is a novelty filament in my opinion… ton of effort to get ok looking parts at a slower then tar pace. Thin walls DONT support themselves.
I use Sainsmarts flexable TPU. I wanted to test flexible filament but I did not want to spend $50.00 for the Ninjflex.my settings are extruder temp: 225c bed temp: 35c print speed: 1800mm/s reaction speed: 1800mm/s. Attached are some pictures of the iPhone case. Got the stl from thingiverse.com 3
That case looks great. A little note… the speeds listed are in mm/min, not mm/sec. Converted they are 30 mm/sec
Oops, I checked my slicer program and it is mm/min. That’s what it get for relying on brain matter.
tnx for the material spec.
Yes I have done it on the old version v3b hotend and extruder drive. I needed to modify the plastic extruder drive bit to add a Teflon tube so the filament would slide easier. I recently upgraded to a v4 dual hotend and haven’t been able to get it to work yet, not because it won’t but because I haven’t been able to get time to solve the issues.
So in summary yes it will work, but you will need to make some modifications. Hope this helps, I can send you pictures if interested.
It is a great printer btw the only problem I have had was a worn out extruder drive gear after about a year of use.
origional extruder, and the one i modified… there is only about the thickness of a sheet of paper between the gear and the part… its also tapered for better feeding of the filament… it was the only way to get ninja to feed without problem no matter how big the part is. honestly i think it works better then the v4 at feeding but the v4 works most of the time as well
Hey,
Could you share a CAD or STL file of your extruder design? (haven’t seen it on your thingiverse profile 
)
I’m currently designing my version as well, and the only problem I have is that the filament is not going through the bottom part when changing it, I think you’ve found a smart solution for that.
Thx
I’ve had good results with the Semiflex version of Ninjaflex. I did have it wrap around my extruder gear, but that was my fault trying to push it at 190 degrees instead of 215 degrees.
