I recently exhausted my first roll of 1.75mm Taulman Nylon 618 with my Makerbot Replicator 2. I learned a lot about printing in this tricky material and wanted to share here, as I hadn’t seen anything on Talk as of yet.
Taulman Nylon 618 is similar to cast Nylon 6/6. It’s tough, slippery (a low coefficient of friction), and semi-flexible. As it cools, it contracts to a greater degree than even ABS, making parts susceptible to warping and failed prints.
I wrote a piece of Medium called Brooklyn Artisanal Closet Brackets that discusses design considerations, material printing profiles (including temperature, reticulation, etc.)
Has anybody here printed in this material? What have you found? How does it compare to other Nylon filaments on the market?
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Best 618 advice I can give/add is to print on WOOD. Clamping a thin flat/level piece of wood to your build platform will get most people past the beginning difficulties(and on to the next difficulties). And obviously drying out the filament before printing is CRUCIAL, especially here in south Florida.
-Jesse
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That’s great advice. Did you buy a thin veneer and clamp it with some small C-clamps? What kind of wood did you buy?
I use the build plate from an old printrbot kit I put together in 2012. The printer was entirely made of a high grade birch plywood about .25in thick. Although my printers no longer have wood parts I held on to that build platform because it works so good with the nylon. As long as your nozzle isn’t digging into the wood the clamping required should be minimal. The manufacture(taulman) actually recommends using a sheet of “poplar wood” which I think is similar to birch. This is a good question because if they are that specific, mileage on this tip might significantly vary depending on the type of wood.
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Also, if using auto leveling probe: I remove pre probe code from the print, then do a manual probe (g29), add wood thickness to z offset (m212), and print.
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Jordan,
There is some 1/8" ply in the basement. I would cut that to the size of your bed and fasten with binder clips.
