I’ve printed probably 5 kilos worth of prints with a lot of success, but exclusively PLA. I’d like to branch out to a new material. Should I start with ABS or TPU?
I’ve printed probably 5 kilos worth of prints with a lot of success, but exclusively PLA. I’d like to branch out to a new material. Should I start with ABS or TPU?
I’ve dabbled in both automotive work and home renovation. Anyone who can do auto body work or interior finishing work well deserves way more credit than they usually get, so big kudos. I am pretty solid at the mechanical bits, but when it comes to finishing/painting things are a lot more difficult for me.
Print finishing is something I’ve thought about a few times now, but most of my prints are functional and live a pretty hard life. A bit of texture from layer lines and other imperfections is the least of their concerns. That said, I have sanded ASA some and it sands amazingly well. I could see getting it pretty smooth without too much effort and then either using a solvent based or finishing based method. Of course, if your print has a lot of fine detail this is going to be a massive PITA.
You can totally build a Voron anyway! I suggest magnetic panels, which makes popping the top super easy if you want to print PLA. I’ve run PLA, PETG, TPU, and ASA through mine. I have an under bed carbon filter that does a pretty good job with fumes.
Agree on bike parts being a good print test bed. I’m impressed that anything held up with pedal loads, there’s a lot of force there.
My main motive for sticking with ASA is its easily attainable high volumetric flow. I can easily swing 30 mm^3/s on my Rapido without having to jack up temps. Between this, Core-XY motion, and input shaping prints are way faster than my old i3 clone. PETG is quite a bit slower. PLA can be fast, but it’s also somewhat brittle.
Thanks. The main thing with paint is to be absolutely obsessive about the prep details and sanding. I’ve trained two apprentices. The hardest thing to defeat is one’s internal expectations of time. It is only right and ready when it is perfect even when redoing that primer for the fifth time feels like murder and the issue is only the size of a dime, it simply does not matter. That dime will cost two days to fix when it shows through, and that knowledge must come first. I told everyone that ever worked for me, “sand it until you think you are done, then take a break, come back, and acknowledge you are finally halfway done. Then repeat this until I cannot find a single issue with the panel.”
The cool thing about ABS and ASA is that you can sand it to a polish. Just treat it like a metal polish job but use automotive polishes instead of rouge like for metals. There are usually no inclusions from the print lines in my tests and it polishes to a remarkable finish that looks like extra shiny Lego’s. In fact, if you take a fully polished part and break it, you will likely find that the surface is changed for nearly a millimeter down. It happens even when the polish is done meticulously by hand with no buffer to heat up the surface. I’m not entirely sure what is happening with that one, but based on how it sounds and feels I bet there are better mechanical properties as well.
From my time around automotive racing, polished ABS/ASA feels like parts that are finished to reduce stress risers like how pistons and rods feel different after a similar polishing operation. I haven’t tested it, but that is how the parts felt to me. That might be one to try out, even with mechanical and functional prints. If you happen to snag some sandpapers, it only takes a sheet of 600 or 800, as a baseline where this has removed absolutely everything below regardless of what was below, then use 1500 to knock this down. Finally, toothpaste can nearly replace an automotive compound. No joke I have used it on cars in a pinch with a heavy cut pad. For a mirror it will take an intermediate cutting stage before the final polish. For something like a print that is already sitting at 1500 grit, toothpaste will get more shine than a typical new Lego. Just use an old sock and let the compound do the work just like with a buffer and pad.
The little Proxxon pen sander is also a must have device for print sanding in general. It is worth the spend. You only really need the sander without the power supply though. The supply is the scam. Just clip the wire and add a DC barrel jack to any old 12v 1A wall wart. Their sandpaper is really high quality and worth it, but some decent double sided tape will work to make your own. You can also make your own sandpaper holders to get into awkward places.
I don’t know that I could actually finish a Voron build now. That is the real underlying truth of it. I am physically declining and my up time is very limited over the last coupe of years. That has kinda quashed my EDA and circuit etching projects too, sadly. Even my riding is suffering. I did 26m every day for ~8 years after the broken neck and back, but now 16m every 2-3 days is all I can do and still sleep 4-6 hours at most. It is what it is… “Ya get what ya get and ya don’t pitch a fit.”