Monday, February 20, 2012

PLA and ABS Filament



There are two sizes of filament 3.0mm and 1.75mm. Mostly used by RepRapper are Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene (ABS) and Polylactic acid (PLA) plastics. ABS creates a stronger plastic compare with biodegradable PLA plastic. ABS do produce some fume during extrusion. They sell in different range of weight or length and some will come with a spool.
 
To maintain a high quality print out from the 3D printer. We should buy filament from the same place or supplier as they're probably shipping goods that's all pretty close to the same diameter compare to buy from different suppliers. [1] The finest calibration and most carefully crafted printing profile means nothing when your extruder pulls in filament that is slightly thicker or thinner than expected. The surface quality of your print suffers, extruders jam, and prints can fail.

When we buy 3.0mm filament we’re actually getting anything from 2.70mm - 3.10mm filament. We will have a flow rate problem if we using the same skeinforge profile or setting with 255 flow rate on 2.70mm filament and with 3.10mm filament. A 2.70mm filament has ~5.7mm² area (cross section) and a 3.10mm filament has ~7.5mm² area; it’s +30% more plastic per length of filament and the flow rate is about how fast a given length of plastic is being fed into the extruder.

Note:
  • Get filament from the same supplier or buy more in weight in same spool to maintain consistent filament diameter. Acceptable filament tolerance is ±0.1mm.
  • Measure different places in a row to get an average of the filament diameter.
  • Different filament color will have different extrusion rate as colored compound have mixed into the plastic. 
  • Maintain a list of profile for the print or slice.
    Profiles format: PLA 3.0mm Black,
    PLA 2.8mm Black, ABS 1.75mm White

Suppliers

Romscraj.com (Singapore)
PLA 3.0mm, Filament 3.0, Heater: 185.0, Bed: 60.0, Feed rate: 32, Flow rate: 32

reprapcn.com/ sunyatech.com/ (China, Hong Kong)
PLA 3.0mm Yellow, Filament 2.7 , Heater: 220.0, Bed: 85.0, Feed rate: 36, Flow rate: 36


Resource

2 comments:

  1. Great information post about the PLA vs. ABS printing

    ReplyDelete
  2. sounds like a really interesting book,
    https://www.3dprintingio.com/review-xyzprinting-da-vinci-2-0-duo-3d-printer-blue/

    ReplyDelete