201 Reply by cherryshake

  • cherryshake
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Re: Colorants (masterbatch)

Hello,

I have been experimenting with using powdered pigment in the Filastruder. However, it seems that the particular colourant I want to use (I am a design research student) is not strong enough to give truly lovely colours when mixed with the PLA pellets. I ended up adding a lot, which made the melt flow really slow and resulted in unusable and very brittle filament. Reducing the amount of pigment got the melt flow back up and let me make usable filament, but the colour became really pale. Now I think I need to make concentrated masterbatch to make this colour work.

It is a special pigment, that loses its properties when heated above 230C, so a cold way of making PLA masterbatch is what I'm looking for. To make matters worse, I am not sure about compatibility with acetone - it might kill the special properties of this pigment as well. water would work, but how could I make masterbatch like that? Any ideas?

202 Reply by swbluto4gems

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Re: Colorants (masterbatch)

Hey, does anyone have a recipe for producing pink with ABS?

203 Reply by agilliam

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Re: Colorants (masterbatch)

I have a question. I got my filament extruder working great and figured out the magic thing to get it to extrude to almost a perfect 1.75. It hits 1.72 to about 1.78. My questions is I am using pla balls from OS3DP, and colorant from him as well. The PLA that I made prints great and looks great, however when doing larger prints, it seems to warp SEVERELY like ABS. Could it be that I have too much colorant?

Just so there is no question of what exactly I am using, it is PLA 4043D, and I'm using PLA Colorant. This batch happened to be black. I know with ABS Warpage has A LOT to do with pigments, and colorants, which leads me to my question here, did I use too much colorant when mixing the  balls? I call them balls because they are far from pellet shaped lol.

After quite a bit of time and playing around, I made my own nozzle and got the setup put to where I feel is optimal settings and was quite pleased to find that consistently it hits right around 1.74 averaged. It is running a melt filter as well that I milled into a spot for into the nozzle.

I haven't seen any forums about PLA warpage with a DIY filament maker. So that's why I wonder if its the colorant ratio. No other PLA spool I have warps this bad, using SAME settings, same temp, same gap. even the same tacky layer.

204 Reply by TickTock (edited by TickTock 2016-02-08 16:27:24)

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Re: Colorants (masterbatch)

600g MG94
4g red pellets
4g blue pellets

Was going for a marbled look and I think it turned out perfectly.  This is the gnomon for the digital sundial.
http://soliforum.com/i/?IOoFTSh.jpg

205 Reply by AZERATE

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Re: Colorants (masterbatch)

Awesome!

Printit Mason and Printit Horizon printers
Multiple SD2s- Bulldog XL, E3D v5/v6/Lite6, Volcano, Hobb Goblin, Titan, .9 motor, Lawsy carriages, direct Y drive, fishing line...the list goes on
Filawinder and Filastruder #1870.....worth every penny!

206 Reply by AndersE (edited by AndersE 2018-11-29 22:08:54)

  • AndersE
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Re: Colorants (masterbatch)

Did they not have a specified amount of masterbatch to pellet ratio?

Usually it is 1-3%.

The ones i just have ordered are 10gram to 1kg pellets.

Are you sure it is a PLA masterbatch? They usually are specified "universal" or for only "ABS, PP etc".

Black masterbatch is one of those that you need less of.





agilliam wrote:

I have a question. I got my filament extruder working great and figured out the magic thing to get it to extrude to almost a perfect 1.75. It hits 1.72 to about 1.78. My questions is I am using pla balls from OS3DP, and colorant from him as well. The PLA that I made prints great and looks great, however when doing larger prints, it seems to warp SEVERELY like ABS. Could it be that I have too much colorant?

Just so there is no question of what exactly I am using, it is PLA 4043D, and I'm using PLA Colorant. This batch happened to be black. I know with ABS Warpage has A LOT to do with pigments, and colorants, which leads me to my question here, did I use too much colorant when mixing the  balls? I call them balls because they are far from pellet shaped lol.

After quite a bit of time and playing around, I made my own nozzle and got the setup put to where I feel is optimal settings and was quite pleased to find that consistently it hits right around 1.74 averaged. It is running a melt filter as well that I milled into a spot for into the nozzle.

I haven't seen any forums about PLA warpage with a DIY filament maker. So that's why I wonder if its the colorant ratio. No other PLA spool I have warps this bad, using SAME settings, same temp, same gap. even the same tacky layer.