Colorants (masterbatch) (Page 8 of 9)

Hi everybody,

with great success I extruded 3mm filament of Terluran GP35 with the filastruder. It prints very good. Now I tried to colorize with masterbatch. First of all I see a difference between the masterbatches shown in this thread and mine. Here the masterbatches look like colored pellets with somehow constant size. My masterbatch is from an plastics producer in my area. It looks like crystals with very different size, somehow like big salt crystals.

First I tried to mix my pellets with 3% of this dark blue masterbatch. It ran some hour and then there nearly nothing came out of the nozzle of the filastruder. So I changed to the filternozzle 3mm. I milled the masterbatch with a coffeegrinder expresso-style, - very fine, and mixed again with pellets with 3% (weight). Again some hours it worked. Then suddenly it ended. Only fine as a hair it came out the nozzle.

The diameter was not constant at the whole time. Sometimes there was only one milimeter left. I discovered that sometimes when the diameter decreased the surface of the filament became very rough. Later it was smooth again.

Terluran GP35 I usually extrude at 176°C. I tried the same with masterbatch. Lifting the temperature to 200°C did not help very much.

Any idea? What is wrong? What should I do?
Thanks for Your help in advance.

Regards
Thomas

First of all: I did not buy it. Here in my area is a company which is producing plastic parts. I talked to the owner of this company and he gave me some masterbatches in different colors for testing. He is very interested in buying a 3D-printer. So we help each other. I think I've got the original containers which show the label of a german masterbatch producer: http://www.color-service.de/masterbatch … atches.php
The link above is the UN-type-batch I have. It seems to be ok for ABS. I have attached to photos to show the material, but I cannot find any further information on this. I tried to call the producer of the batch some minutes ago, - it was to late for today. Tomorrow I will try to call again and speak to them.

Regards
Thomas

You should definitely not run 220C with ABS. Temperatures like that are for industrial extruders.

Any news on the PLA?
Could you guys please make reference to some datasheet or link? What kind of materials the PLA masterbatches are made of? What chemical compounds?

Thanks!

I have a theory on this that i hope someone has already tried.
Adding another heater somewhere along the barrel. It will do 2 things (in theory).1:Create more pre-melted material before it hits the extruder.2:Having it set at lower temperature, it should have more time to mix before it hits the nozzle.
In theory, it should also improve extrusion rate because there will be more solid mass to push. Pellets dont have that much push of their own, they keep getting squeezed in and out, so a more solid mass with cooler temperature should help.
Again its only a theory and its not cheap (per say)
It will require another coupling and a heater and a temperature controller. And with stock power supply you'd have to upgrade to a second power supply VS buying more amps. It will be simpler that way and more efficient since you can turn it off when you dont need to.

20mm is 2cm or little under 1 inch. Are you sure you didnt use 200mm that would make it 20cm about 7 inch long ?
I really want to try different colorant, the one i got does not seem to produce even color. It goes from full color to full clear with continuous extrusion of same material for hours.

Interested on those but do you know same batch from US supplier ?
emakershop.com is not US seller

Cool.
Am starring to like the "what the pros do"
Tried to setup a hair dryer to dry pla as it sits in the hopper but failed. Instead i sealed the hopper and the bottle from air. Seem to be working great. Diameter flactuation is exactly where it was 2 days ago with the same filament in the bottle. Perhaps drying it in the hopper is not the only way to deal with it, but to seal it from the air would be cheaper and just as effective. I mean think about it. There is no air entering thru nozzle. And if you get the hopper set air tight then no air should enter the hopper (in theory) except for one thats already there.

Darn it. Didnt think about the back. But think of this one. When everything else is sealed, internal heat in the barrel will prevent colder air to enter that small gap. (theory)
This can be tested by measuring the moisture in the hopper. If it decreases (while being sealed) then its a win. I cant test it because i dont have such device, maybe you do ?

Well i am not talking about leaving it NOT RUNNING for extended amount of time allowing moisture to build up. If the unit runs, its own heat will dry what ever air will try to enter the back of the tube.
Again, there is no way to tell for sure (i think) without testing it.

If i ran machine for over 24hrs with same filament partially sealed (no seal between the hopper and the tube, just the bottle and the hopper seal) diameter variation has not changed, not even by 0.01mm. Would not fluctuate below 1.68 or above 1.8.

As i said before:fluctuation was (i suspect) due to temperature jumps from 1.62 to 167. I should have re-self adjusted the thermostat (as per instructions) to learn environmental change i created by re-wrapping the nozzle and the barrel with new heat seal wrap in hopes to create more barrel temperature to allow more pre-melt and increase chances of even color mix but it didt help with the color.

No no no, how is that +/-0.06 ?  Technically yes but its like advertising internet speed with megabits instead of megabytes. The sound of more megabits is better then in megabytes. Best way to describe it is to give the amount of fluctuation, which is 0.1. 0.05 would be mid point of that fluctuation. Less of a number makes it seem like a less of a problem i guess LOL

Is there a standard way of expressing it such that .05 would mean the values maintain a range that is no more than .05 from Min to Max?

Were there a standard way to express "1.75mm with a maximum variation range of 0.05mm" doesn't really tell you much: where is min and where is max relative to the nominal? In short, could be anywhere from 1.70 to 1.80mm depending on how you read it; assuming it's a symmetric +/-0.025 would be a dangerous game!

If you like the bigger numbers, you could do something like "1.725 +0.050/-0.000" but that seems more confusing to me.

+/- is pretty straightforward isn't it, or have I just been doing this stuff for too long??