http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:371170

http://imgur.com/a/K9Jv5

I'm very happy with ninjaflex so far.  The vase was one of my first prints after a few calibration cubes and I think it is near perfect.  Filament diameter was dead on at 1.75 mm everywhere I measured it.  Even my extrusion multiplier calibrated out to 1.0.  I'm running it at 225 C and all speeds set to 20 mm/s but I think it could go up to 30 with no problems since I'm running an E3D V6 with a PTFE tube right up to the drive gear so there is no gap.  I turned the heat bed to 60 C even though it said I don't need to.  I use a very thin layer of glue stick with all prints now and I had absolutely no warping or lifting with ninjaflex.  Texture can best be compared to an RC car tire and my prints came out very smooth.

The phone case is for a Galaxy S5 and it fit on the bed of my SD2 with less than 4mm to spare.  It has a little bit of layer splitting, probably due to trying to fit the comparatively thick 0.48 mm extrusion width into the thin wall.  This would be a good print to bring out the 0.25mm nozzle and use 0.2 or 0.1 mm layers.  That will be a 6- 8 hour print at these speeds.  It will never be as tight as an injection molded case but hey, its still cool to make it and you can then you always have a conversation starting piece on you if someone mentions 3D printing.

Support material was not particularly easy to remove at the bottom and left a bit of a mess when I can to cut it off since I didn't want to pull and risk breaking the part.  I'm not sure I can do bridging without speeding it up a good bit, so some experimentation is in order.  Any tips?

More prints to come!

A quick update; since I received the pla and have been printing with it very successfully, I made some PTFE guides to go into the E3D.  I'm going to try them out and see if I can get better speeds.  I found that with just the flimsy PTFE tube stuck in the top it would end up bending as well with any amount of extra speed.  Since the PLA doesn't bend and fills the entire gap above the hot end I'm hoping I can crank up the speed to at least 25mm/s.

Edit:
Good news all.  It seems as long as the buckling can be stopped faster speeds are possible.  I'm printing that same tire now at 25mm/s.  My temp is at 220 but it is EXTREMELY runny.  This stuff pours out of the hot end basically.  Obviously that tells me I could probably dial back the temp some, but I put the retraction length at 3mm instead.  I'll see how much temperature affects the extrusion force soon.

I believe one of the bigger factors as well in feeding the filament is having slack off the spool.  It helps to have it free floating for the extruder to pull.  Everytime it has to pull off the spool it will stretch which changes the shape and friction at the pinch point. 

One last bit, I have my bed at 0 for temp and printing on blue tape which I was doing for PLA.  Works like a charm so far.

Here's the updated guide:

I´m working with the ninjaflex too, this is my first printing.

Accusedmonk, Can you help me with parameters like speeds, temperature and other things?

I have tried other settings but I've had trouble with Extrusion material and I do not dispense evenly, any ideas?

Thanks !!

solijohn wrote:

You should post your ninja flex victories on the 3D printing reddit.

Please stop quoting massive blocks of pictures.

agree, fixed it

You should post your ninja flex victories on the 3D printing reddit.

Please stop quoting massive blocks of pictures.

I linked here on reddit, hopefully that's no problem.

Do you have a fan on the extruder itself?  Reason I ask is because the heat creeps up bad in the stock hot end, which makes the filament swell against the walls higher up in the extrusion process.  Since this adds friction, the force required to push it through goes up.  Of course that means with the Ninjaflex, and like filaments, instead of being pushed down it finds the path of least resistance ha. 

In this picture I changed out the filament from my stock hot end and you can see just how high the heat creeps up on it especially compared to what the E3D below it looks like.  I never tried pushing filament through by hand on the old extruder, but its quite easy on the E3D.  Try putting a fan blowing on the "cold" end and that should help as well.

This filament would most likely benefit most from a larger nozzle diameter.  For those with larger nozzles, care to share your experience if there is a large difference in say a .4 nozzle and .7 nozzle?  I'll get different sizes later down the road, especially when I move towards multiple heads.

It just buckles and wraps around the filament feet wheel.. even when i have extrude speed set to slow.

Don't quite have the money for an E3D right now

I've had the Ninjaflex filament for awhile but the old acrylic extruder didn't keep the filament straight enough for me to even push any length of it out.

I'm using the bowden version of the E3D head, I'm not sure if they actually differ in regards to that but just in case.  With the Mk5 and open end of the E3D it was actually worse feeding in, so I just stuck in a small section of the PTFE that came with the new hotend.  Don't mind the gap in the bottom of the Mk5 , my octave green gained some moisture and I can see stress marks in the filament from the end of the roll .

This is right after I printed the 0.5mm single wall test, you can see how flexible it is there.

I tried to break/tear it but it holds its own, even with just 1 wall thick.  I couldn't tear the layers apart either, they just stretch.

This thing is ssllooww going right now, I went ahead and started it at just 10mm/s.  I'll try later to see what speeds are attainable.  She is singing a different tune at this pace.  The tire I have from Thingiverse is supposed to take over 2 hours, but I'm going to stop it quite a bit before then I think.  It has a few more walls and should be usable on the wheel that is also in the pack.

You should post your ninja flex victories on the 3D printing reddit.