Extruder type: Standard Filastruder with 1.75mm melt filter, full barrel insulation, hopper shaker, and vertical setup with winder.
Picture of my set up:
I added straws were the PTFE tubing was on the laser sensor to guide the filament better.
You can find more pictures on my imgur here: http://ggalisky.imgur.com/all/
Printer type: SD2, E3D v6, Bulldog XL, Glass bed, and Lawsy's Carriages.
Mixing ratios
I usually use 1 colorant pellets to every 96 ABS pellet. Since I do not want to count each and every pellet (no one else wants to either), I ended up converting the 1:96 ratio into weight, and I ended up with 56 grams of ABS for every 1 gram of colorant. A benefit of using the weight system, is you do not have to worry about differing colorant pellet size. How did I get that number? Time for some math! 80 ABS pellets = 1g and 56 colorant pellets = 1.2g. Lets say you have 56g of ABS and you want to figure out how much teal colorant to add in order to get a 1:96 ratio.
1. Multiply 56g by 80 (this gives you the amount of total pellets) you get 4480
2. Set up a proportion like this:x/4480 = 1/96. Solve the proportion and you get 46. (you can skip the proportion and divide by 96 too)
3. Multiply 46 by 1.2 and divide everything by 56. You get 1 at the end of all that. The last number, 1 in our case, is the number of grams you need to add.
Tips and tricks for colorants:
Make sure to mix your colorant evenly with the rest of you plastic
To get awesome color consistency you need to use really fine colorant or chop up and re-extrude.
Some colorants dramatically slow extrusion, and mixing colorants usually leads to extremely slow extrusion
Big colorant pellets = horrible color consistency and the other way around too.
The Filastruder is perfectly capable of producing consistent colored filament. If you are getting color banding try the following: Decrease pellet size, add more colorant, or increase extrusion temp. Usually the problem is with pellets being too large and not mixing evenly.
Extrusion
Extrusion temperature: 194°C
Extrusion rate: 11 inches per minute.
Average diameter of filament: 1.73mm
Tolerances: + or - 0.05mm
Comments
I got this from Revolve 3D. Link: http://www.revolve3d.com/ . If you ever end up mixing this orange with a darker colorant like silver, you will get a burnt looking orange. Anyways, I think this color looks fantastic. The size of these colorant pellets is on the smaller size, so color mixing is improved. I do not believe this colorant is ABS based, but i may be wrong about that. I say it is not ABS based because it does not dissolve in acetone.
Printing
Setting my glass bed to 104°C, the hot end to 240°C, setting the extrusion multiplier to 150% for the fist layer, and using a coat of PVA glue worked very well against warping. This is a very easy material to print. The vase took about 2 hours on spiral vase mode, and there seems to be a fixed speed that you cannot change when using the spiral vase setting. Since the vase is a single wall, you could crush it in your hands if you wanted too. I had no problems with delamination.
Brittleness
1-10 scale, 1 is TPU and 10 is acrylic. 3
Layer bonding
1-10 scale, 1 is Nylon and 10 is acrylic. 5
Comparison to commercial ABS filament: N/A ( I have never bought a roll of ABS filament thanks to the Filastruder)
Pictures:
Questions? Comment? Feel free to send me a PM, or post a reply down below!
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