1 Topic by XmodAlloy (edited by XmodAlloy 2017-05-05 04:00:42)

  • XmodAlloy
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Topic: Good vibes!

Hey everyone,

I just got my 'Struder, #2888, set up and making filament. I figured I'd share some of experience thus far.

The kit went together mostly smoothly. I did have to substitute some washers around to get the right motor shaft-auger gap right and getting the face lasercut piece lined up so that the case fit was a little annoying, but it went together just fine after a couple tries. In about 6 hours, I had it making its first bath of filament from the supplied pound of ABS. I've never much cared for ABS, but I know how to get it to print! I started printing some of the parts for a vertical hopper (although I don't know when that will be implemented).  I did make one silly mistake; I went to Microcenter and saw "Polymorph Pigment" near the 3D Printer stuff. "Huh. They've got filament pigment, how strange and lucky for me!" I thought. I should have googled exactly what that was, but I was too lazy at the time... Anyway, I mix that with the ABS pellets and start extruding. All goes well for the first few hours and then there's a pellet jam. I look into the hopper to find a bit balled of mass of blue pellets... Turns out "Polymorph Pigment" is for stuff like Insta-Morph which is a low-temp thermoplastic. The substance had melted from the ambient heat at the barrel entrance and had coagulated the pellets into a solid mass preventing more pellets from entering the barrel. Oops! I removed all the pigment fragments and put the clean ABS back in, ran it at 210 for a few hours and the barrel was clean again. I printed with the mystery blue filament with reasonable success too! It probably didn't do anything good for the Tg of the material, but it prints just fine.

I swapped to a bag of PLA pellets I had purchased from OSP back in 2013-2014 (I'd intended to make my own 'Struder back then but never gotten around to it) and let those run through. After an hour of purging the ABS-PLA copolymer (It's dreadfully brittle when mixed), I was getting clean clear-ish PLA. I quickly ran this through my printer and made a part that I've been printing a full batch of for a local company. Really cool to have something which was just pellets the day before! Especially when those pellets had been sitting... And sitting... And sitting... I did try mixing the color pellets I got from OSP in with the PLA, but they didn't mix well. I think I'm going to run them through a coffee grinder and try mixing the powder with the PLA pellets to get the color to be uniform.

Also, I had to put grease in the thrust bearing because it was actually tending to lock up and make the plastic spacer rotate against the aluminum housing without it. A bit of bike-chain oil seems to have fixed it, but I may throw some proper moly-D based bearing grease in there.

Anyway, I just figured I'd share my experience thus far!

-Don

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2 Reply by jinxycob

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Re: Good vibes!

congrats on a fine start am new to the filastruder and been reading  all I can slowly sinking in.

I did try mixing the color pellets I got from OSP in with the PLA, but they didn't mix well. I think I'm going to run them through a coffee grinder and try mixing the powder with the PLA pellets to get the color to be uniform.

      I read to get consistent color mix, was to chop up the filament something like this http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:288465 and run it through again.   but am so new to this  take everything I say with a pinch of salt!!!.

3 Reply by Kronikabuse

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Re: Good vibes!

Get some powdered pigment.  You'll never use master batch again

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4 Reply by geoffro

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Re: Good vibes!

effing lucky you

5 Reply by XmodAlloy

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Re: Good vibes!

jinxycob wrote:

congrats on a fine start am new to the filastruder and been reading  all I can slowly sinking in.

I did try mixing the color pellets I got from OSP in with the PLA, but they didn't mix well. I think I'm going to run them through a coffee grinder and try mixing the powder with the PLA pellets to get the color to be uniform.

      I read to get consistent color mix, was to chop up the filament something like this http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:288465 and run it through again.   but am so new to this  take everything I say with a pinch of salt!!!.

Too much time. Too much work. Really, it takes too much time to run a kilo of PLA as it is.

Kronikabuse wrote:

Get some powdered pigment.  You'll never use master batch again

I'm going to go this route. Kinda tempted to try stuff like this too: http://www.ebay.com/itm/10g-Cosmetic-Gr … 2548.l4275

6 Reply by JeremyLGSiegfried

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Re: Good vibes!

Remember to get the kind from OS3DP. It has an additive that makes it stick to the pellets, instead of making a mess.

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7 Reply by XmodAlloy

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Re: Good vibes!

JeremyLGSiegfried wrote:

Remember to get the kind from OS3DP. It has an additive that makes it stick to the pellets, instead of making a mess.

While I am going to get OS3DP's big lot of powdered colorants, I want a few more colors than that. I'll report back when I'm covered with MICA dust. xD

8 Reply by genesat1

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Re: Good vibes!

XmodAlloy wrote:
JeremyLGSiegfried wrote:

Remember to get the kind from OS3DP. It has an additive that makes it stick to the pellets, instead of making a mess.

While I am going to get OS3DP's big lot of powdered colorants, I want a few more colors than that. I'll report back when I'm covered with MICA dust. xD

Looking forward to hearing how it goes.  I saw a video where the 3D Printing Nerd went to Protopasta and they made bacon filament.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78K4G1yW9OI&t=8m55s

If they can get ground up bacon bits to stick to plastic, who knows - maybe that mica powder will too.

9 Reply by XmodAlloy

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Re: Good vibes!

I've been doing a bunch of reading on what pigments they use in injection molding setups. It seems pretty vague on what's defined as a pigment, but one of the things they covered were colored MICA powders. I'm not expecting the powder to do any favors for the mechanical properties as it's going to make lots and lots of micro-voids in the material. Then again, we're relying on diffusion bonding between layers, so... Mechanical properties are never going to be as great as a monolithic injection molded part anyway.

In the papers I've read, it seems particle size of 0.5 micrometers is about right for pigments, but some of the pigments I've been looking at have been 40 micrometers. That's 0.04mm! Standard nozzles are only 10 times that diameter, so I don't know how well that would treat brass nozzles. I'd expect enormous amounts of wear on non-hardened ones. We'll see I guess.

10 Reply by genesat1

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Re: Good vibes!

40 is huge.  The first result on Ebay when I search is 0.3-1 micron powder - I'd suggest trying small first, and then try progressively bigger stuff.  If you can't get the small powder to work then you know the big powder definitely won't.