My son just bought a 3d printer and i was thinking about printing some lost wax patterns, have any of you found a functional filament for use in a 3d printer? Art b
Art, DavidF will probably weigh in. He has used some and prints regularly. Think he might prefer PLA but let's see what he says. Best, K
4 different types that I'm experimenting with PLA, MoldLay, machinable wax filament, and Polycast. Depending on which brand, PLA burns out reasonably clean but is a pain to sand. Hatchbox seems to work ok for me and is cheap. Moldlay melts at a lower temperature and prints well but is pricey. Finish-wise, it sands better than PLA but still not great. Machinable wax is difficult to extrude and I haven't had much luck with it. David seem to have done better with it. Polycast prints like PLA, smooths with IPA, and is designed for casting. I just got a roll of it last week. Let me know if you'd like to try some. I've been using Polysmooth which is similar but haven't tried burning it out yet. Below is Polysmooth, injection wax, and PLA.
Im tired of experimenting... Just sticking with pla. If you want to smooth pla just rub it with some styrene on a paper towel or q tips.... bottom line is they all burn out clean but regular pla will have issues with mold cracking/ blind holes where it is better with mold lay and best with wax but print ability gets worse as you go down the line... chose your poison. Im still waiting on the right material, tired of comprise...
Its difficult to print with, after all you are trying to print with melted wax... Ive just been sticking with pla
Mach, the Polysmooth looks interesting from the burnout perspective, the colour of the print doesn't seem to exhibit the same detail. Is it as detailed/accurate as the others?
It does but the filament is slightly translucent so the detail doesn't show - more so when its smoothed.
I just wanted to say thanks for the feedback on this. My son has 3 different kinds that came with the printer I'll see what he has and go from there. Thanks again for the feedback Art b
I also got a 3d printer for Xmas. I will be following this thread and posting new ones for help. Too bad the wax filament didn't work out well (although the wax middle one looks like it printed just fine?).
Watch sanding PLA. It likes to splinter and can end up embedded under your skin. Some people react to it sorta like fiberglass. Mild skin irritation, redness, and or itching. There is some way to vapor smooth PLA but the chemicals are kinda nasty. Might be further ahead to add a little coat of wax and smooth it that way for burnout.
Oh, didn't realize there was a difference. Little confused. Will reread the above posts and see if I can figure out whats what.
I just got one too and will be watching. They gave me a kilo of PLA with it. I'm starting to wrangle the software but it seems that I can't squeeze one more day out of my Windows XP. You know your getting old when you give someone your email address and they giggle (aol). I just got a new snowblower. A 1978 Snapper 8horse. (Tecumseh. I know, I know). A new carbureter, a new belt, good as new. I guess computers don't work like that. Pete
XP is a great platform. We run old school idiot machines UNPLUGGED from the net for cnc stuff like this with XP. When you trim the fat off xp, you can make it really fly and nice and stable. I've seen some machines not restarted in almost 2 years! You want old school... I still have a IBM laptop that's running win95! What suxs, it doesnt have a cd drive and no USB so it's pretty much a working paper weight. Cant bring myself to destroy it.
Yeah that's the issue. It's a platform that's worked great and worked great for years. Some of my computer based equipment at work won't run on anything but XP so it won't be abandoned, that's for certain. Several are unplugged from the network and run offline so we don't get blindsided by the possibility web-induced issues or glitches in our own network. Unfortunately there are some areas where you have to stay current if you want or need to use updated technology and software offerings, so here we are. Pete
I have a ZX81 (no really, I do still have it!) What printers are you guys using? I haven't money to splurge just yet but there seems to be some really cheap deals coming up.
