As someone currently goofing around with his first 3D printer with a hardened nozzle and heated chamber, I've been wanting a nice rundown on all the various exotic plastics out there. I love this...
As someone currently goofing around with his first 3D printer with a hardened nozzle and heated chamber, I've been wanting a nice rundown on all the various exotic plastics out there. I love this format and wish it went further.
Nowadays there are so many weird offshoots available (PBT, PCTG, PMMA, PEEK, PVB, etc) out there with little work given to differentiate them aside from offering datasheets that are often difficult to compare between manufacturer. Given the wide world of use cases and how industry is mostly concerned with injection molding, it's hard to figure out what a specific plastic chemistry is best suited for in the 3DP space.
This is a fun article. The part about polyurethane undergoing degradation is only partly true. The PU that the article is talking about is ester-based, which has been used for cushions for...
This is a fun article. The part about polyurethane undergoing degradation is only partly true. The PU that the article is talking about is ester-based, which has been used for cushions for decades. Ether-based PU is not susceptible to hydrolysis, giving it a higher level of resistance to moisture and UV, making it suitable for outdoor applications.
“It’s made of plastic” is a common put-down. Marketers selling higher-end bits made of plastic (like gun parts) try to evade the stigma by calling it “polymer”, but that’s just a stupid euphemism: every plastic is a polymer, though not every polymer is a plastic. The word “polymer” says nothing to indicate that this might be a superior sort of plastic. Yet there are superior sorts; plastics vary widely in their characters. Some analogies between plastic and human characters:
As someone currently goofing around with his first 3D printer with a hardened nozzle and heated chamber, I've been wanting a nice rundown on all the various exotic plastics out there. I love this format and wish it went further.
Nowadays there are so many weird offshoots available (PBT, PCTG, PMMA, PEEK, PVB, etc) out there with little work given to differentiate them aside from offering datasheets that are often difficult to compare between manufacturer. Given the wide world of use cases and how industry is mostly concerned with injection molding, it's hard to figure out what a specific plastic chemistry is best suited for in the 3DP space.
This is a fun article. The part about polyurethane undergoing degradation is only partly true. The PU that the article is talking about is ester-based, which has been used for cushions for decades. Ether-based PU is not susceptible to hydrolysis, giving it a higher level of resistance to moisture and UV, making it suitable for outdoor applications.
From the article: