BASF Ultrafuse 316L

Really keen to try this but it is insanely expensive!

Pugs

Iā€™ve seen that the laser version of 3d printing for metal has been getting better lately. This is a very interesting thing to evolve the methods of using metals. Nice share!!

Iā€™ll get to the 316l material eventually. I wonder if you can get blanks of it for CNC jobs?

For now I couldnā€™t wait for my hardened hot end parts to test PA-CF

Looks ok so far!

Hopefully it actually works!
Iā€™ll test my wood filled PLA on the key :+1:

Further to testing what can be done, Iā€™ll be trying some PA12-CF for real engineering parts + looking to design a Chinese finger trap on the rotary module in elastic TPE :joy:

Pugs

Good luck with that. Youā€™ll need a sintering furnace capable of 100% dry hydrogen or dry argon atmosphere. But thatā€™s not the hard part. The debinding step requires oven processing with a nitric acid feed and waste gas burnoff.

The filamentā€™s the cheap part of this process.

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BASF actually handle those processes as part of the product. 1 ticket per spool :man_shrugging:

But you would know that from the vid of course :slight_smile:

Pugs

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I wouldnā€™t know that because I looked up and read the technical data sheets. I am in the habit of avoiding time-waste by watching randomly-posted videos.

So what youā€™re actually saying is that youā€™re purchasing a combination of filament and processing services, not just filament. I stand by my comment that the filament itself is relatively inexpensive compared to the processing equipment and associated services. Thereā€™s likely a metal-sintering job shop in the closest large metropolitan area near you. It may well be cheaper to buy plain filament and buy local services.

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Indeed, it did occur to me to actually buy blanks of ā€œgreenā€ material to CNC and send out.

I have been getting a bit excited printing ā€˜filledā€™ material tho, seems to perform better than raw so the idea of laying down something to be sintered is quite cool!

Itā€™s no beyond us hobbyists to even do it our self (the list of tooling and equipment enlarges again!)

This company claims their filament can be debound and sintered in a normal kiln, and they provide process parameters. A spool is much cheaper than Ultrafuse.

image

Nice!, cost is probably about the same, the BASF spools are 3kg

It really does come down to purpose tho of course. I have several clients that while they do not need it, they wanā€™t to feel covered :confused:

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I guess this it the filament thread for nowā€¦

How crap is SMā€™s spools?

I have a PLA print going I want to kill right now it is terrible :frowning:

They have shown to have a large variation in quality. I had no issues with my SM spool that came with the printer, and many other people received wet spools and spools with dimensional variability.

Iā€™m put off PETG because of the sample provided. I should try a trusted brand. The SM PLA seemed ok but a bit brittle? Current print looking horrible but that might because I used Luban and not Cura lol

ASENSAR AUTOMATION - Your Product Development Partner.

You could try drying it.

By the time youā€™d go through all the trouble of printing the 316l and getting it to work on an SM, and then all the post procedures, why not just send out the file to a place that can do it all?

Luban prints fine as long as youā€™re okay with the limited parameters it has. Itā€™s just using an older version of Curaā€™s slicing engine. If you need more control and adjustments (or especially better supports) thatā€™s where Luban is lacking (besides being buggy and having an awful interface)

-S

Have a dryer on the way, the SM spools just seem cheap tho

Grabbed some eSUN PLA+ and just a few minutes in I can tell the SM spools are garbage

chalk and cheese

Pugs

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I only print with PETG, (matterhackers build series to be specific). Canā€™t really use supports, and stringing can be a bit of an issue sometimes, but overall I really like the parts that come out, since they conform to my ideas of how plastic should work much better than PLA parts do (e.g. not ridiculously brittle and super sensitive to heat).

I found PETG really sticky/stringy, although that could well be the SM sampleā€¦

I picked up some ASA in the hope it means I can replace PETG & ABS for those items that would benifit for an outdoor/industrial application. Based on specs I have reviewed it only really loses out to PETG for flexibility(?)

So far it is laying down very nicely with generic settings out of CURA so hopefully that cuts PETG & ABS out for me lol, (spool addiction is a thingā€¦ did not account for that!)

PLA+ - General
PETG - Do not like!
ABS - Not tested!
ASA - Outdoor/Industrial
Nylon6 - Warps to muchā€¦
Nylon6 + CF - Industrial, Love it!
Nylon 12 + CF Next to try :slight_smile:
Others - As application requires.

Iā€™ll happily share my profiles once I have these target materials locked in to my proving prints!

Happy makings!

Pugs

First time ASA, free Cults model, Generic slice :man_shrugging:

I thought this model would fail so it does impress me :cowboy_hat_face:

Pug