I have some designs that i want to print for animal keeping/housing. Ultimately they need to be able to be put into a dishwasher to be cleaned. Like a “top rack only” situation. I found the following article:
About 2/3 of the way down the page there is a table of materials vs use vs “food safe” vs “dishwasher safe.”
Q1: does anyone have any direct experience making things and then putting them into the dishwasher? And if so please link the material you used =)
NOTE: I’ve seen a lot of threads about “food safe” and the whole debate around that. I am interested in that separately, but in this case I’m just poking at the “dishwasher safe” idea. If you have advice in both categories thats super appreciated tho =)
Q2: Any good sources of small batch filament to test? I’d love to play with different materials but have so far only seen whole spools for sale and was hoping for really small spools with less monetary commitment to test different stuff.
Temperature inside a dishwasher is going to depend on what your hot water heater is set to and whether your dishwasher gives the water temperature an extra boost. No specific advice, though (other than that PCL is obviously unsuitable, but that isn’t exactly the most common filament type).
The search term you want for your Q2 is “filament sample”. Here’s one offering from a reputable manufacturer (although I’ve never ordered from them myself): Sample Box - Polymaker US
Fiddling with a search engine will turn up many more.
I’m experimenting with the TRUE Food Safe PLA right now. Prints well, but it will have to be annealed for 10-20 min @ 176-266°F to get the best heat deflection temperature of the 3D printed part, increasing it from 131-140°C to 176-194°F. If placed on the top rack away from the drying unit, or if the dish drier is turned off it should work. I’ll report back when I’ve gotten to that point.
You may want to check into polypropylene, it’s not nearly as susceptible to moisture and I can just see problems happening with things like PLA ABS ASA PC etc because of the hygroscopic properties couples with hot water just wreaking havoc on a print. Polypropylene is highly flexible though so it may not fit your needs just for that reason.
Thanks for the suggestion. Flexible would actually be a-ok for my plans (insert evil scientist laugh here). Can Snapmaker print PP? I’m new, sorry, and i dont see it on the list of filament types from the manual (it shows four: PLA, ABS, TPU, PETG). Maybe that’s not the actual complete list tho……
@Jensa theres a user on here that has been printing it, it’s tricky though for adhesion, polypropylene only sticks to itself, best to use the magigoo glue that is intended for printing polypropylene, clear packaging tape works good too but I would think it would be messy trying to take that tape off the sticker sheet. Snapmaker meets all the requirements needed to print it, it’s just tricky to print regardless what printer is used.
I’ve had a prototype part soaking in tap water at room temperature for 4 days now. Inspected it yesterday and there is no sign of absorption or part damage.
Pretty sure that’s just the list of filament types the Snapmaker people had tested when the manual went to print. The maximum specified temperature for the nozzle is 275C, so if it prints below that temperature, is available as filament of the right diameter, and can be convinced to stick to the print bed somehow, you should be able to print it. A couple of people have mentioned printing nylon, so we know that works (not suitable for your application, though), and I think someone else was working with ASA. I have some less-usual filaments I’m hoping to get around to testing next weekend (PVB, PCL and TPE).
If you want to know what filaments it definitely won’t print, well, PC (polycarbonate), PEI and PEEK require print temperatures that are beyond the capacity of the Snapmaker2 (some PC claims to print just barely cool enough, but I have my doubts).
Bad news on the True Food Safe PLA (TFS PLA). Just finished annealing a test part, as per the website instructions, and the part shrank and deformed horribly. It’s no longer usable. I have contacted the company. First pic shows TFS PLA after annealing on the left, black snapmaker PLA without annealing on the right. Should be identical, minus the grid at the bottom and the extra lip in the white.
Haven’t heard back from the company. Further experiments show that the PLA cannot stand up to 58 C hot water without deforming badly. Still working on trying to anneal it.
The annealing process deforms prints. You can try to reduce the deformation as much as possible, but in the end, there will always be some deformation. You can place the part in a medium that will help it retain its shape, like talc, salt, clay, plaster, etc., before heating everything up to the annealing temperature, and it will retain its shape better, but the medium will embed itself into the outer layer of the print, and you’ll need to clean it up after that.
Think Shrinky Dinks, as that is basically what will happen when annealed without a retaining medium.
Did another experiment, this time putting the top and bottom pieces together in a big bowl of hot water, then microwaving it for 4 minutes. Tempered OK, still have some distortion but usable. Problem is that now the top and bottom are permanently stuck together. Perhaps the microwave heated the PLA enough to fuse the two parts as they contracted.
@gwfami something about microwaving printed parts just doesn’t seem to sit well with me lol. I saw someone melt a benchy in their microwave ‘just because’ and made me think about the toxic fumes that coated the inside of the microwave where food is intended lol. Best to use one that you won’t put food in again me thinks.
Ok. Just wanted to report some success. I glued a small flat liner into one of the parts and put it in the oven and allowed it to preheat to 170 F, then cooked it for 20 minutes. No distortions in the part, but there was a small amount of shrink in the X,Y axis.
Also, the company has said “make the parts thicker and 100% infill”, but that’s not an option for me. Tomorrow I’m going to see if it was the liner or the superglue, or both that allowed the part not to distort. My guess is the superglue is adding rigidity to the structure and allowing it to relax without distortions.
Careful with that statement… the SM2 will print anything it can melt for a time. But it is not designed for highly abrasive materials. Printing with such materials over extended periods (depending on the material as little as 8 hours) will result in damage to the SM… for instance I have heard that some glow in the dark filament is abrasive enough to cut through an 1/8 inch of aluminum is the matter of a couple hours.
There are mods you could preform to protect the SM from abrasion if you wanted to.
Well, I didn’t say it was necessarily always a good idea, only that it was possible. Seriously, the advice I’ve seen for abrasive filaments has mostly been “replace the nozzle frequently, or buy a nozzle made of something more wear-resistant than brass”. I’ve never heard of there being a problem with those filaments eroding other parts of the guts, although I suppose the rest of the hotend, and even the feed gears, might get abraded to some extent.
Seriously, the advice I’ve seen for abrasive filaments has mostly been “replace the nozzle frequently, or buy a nozzle made of something more wear-resistant than brass”. I’ve never heard of there being a problem with those filaments eroding other parts of the guts, although I suppose the rest of the hotend, and even the feed gears, might get abraded to some extent.