Filament Energy Testing | MatterHackers

One of the vital widespread questions we get from clients is, “What’s the strongest 3D printing filament?”  That’s an awesome query as a result of for 3D printing to be helpful, we’d like to have the ability to print elements which might be sturdy sufficient for practical use.

“Energy”, nonetheless, is a bit obscure as it may refer to some completely different mechanical properties – tensile power, yield power, fatigue power, compressive power, and impression power – so it’s a troublesome query to reply with out extra data.

Don’t fear, you don’t have to know what any of these phrases imply for this text. We’re not a testing lab and we are able to’t carry out any scientific checks of these mechanical properties, and we certainly did not discover a Younger’s Modulus.  What we are able to do is carry out a comparative take a look at – placing 3D printed elements by means of the identical take a look at, and seeing how filaments evaluate to one another.

Comparative Testing

We began with an element everyone seems to be accustomed to – a 3D printed carabiner. We scaled it to the approximate dimension of the aluminum carabiners you could find at native {hardware} shops which might be rated for 150lbs.

To eradicate as many variables as doable, we printed all of them on the identical 3D printer (Rostock Max by SeeMeCNC) with the identical settings (except those printed on the MarkForged, however we’ll get into that later).

A 0.4mm nozzle was used, and the carabiners had been printed at 0.25mm layer peak with 5 perimeters, 5 stable high & backside layers, and 50% triangle sample infill.

Protocol

We rigged up a drive gauge to a block and sort out pulley system with an 8:1 ratio. Because of this for each 1 pound we utilized to 1 facet of the system, we utilized 8 kilos to the opposite facet.

Once more, this was a comparative take a look at, not a scientific one, so issues like friction within the block and sort out setup weren’t accounted for.

Every carabiner was connected to the pulley system and we used a ratcheting cable pull to use pressure till the carabiner failed. The drive gauge recorded the height drive reached.

Listed below are our summarized information:

Considerably surprisingly, Taulman 645 failed on the lowest weight of any filament we examined, but it surely was the one filament that didn’t break. As a result of it’s not very inflexible, it simply bent and deformed till it got here off the take a look at rig.  This toughness is clearly a really helpful attribute, but it surely’s not a super materials for one thing like this carabiner.

The opposite supplies just about failed within the order we anticipated. PLA was the primary to interrupt, and when it broke, it shattered. PETG additionally failed violently, however was fairly a bit stronger than PLA. Because of this it’s a wonderful common objective filament – it’s stronger than PLA and far simpler to print than ABS.

We suspected that NylonX would carry out properly on this kind of take a look at, however we didn’t count on it to carry out in addition to it did. Put merely, it’s simply superior. It’s a lot simpler to print than common nylon as a result of the carbon fiber lowers the shrink charge considerably. The CF additionally stiffens it considerably, so it doesn’t have the deflection of normal nylon. It was over 100% stronger than PLA in our take a look at, and , on common, 60% stronger than ABS! 

As you possibly can see, Polycarbonate carried out very properly, and it had the tightest unfold from peak to low load till failure. Sadly, it was additionally probably the most troublesome materials to print with of all of the supplies we examined. It requires thorough drying earlier than printing, and it’s very susceptible to warp and curl up and doing.

The carabiners printed on the Mark Solid had been a bit completely different than the others. The MarkForged prints in nylon and has the flexibility to strengthen elements with steady fibers. For this take a look at, we printed 2 with fiberglass reinforcement, and a pair of with carbon fiber reinforcement. MarkForged makes use of their very own proprietary slicing software program referred to as Eiger.io, so the settings weren’t equivalent to the opposite printed elements, however we bought them as shut as we may. The settings used had been 4 stable high/backside layers of nylon, 2 outer partitions of nylon, 5 concentric rings of fiber reinforcement, 50% triangle sample infill, and 0.125mm layers.

For causes that aren’t but clear, they didn’t carry out in addition to we had anticipated – with each the Fiberglass and CF elements performing worse than NylonX and Polycarbonate. We’ve gotten some extremely sturdy elements off the MarkForged up to now, so we’ll be exploring this a bit extra to see why the carabiners didn’t carry out as anticipated.

Outcomes

After watching the video of the elements breaking, and taking a look at our information, we realized just a few issues.

Whereas we had been making use of pressure to the 3D printed carabiners, we weren’t simply measuring tensile power. We discovered that the integrity of the latch and the flexibility of it to remain closed so long as doable was an enormous issue within the max load earlier than failure. The extra versatile the filament is, the extra simply the latch unseats/opens, and this results in failure extra rapidly. After observing this, we experimented through the use of latches printed in PLA filament and NylonX for just a few of the checks. For instance, after we examined the Taulman 645, we carried out 2 checks with latches printed in 645, 2 checks with PLA latches, and a pair of with NylonX. The height worth for Taulman 645 was reached through the use of the NylonX latch – which is smart given the outcomes we noticed.

This isn’t shocking, however we level it out in order that we don’t get folks asking us if this take a look at means PLA filament is stronger than Nylon. With this specific half and take a look at, stiffness was essential. Most nylon filaments, like Taulman 645, aren’t significantly stiff, so that they didn’t fare properly on this take a look at, however that doesn’t imply they don’t seem to be sturdy, sturdy supplies. The PLA elements shattered aside once they failed. The Taulman 645 simply deformed sufficient to not help any extra weight. They kind of returned again to their unique form after eradicating them from the take a look at rig.

As an apart, we did take a look at 2 of the aluminum carabiners from the ironmongery shop. They had been stamped as being rated as much as 150lbs. Each of them maxed out our drive gauge at 480lbs. Then, we taped the latches open, they usually failed at 168 lbs, and 183 lbs. We aren’t certain, however it could appear that the load ranking relies on the load it may maintain with out the latch engaged.

Despite the fact that we used the identical 3D printer and the identical settings for all of the elements, there was fairly a little bit of variance in load earlier than failure. Whereas we didn’t carry out sufficient checks with every 3D filament to get a correct statistical information set, it seems that there could also be a good quantity of inconsistency inherent to the FFF course of.

Inconsistencies weren’t important sufficient to alter the failure level location. Each single carabiner failed in the identical spot, which is precisely the place we’d count on the carabiner to fail. We did count on to have at the very least 1 or 2 fail as a consequence of poor layer adhesion or different 3D printing-related problem, however that wasn’t the case.

Conclusions

Now we have been totally impressed with NylonX. We have been printing with it for about 3 months now, and it is simply an superior 3D printing materials. Robust, sturdy, straightforward to print, and it has an awesome floor end.

And but, probably the most shocking results of our take a look at was how sturdy NylonX turned out to be. It even outperformed the continual fiber bolstered Mark Solid elements – which we had been positively not anticipating. The truth is, the MarkForged elements, whereas clearly very sturdy, didn’t carry out in addition to we had anticipated. Solely Polycarbonate had the next load capability than Nylon X in our take a look at. That is smart as a result of although Nylon and Polycarbonate filament have comparable tensile strengths, PC is considerably extra inflexible, so there was much less deflection and the latch was capable of keep engaged longer.