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in comparison to what i started with.

last print is the most recent print, almost there.
still difficult to remove from the garolite le sheet. i have to hit it with a hammer to remove it.. cast nylon sheet should be here tomorrow and hopefully that will be easier to remove the printed part from.
I started a 4th print but it seems that the moisture has absorbed back into the filament, after about 2hrs of leaving it out while printing the other prints. i'll let it print just to see how it comes out.

cambo3d wrote:in comparison to what i started with.

last print is the most recent print, almost there.
still difficult to remove from the garolite le sheet. i have to hit it with a hammer to remove it.. cast nylon sheet should be here tomorrow and hopefully that will be easier to remove the printed part from.

nylon trials.jpg

In my experimenting with Nylon, I tried sanding the garolite sheet (which I had to do anyway to get the bits of nylon off) but instead of cleaning the sanding dust off of it, I left it on. It seemed to tone down the grip of the garolite a little. If I wanted to get a spot to really stick, I'd just clean the dust off on that spot.

After that, a weird thing I tried was just dusting the garolite surface with actual flour. Kind-of like when you don't want dough to stick. It also helped but was a little too hard to control the amount of dusting.

After further testing (and sanding), things got a little strange and the garolite surface reached a point where I couldn't get corners of 120mm part to stick at all, even with a clean garolite surface and with or without a heated bed. I may have needed to re-zero the bed because it changed from the sanding but I decided to take a break from Nylon.

Garolite is an epoxy bound fiber sheet. I would assume that the nylon is sticking to the thin epoxy film on the top of the garolite. If this is the case would a thin two part epoxy layer on top of glass be as effective?

Is this 618 or 645 nylon?

I literally cook mine in the oven for 8-12 hours at low heat. Huge difference in print quality with zero popping. And zero steam.

I then store the spools in the previously mentioned cake holders with a "dry-z-air" in the middle for good measure.

Stuff comes out DRY.

Flateric wrote:Is this 618 or 645 nylon?

I literally cook mine in the oven for 8-12 hours at low heat. Huge difference in print quality with zero popping. And zero steam.

I then store the spools in the previously mentioned cake holders with a "dry-z-air" in the middle for good measure.

Stuff comes out DRY.

618

foshon wrote:Garolite is an epoxy bound fiber sheet. I would assume that the nylon is sticking to the thin epoxy film on the top of the garolite. If this is the case would a thin two part epoxy layer on top of glass be as effective?

From what I've read, it is mainly sticking to the fibers in the garolite. I've also heard of someone having good success printing on canvas that has been glued to glass but I haven't tried it myself.

this final print was printed with a raft, it was easier to remove and didn't damage the part.
I slide a razor blade under the raft and it came right out with just a little force.
then carefully peeled the raft off the part by hand.
here's what the print surface looks like now after about 5 prints. you can see where the nylon stripped some of the coating off of the garolite le board. the nylon still sticks like glue to it though. I'll have the cast nylon sheet to try later today. Hopefully it will work out better than garolite le.

joseph prusa came up with a heated feed tube for removing moisture from the polycarbonate filament he was printing. http://youtu.be/fgBEZJlYdCI

Im wondering if the idea will work for nylon. Wont have to necessarily worry about drying the filament to much because it will dry in the tube on the way to the hot end.

im gonna see if can come up with something similar.

foshon wrote:Garolite is an epoxy bound fiber sheet. I would assume that the nylon is sticking to the thin epoxy film on the top of the garolite. If this is the case would a thin two part epoxy layer on top of glass be as effective?

You may have hit on a good idea. I had wondered what was so special about the Garolite that Nylon sticks to it so well.
I think you are correct about the Epoxy and coating the glass with epoxy would work well, the only problem would be that
you would probably have to dedicate the glass to printing Nylon but who knows, the other plastics might love the epoxy also.
Are you going to try it?

Carl

cambo3d wrote:joseph prusa came up with a heated feed tube for removing moisture from the polycarbonate filament he was printing. http://youtu.be/fgBEZJlYdCI

Im wondering if the idea will work for nylon. Wont have to necessarily worry about drying the filament to much because it will dry in the tube on the way to the hot end.

im gonna see if can come up with something similar.

That is a great approach! With everyone who uses nylon spending a lot of money in energy costs to dry the stuff, you could come up with something that would be a great
benefit to the printing community. I think the key is not only the temperature of the feed tube but also the duration of time the nylon stays in the tube which means the length of
the tube could be critical.

so i put on my thinking cap on some more. rather than heat up the filament tube.....

i could create a section of tube that the filament runs through that is connected to a vacuum pump. The pump will lower the pressure inside that section of the tube, which in turn causes the water/ moisture to boil out. this technique wont require me to heat up the tube.

cambo3d wrote:so i put on my thinking cap on some more. rather than heat up the filament tube.....

i could create a section of tube that the filament runs through that is connected to a vacuum pump. The pump will lower the pressure inside that section of the tube, which in turn causes the water/ moisture to boil out. this technique wont require me to heat up the tube.

Now that is a radical approach and a darned good one, I hope that you will get this to work and if you do, you deserve to profit from it. Open source is great for the overall concepts but such a unique
item should be patented and profit should be made from the hard work you will have invested. I have no doubt that you will get it to work but what to do once you create it requires some thought.

This is what I came across up when I considered Nylon.

http://www.tridimake.com/2013/04/3D-pri ... -line.html

What he printed on was masonite/fiberboard instead of Garolite which I found interesting.

The comparison of "printing trimmer line on the back of an IKEA piece of furniture" made me laugh.

Has anyone tried printing on a clean sheet of paper?

g.

A clean sheet of paper probably would lift up from the bed, you definitely need some rigidity to prevent the nylon from curling during printing.

I could see using PVA glue to glue a sheet of paper to a glass surface though.

I did look up some basic info on drying nylon, seems that vacuum is the way to go for quick drying. Some articles about nylon and polymer drying.

http://www.cometplasticequipment.com/html/pr_nylon.htm
http://www.ptonline.com/articles/resin- ... ht-for-you

It seems like a box or some sort of vacuum safe vessel would be better than a tube, drop in the spool, draw a vacuum, close the valve, let sit for an hour or so then take up the vacuum again. I don't think you could get the 29+ cmHG. Remember, vacuum time will vary with surface area, so raw pellets will dry faster than 1.75mm filament which will dry faster than 3mm filament. A oven preheat would probably be a benefit to the process too, though I'd grab a used toaster oven at the local thrift shop rather than use a food prep oven, but that's the diy powder coater in me talking. Either way, according to the ptonline article vacuum doesn't ever over dry nylon, so you won't run into cracking filament in the bowden.

geneb wrote:Has anyone tried printing on a clean sheet of paper?

g.

I printed on a 1/8th sheet of Nylon6, when it did adhere to the surface, the warping forces were so strong it warped the Nylon sheet, so you'll need to glue the paper to something that won't warp.

Durandal wrote:A clean sheet of paper probably would lift up from the bed, you definitely need some rigidity to prevent the nylon from curling during printing.

I could see using PVA glue to glue a sheet of paper to a glass surface though.

I did look up some basic info on drying nylon, seems that vacuum is the way to go for quick drying. Some articles about nylon and polymer drying.

http://www.cometplasticequipment.com/html/pr_nylon.htm
http://www.ptonline.com/articles/resin- ... ht-for-you

It seems like a box or some sort of vacuum safe vessel would be better than a tube, drop in the spool, draw a vacuum, close the valve, let sit for an hour or so then take up the vacuum again. I don't think you could get the 29+ cmHG. Remember, vacuum time will vary with surface area, so raw pellets will dry faster than 1.75mm filament which will dry faster than 3mm filament. A oven preheat would probably be a benefit to the process too, though I'd grab a used toaster oven at the local thrift shop rather than use a food prep oven, but that's the diy powder coater in me talking. Either way, according to the ptonline article vacuum doesn't ever over dry nylon, so you won't run into cracking filament in the bowden.

it would probably be easier to do it this way to just put the whole filament spool/spools in a heated vacuum chamber. should be fairly easy to build something or get something already designed for this. I searched ebay for vacuum chamber and heated vacuum chamber and came up with all kinds of possibilities.

the cast nylon sheet came in today and I didn't have any luck getting it to stick. unless i just have the wrong material.

and further reading suggest i need to dry the nylon in an oven at about 180f for 12 hours to get the moisture out.. There's no way im doing this every time I want to use nylon.

some times I wish manufacturers would put this information out in the specs, so people can make a better decision weather this stuff is right for our needs. Pretty sure these guys made good deal of money when they first came out with the stuff, but i bet their sales are slacking now that people know the real deal about this stuff.

i'm gonna try the vacuum chamber drying method though.... to be continued.

I've been printing with trimmer line nylon since I got my rostock working. It sticks to cardboard decently, but that leaves a thin layer of cardboard stuck to the piece after it's done printing. The cardboard warps a lot too. The best thing I've found so far is to just smear a glue stick on the surface of the glass and let it dry. I keep my glass at 60 degrees for printing and it helps dry the glue in a few seconds. I bought the glue stick for 2$, which is a lot less than garolite. It doesn't break your part or your build surface to remove, either. For bigger parts just get some water around the edges of the part you're making, and the glue will wash away and make your part easy to remove.

As for drying, I just put my 3 lb spool in the oven on 200 degrees Fahrenheit for a few hours with two small bags of desiccant. Then I double bagged it in the onyx bag and some other plastic bag that came with the rostock. Put the desiccant in with it. The entire top part of the spool was exposed to air, but I haven't had any popping problems with it since then.

The trimmer line I bought costs 23$ for a 3 lb spool, and if you buy 2 at once, the shipping is free. That comes out to about 7.70$ per lb, and it makes some very strong parts!

Could you post your source for the trimmer line and what is it's diameter.

http://www.amazon.com/SuperTrim-065-Inc ... 050&sr=1-6

That's the stuff I'm using. Before I bought it, I emailed the company that makes it (Desert Extrusion). They said their products are "made from 100% virgin nylons", which I think means that nothing else like glass fiber is added.

It's 1.65mm round line (0.065 inch), the 1.65mm is cyan blue. If you have a 3mm setup on your machine you may want to use the .105 inch or .13 inch stuff. I can't compare the fumes to ABS or PLA because I haven't used ABS or PLA yet, but I would describe the nylon fumes as mild at most. I was printing in a small, closed room all day for a few days in a row, and I'm not dead yet! The smell isn't really that noticeable unless you put your face right next to the printer. Drying the nylon further reduces the smell.

Check out their other stuff here;
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_ ... Asupertrim

Desert extrusion makes most of the trimmer line available in the USA, so other trimmer line brands are probably chemically identical.

The only problem I have with printing so far is that printing at anything less than 235 degrees Celsius makes for bad layer adhesion. I can't print over 240 degrees because I'm using the rostock hotend with PEEK, but if you buy this stuff, you should try slightly higher temperatures. It makes some really strong parts. I printed a 0.21 inch thick trigger and I couldn't break it by torquing it with pliers with all of my strength. It just bends, then slowly creeps back to its original position. The line doesn't break in the extruder or hotend like PLA because of how flexible it is.

parts arrived today. time for some more experimenting.
nylon is in and vacuum chamber holding vacuum at -29inhg so now i wait, not sure how long though..

You are serious about this. One thing about you, you don't give up. We will all benefit from what you learn, thanks.

Now i call this the heated vacuum chamber. hmmm for some reason i have craving for some Cajun crawfish. hhmmmm

Crawfish, how about a beer?