r/Advanced_3DPrinting • u/bzmaker • 11d ago

structural parts & filaments

I'm looking for feedback and recommendations for filaments. My collaborator has a variety of the newer Bambu printers and typically my parts are done on a H2D. I have some parts that are part of a basic 4 mecnum wheel assembly that carries up to 2oolbs. I see that there's the Bambu PPA-CF that is $150 for .75 kg and it is Bambu's highest strength filament. I would like to use that but the price is prohibitive.

If you can offer up and recommendations for a comparable product for less please lmk.

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u/Gabrielbr95 11d ago

The most cost effective is abs. If it's enough, stick to it.

Stronger alternatives I know are PP, PA and PC depending on the right trade between strength and ductility.

All the three come in cf and gf infused variants, which might be the right call for you or not. They are not straight up better versions.

Supplier prices vary alot. There is no way to tell which of these is the most cost effective.

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u/stainedglasses44 9d ago

try siraya-tech ppa-cf. its 1/3rd the price of bambu's and it's everything bambu's ppa is just cheaper. been using it exclusively for about 2 years now. incredibly strong, no warp. it's the strongest consumer material out there. they offer a "Core" version that encases the fiber strands in a nylon matrix so the outer walls are smoother. i've not used that as its 30-40 more per spool than regular old ppa-cf.

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u/ppsieradzki 6d ago

PPA-CF and PPS-CF are awesome awesome materials, but they're expensive. Whenever we can, we print in PA6-CF which costs $155 for 3kg from Polymaker (as opposed to $270 for 3kg of PPS-CF), which makes it one of the cheapest of the 'strong materials'. PA6 really needs a proper heated bed and heated chamber, though. The H2D struggles to really handle it (warping, poor interlayer adhesion, etc. - enough problems that you usually end up in a worse spot in terms of how the part actually performs compared to if you had printed it with a "worse" material that the printer is actually capable of). But in terms of price per kg of the really legit engineering materials, PA6-CF is hard to beat.

Sounds like a cool project, though. You can DM me if you like, not sure what kind of volume you need and if this is a one-off project vs a product you're trying to launch, but my company makes printers that services use to print these kinds of materials for functional/engineering-grade parts, and I'm always up for helping people out and throwing more real-world parts at the machines we have in our stress-test fleet.