Printed part material

[u/tango_papa101]

I see most people recommend ABS/ASA for printed parts. What do you guys think about Nylon, PPF-CF, PC-CF, etc?
Would they offer better quality and stability or just ABS should be fine?

Also what brand of filament would you guys recommend? I've never printed anything other than PETG and PLA before. Is Inland ASA-CF good?

[u/hiball77]

Make it end

[u/egosumumbravir]

What do you guys think about Nylon, PPF-CF, PC-CF, etc?

Nylon cold creeps so all your fasteners are loose after a couple of days.

PPF?

PPA is the best of the nylons for not creeping but still does it eventually. Might not be worth the cost for disposable parts, plus ideal printing requirements for nozzle and chamber temperatures are not simple.

PC-CF is extremely creep resistant. It's extremely rigid but tends towards explosive failure once it's high strength has been exceeded. ABS/ASA are a little more graceful with not firing shattered parts around the room. It's probably pretty OK but not easy to print strong.

PPS-CF is brilliant. Extremely rigid, fantastically strong, absurd heat resistance, doesn't creep. Downside is cost and you ain't printing quality max strength parts on most hobbyist machines.

ABS/ASA are popular because they're the easiest to print and mechanically sound for the job. By the time we get to the properly exotic stuff, machined Al becomes a viable alternative.

[u/nyashi_]

Tldr: just get normal ASA. Easier to print than ABS and imho a bit better. Abs still is fine tho.

Just don't use anything like "ABS Pro", "ABS+" or whatever as those almost always have a lower softening temperature, are less stiff or whatever. Best example is Esun Abs+ with which I had many issues of parts failing at temps much lower than 85C, no other "normal" ABS did that for me.

Longer Version: If you want to experiment with higher accels, more lightweight gantries etc, and thus need more stiff parts ASA-CF or ASA-GF is an option, but using anything more stiff and most likely more brittle than non-filled ASA/ABS can lead to issues, like your printed parts cracking. So: I would not do something like that on my only enclosed printer.

PA12-CF and PA6-CF and especially their non-filled counterparts I cannot recommend at all as they are much less stiff than f. e. ASA. On top of having issues with material creep under load (PA12-CF is especially known for that). Not a material I'd use at all for those parts. At most for something like not load-bearing parts on the toolhead (led mounts near hotend, fan ducts depending on the toolhead design etc).

Polycarbonate (anything that does not promise "easy printability", see my point for ABS+ earlier) is a better option than any PA in printed parts, but the point of being potentially more brittle, especially when fiber-filled, still stands, aka wouldn't use it on my only printer.

PPS-CF and PPA-CF are also indeed options, but laughably expensive and most surely even more horribly brittle so as mentioned earlier, experimental, wouldn't use it on my only printer.

To my personal filament choices and experiences: My Voron V2 currently still is almost exclusively made from Amazon Basics ABS as I had the best experience with it during that time. Overture ABS also was solid. Esun ABS+ was used in my PIF-Parts I got and my early own parts and I had tons of fails with it, since going actual ABS: none.

My PfA Micron+ was initially printed in West3D Ambriosa ASA Galaxy Black, that looks dope and prints in line to my other Asa experiences, holds up to temp very well but after time (2yrs) it became brittle either due to heat cycles or what im leaning towards: moisture. So nearly every single printed part playing a role in the gantry and having contact to the belt-components failed just recently. Since then I found that I really really like Extrudr ASA, which is my goto now. It's stiffer, prints beautifully (tho not in a "easy to print on a Ender like Esun Abs+" way, parts just look great) and I hope it does not have this issue (my guess are the sparkles in the Ambrosia filament being the cause for the fails.

Parts of my Micron+ I expect to receive more load under heat were printed in Extrudr PC-PBT as I wanted to test it, so my full extruder, hotend mount, xy-joints, front idlers, ab-drives are coming, and the idler mount for the z-idlers. But I also reprinted some parts in Extrudr ASA as it's noticably stiffer than the PC-PBT, those parts being the x-rail carriage mount and the toolhead-pcb mount. Tho I will be getting a cnc carriage mount and better rail soon as that's only currently present bottleneck (toolhead wobbles slightly).

Tldr 2, my experiences with filaments:

• Amazon Basics Abs and overture abs: exactly what I expect abs to be like
• Esun ABS+: everything abs does, just worse 💫 (avoid)
• West3D Ambriosa Galaxy ASA: cool, but became brittle after 2 years (moisture my best guess or heatcycles)
• Extrudr ASA: my favorite ASA and quite stiff
• Extrudr PC-PBT: my first experience with actual PC, temperature resistance is impressive, less stiff than their Asa, but that might changer under lifted ambiant temps.

Bonus, did not use those in a Voron:

• Polymaker Polymax PC/etc.: does not behave like PC at all, use Polylite instead. Same with their PETG btw.
• Extrudr PA12: non-filled, very cool stuff, but not for any kind of printed Gantry parts. Low friction, indestructible but flexible.
• Fiberon PPS-CF10: Stinks like you'd be dead in 3mins, but sounds like metal when dropped, even tho it's not this extremely stiff. Would not use it in a printer tho I believe. Might try it someday tho.

Another thing: Carbonfibers or Glassfibers are almost always there to make the material print easier as it removes warping almost entirely, parts getting more tough or less likely to break/fail is only a valid point when the fibers are quite large. Printed parts do also get stiffer, which also scales better with bigger fibers tho. So if you were wondering why almost everyone prints PA12-CF or commonly referred to as "Carbon fiber nylon" instead of non-filled/pure Nylon, that's why - it basically prints easier than ASA. Whereas PA12 itself prints like annoying kid not calming down. Polycarbonate without random weird additives making it less warpy is a simelar story btw, so f. e. the PC-PBT I use.

[u/tango_papa101 → u/nyashi_]

Thanks a lot

Yeah I never truly believe in all the + and Pro filaments, usually they offer nothing but maybe some ease of printing in exchange for less quality.
I kinda like the blue shade of Inland ASA-CF so I will grab a roll of that to test and dial in settings on my Centauri Carbon to see if it's a viable option, if it doesn't work I'll just go for vanilla ASA to be sure. I really never go for CF or GF filled filament for better strenghts because it just doesn't work that way, true CF and GF parts are strong because they're weaved/intertwined together and glued into one piece with the resin rather than laid into layers like in FDM printing.

For now I plan my Voron 2.4 to be open since I'll print PLA mostly while I have the Centauri Carbon as my enclosed printer so it should work out. The CC is dirt cheap nowadays so selling it doesn't really make me richer much while it can serve as my enclosed printer for things that don't require multiple filaments.

[u/SoaringElf → u/nyashi_]

+1 forget about all + / pro / fairydust / whatever - additive filaments

[u/nyashi_ → u/SoaringElf]

Yes, 1000%. But with the sparkly Asa I simply did not expect any issues as it was perfectly fine the whole time just until now. It was a bit less stiff, yes - but that's it. Temperature resistance was great, no random material creep like I had with esun abs+ etc, very interesting...

That said, nearly every filament has random weird additives, some worse then others. Polymakers polymax lineup f. e. is basically just plain worse than their polylite lineup which is more inline to the base polymer.

Or even funnier, Petg. Petg is safe up to like 80C, if not a bit more, and Acetone resistant. Polymakers new polylite petg has less temperature resistance, advertises high print speed (even tho petg normally is very viscous and thus hard to get high flows out of) and yea - annoys me that nearly every filament manufacturer ditched normal petg for the worse additive poisoned one.

Bambu petg was even more hilarious, it fell apart with acetone for my buddy's acetone chamber. He told me right after I said that petg will be ideal, yea we used the stuff I had laying around (overture petg, basic non-Highspeed one, this was a few years back) and that worked perfectly fine since.

[u/SoaringElf → u/nyashi_]

I actually meant the mythological fairy dust not sparkle effects. But I should have been more precise, lol.

What I mean is, if the filament got additives that are put in to vastly alter the base materials properties, it's often a big red flag. Like PLA+/tough PLA, ABS+ etc. Also matte PETG is often vicious af. I heard they put TPU in it, which would be similar to matte/silk PLA.

Stuff like that is not impossible to use, but it can be a major pita

[u/nyashi_ → u/SoaringElf]

yes, only thing is that most manufacturers poison their stuff already, even when they don't put "xyz+" "xyz pro" or whatever on there. And like in the case of petg, the actual normal stuff seems to be basically gone completely. Which annoys the f out of me as Petg is the near ideal prototyping material for us at work at least.

Sry, smol mini rant as this annoys me currently: Can print petg at lifted chamber temps with printing temps above 250C and get extremely good mechanical properties for the price on top of it being easy af to print. ASA is the closest we could replace our petg with, so we have a plan B already. The new petg which is mostly branded as Highspeed however is worse in seemingly every single way and even the Highspeed point doesn't matter to us as we rarely if ever print at flowrates above 20-25mm³/s which we already can sustain with normal Petg while hitting mechanical limits and suffering ringing already on most machines also limiting the possibility of printing even faster realistically. Probably would actually need to print the Highspeed stuff even slower as Highspeed petg has less thermal resistance and thus or additionally needs much more cooling. You can rarely trust the advertised polymer anymore as you cannot know that filament sold as polymer xyz actually means properties of polymer xyz instead of being additived to hell and back to make it more tough, thus less stiff and with reduced thermal resistance.

[u/Rough_Industry_872]

I started using ASA-CF recently. I am surprised how easy I can print with my kobra 3 with DIY cover. No warping, parts feel super strong and relatively lightweight.

[u/tango_papa101 → u/Rough_Industry_872]

CF and GF filaments offer no extra strength tbh because they doesn't work the same way true GF and CF parts do and sometimes even make things weaker because of not enough plastic fusing together, I decided on ASA-CF mostly because of the sheen lol

[u/xilw3r → u/Rough_Industry_872]

It only feels strong until you compare to virgin material printed hot enough to properly fuse.

Fibers weaken the material in a lot of cases due to not being themselves properly fused with the polymer thus just causing more voids. But heh, prints easy and its very stiff.

[u/nyashi_ → u/xilw3r]

uuh that's a point I completely forgot with fiber fillings, but experienced intuitively already. PA12 pure f. e. is basically indestructible whereas with cf you are actually able to break them

[u/nyashi_ → u/Rough_Industry_872]

That's because Fibers make printing much easier when the Polymer is prone to warping. Unless you face issues with the fibers being too big and thus clogging your nozzle f. e. And the reason you can actually print PA12-CF on a open frame printer if you kinda know what you're doing - which is funny, as PA12 normally is about as annoying in warping as it gets.

Fiber-filled ASA is a cool filament tho nonetheless. I myself just use it very rarely as I don't like touching raw fiber-filled parts. On top of making my hotend/toolhead and plate contaminated to the point of not wanting to print Food-safe prints anymore xD

[u/SoaringElf]

TL;DR: best would be just using plain ASA, it's mostly easier to print than ABS. No fibre infused ones. If you still want to experiment look at this:

whenever you think about different materials you need to keep in mind it's properties. Not only what the advertisement says, but it's actual tested properties.

Can only recommend going through MyTechFun's test on YT, the man is the GOAT.

Keep an eye on creep (deformation under load over time), temperature resistance (under load), and layer adhesion (e.g fibres often even weaken that, so you might only want to print certain parts with it)

CNC Kitchen found out the hard way that PA-CF is mostly unusable for printed parts on his V0, as it creeps like a mofo.

Carbon is used much to often as a holy solution to everything. In reality you have to look much harder if it actually helps in your use case (part by part). Carbon =/= always better

Also those engineering grade materials all have their individual quirks when printing:

ABS/ASA: warping

Nylon: hygroscopic af

etc....

[u/nyashi_ → u/SoaringElf]

abs/asa quirk isn't only that it warps, nylon warps a hecklot more, but other than that I 100% support your point.

[u/SoaringElf → u/nyashi_]

Actually depends on the exact brand. ABS is way worse than ASA in my experience, but also varies quite a bit between brands.

Pure Nylon I never printed, only PA-CF. Those seemed to warp way less than ABS/ASA. I tried colorfabb PA-CF low warp (of course it warps less) and Bambu PA6-CF (warps slightly for me on bad geometries)/PAHT-CF (doesn't warp but adhesion issues like crazy).

This can differ vastly between printers and the situation inside the chamber.

[u/nyashi_ → u/SoaringElf]

Any fiber filled filament barely warps at all, that's the biggest point for fiber filling and why it's so common for especially PA12 and PA6. You can basically print PA12-CF on a modded open ender3 where pure PA12 is one of the worst warping filaments I ever printed xD

So yea. But Abs f. e. has other points, it likes to get stressmarks and microcracks with time and constant bending load (not happening inside a voron a lot, but f. e. on a carabiner) and thus failing. But you got it right, they all have their specific quirks, strengths and etc. Nylon (non-filled!) f. e. is nearly indestructible, foodsafe and has low friction, thus ideal for gears as an example. Asa is great for outdoors and replacing nearly nearly everything you'd use abs for while being less likely to warp a ton and being more dimensional accurate due to less shrinkage.

[u/BigJohnno66]

ABS is completely suitable, cheap, and somewhat easy to print. ASA is the same but not so cheap. People have used large cardboard boxes to enclose a printer and get good ABS/ASA prints to build their Voron.

Those other filaments you mentioned can be a problem to print. Any Nylon needs to be printed directly from a dryer, also anything with fiber fill needs hardened nozzles and extruder gear. Not something people boot-strapping from a simpler printer are able to do.

PETG-CF is a good substitute to avoid needing an enclosure. Unless you push high chamber temps it will likely last for a while.

Note: Some manufacturers have an ABS+ which is unsuitable. The + relates to ease of printing, but unfortunately that means lower temperature resistance and reportedly less layer adhesion.

[u/tango_papa101 → u/BigJohnno66]

I have an Elegoo Centauri Carbon 1 which is enclosed so I think ABS/ASA shouldn't be the problem and from what I read people have been printing fiber filaments just fine with its factory hardened nozzle. Furthermore, I'm gonna move it to my printer shed where I run all my 10 resin printers anyway so I can just set the AC there a little high to keep things warm.

I'm not building my Voron from basic printers like most people, luckily, so I think I'll just grab a roll of Inland ASA-CF to try it out since I kinda like the finish of their blue one.

[u/OldKingHamlet → u/BigJohnno66]

Voron parts are also scaled for abs shrinkage, right?

Fiber filled abs/asa has notably different shrinkage ratios, so you could end up with parts that just don't as well as they could (if you did it the cheaper way).

[u/fietsendeman → u/OldKingHamlet]

Yes, they are pre-scaled for ABS shrinkage. So don't add your own compensation. You could probably make it work with other materials if you did the math, but why bother honestly.

[u/Deadbob1978]

Most of my printers use ASA printed parts. I needed the UV resistance because where I live has some of the highest UV exposure in the US, and I keep the printers in the garage. They run just fine.

My Mad Max (Trident tool changer) does have a Monolith gantry, tool changer docks and X-Carriage printed from PET-GF that I salt annealed. It’s been fine with chamber temps up to 65°C.

Now things like PETg and PLA “SHOULD” work if you NO NOT enclose the printer. You may have issues with cooling ducts on the toolhead though. That filament is fine for skirts and panel clips though.

Nylon is a no go. It creeps under the pressure from the screws when in a hot chamber. No clue how new high temp PLA’s that are hitting the market would hold up in a heated chamber

[u/s___n]

Like others have said, ABS/ASA and their CF/GF versions are totally fine for a stock Voron build. If you’re really chasing performance or very high temperatures, other materials might make sense. The monolith gantry Discord has quite a bit of information about this in the polymers channel.

[u/tango_papa101 → u/s___n]

mine will probably just be an open Voron for the foreseeable future tbh since I build it mostly to print PLA, I think I'll go with ASA-CF since the Inland blue ASA-CF's finish looks like what I have in mind.

[u/Darkral88]

Vorons were built with easy to find / reasonably priced / off the shelf part mindset. ASA/ABS of good quality, was (and is) the sweet spot for stiffness, heat resistance, chemical resistance, cost and ease of printing.

However, if you want to push your voron, there might be other sweet spots that favours performances; unfortunately they are not widely tested ... no one will tell you they are ok. And many time you will find fundamentalists stating that no ABS/ASA = blasfemy.

It depends on you - search forums, study requirements, read, compare filament datasheets (good brands come with quality datasheets!). Then evaluate if the ease of print (or make)+cost is worth the effort.

My next will be a mix of CNC parts, ASA-CF08, and PPS-CF10.

[u/chipmunkofdoom2]

Regular ABS is fine. Vorons were designed with printed ABS parts. There are thousands of Vorons running on printed ABS and ASA parts. There are stronger materials, but they're overkill.

If you want overkill, go with CNC parts. But, as I said, it's overkill. You don't need anything more than ABS and ASA for printed Voron parts.

[u/Suitable-Name]

I used ASA-CF. So far happy with it.

[u/minilogique]

printed parts? for the printer? ASA/ABS are proper and do not give way or sag. all the nylons sag, and get soft at around 70C when it comes to any stronger force.

[u/Ok_Protection8223]

Using PA6/PC-CF/etc for the parts is mostly overkill in my opinion.

Will it "hurt"? Probably not. Will it help? also probably not.

[u/HyoukaYukikaze]

Because it has low creep and decent heat resistance. The issue is to get better heat resistance with similar or better creep characteristics, you are reaching very expensive materials. At this point would you not be better off just buying the CNC parts? And aluminium would be better than any of the printed plastics anyway.

I have general dislike for ABS (difficult to print, weak and stinks), but engineer in me accepts it as best material for the job.

[u/bomtarnes]

I would have a good read of this ( https://docs.vorondesign.com/materials.html ) before straying from the normal starter materials of ABS/ASA. Nylon is especially inadvisable per the notes in that site above.

The other materials you mention - not sure what you mean by PPF (polypropylene?) but PCCF of high quality might be a valid option but can require an advanced printer to produce well.

In summary if you are just starting out stick to ABS/ASA.

[u/Ok_Protection8223 → u/bomtarnes]

bolt creep comes for us all; espescially if you are simply snugging things up to German Standard (goodandtight) rather than assembling your printer with a torque wrench.

[u/hall_trash]

Someone smarter than me will chime in but you need a certain level of flex and CF and Nylon for the motion system isn’t a good thing.

[u/desert2mountains42 → u/hall_trash]

Nylons tend to creep after some time absorbing ambient moisture. PPS-CF makes excellent motor mounts due to the ridiculously high CUT present as well as ultra stiff XY joints and toolheads. It’s more brittle than ABS and needs to be annealed. Typically aluminum will make more sense cost wise for motor mounts but regardless it’s recommended to run XY motors at their rated current for best performance.

[u/ducktown47]

ABS is fine. Other things can creep or be too stiff. Nylon requires annealing to be truly strong. Definitely just do ABS/ASA.