{"id":1019,"date":"2011-05-24T16:22:33","date_gmt":"2011-05-24T22:22:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/haveblue.org\/?p=1019"},"modified":"2011-05-24T16:22:33","modified_gmt":"2011-05-24T22:22:33","slug":"a-challenger-appears","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/haveblue.org\/?p=1019","title":{"rendered":"A challenger appears!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\tWith some other projects having consumed my attentions for the past few weeks, I was eager to return to more Stratasys experiments.\u00a0 Having acquired enough breakaway support material to last me for the foreseeable future, I could once again be running with both extruders operational.\u00a0 One material that I’ve wanted to try for quite a while is the 0.070″ ABS filament used on the PP3DP<\/a> UP! printer, as people had mentioned that it was a bit different from the Chi Mei PA-747 ABS filament sold by Makerbot, New Image Plastics, Village Plastics and most other US suppliers. The problem is that overseas ordering is rather a pain – while PP3DP does now take Paypal, they still need a minimum order of over $100 (and stick the buyer with the paypal fees as well).<\/p>\n

Fortunately, UP! user Enrique Muyshondt set up desktopFab<\/a> to act as a US dealer for PP3DP printers and supplies. I ordered a 700 gram spool (1.54 lbs.) for $35 plus $12.34 shipping. Unfortunately, Enrique has since had to increase the price to $40 per spool – it seems PP3DP really doesn’t have any sort of dealer margin built into their price structure.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
A Stratasys 2lb. spool on the bottom, a Bolson 2lb. spool in the middle, and a PP3DP 1.5lb. spool on top.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The spools are pretty small, but then again, the UP! printer that they’re intended for use with is a small desktop printer.\u00a0 Happily, they have a 2″ mounting hole, so FDM users don’t have to re-spool onto empty Stratasys reels.\u00a0 I threaded the material through the FDM 1600 and after waiting for the head to come up to temperature, I loaded it through the T12 modeling tip.\u00a0 The extruded material looked and acted just like Stratasys P400, so I grabbed a micrometer and checked the die swell – 0.0175″!\u00a0 Time to get the support material loaded and try making some parts – this was very promising.\u00a0 Despite being honest-to-goodness Stratasys breakaway support material, I had trouble with it kinking between the feed wheels and the liquifier inlet.\u00a0 I had almost resigned myself to tracking down some Vespel rod (horrifically expensive) to machine a new inlet that would reduce the distance to the drive wheels when I figured I’d try drilling out the nozzle again with a 0.011″ bit.\u00a0 There must have been some buildup in the tip, as I had no more jamming after running the drill bit through.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
I thought I'd give Adrian's cute little mini-extruder a try.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I could post lots of pictures of all the results, but I’ll keep it brief and simply say that the PP3DP filament runs great<\/strong>.\u00a0 If I didn’t know any better, I’d swear that it was Stratasys P400 – it has the same matte finish, die swell, adhesion to support material, etc. that the OEM filament has.\u00a0 It does seem to have a substantial amount of ooze, though it has been rather humid lately and I didn’t bother trying to dry the filament (it came in a sealed bag with desiccant).\u00a0 While I’ll certainly continue with investigating alternate materials (the MG94 should be extruded soon), the PP3DP filament is easily the best bang-for-the-buck model material for Stratasys owners at this time.\u00a0 However, one possible caveat is quality control – several months back, a number of UP! users noted that a batch of filament put out noxious fumes when run<\/a>. While this isn’t much of a concern with a closed oven type of machine like a Stratasys, it may indicate that batch-to-batch consistency has yet to be perfected by PP3DP’s filament source.\u00a0 Still, this is nitpicking about second-hand information – when I run out of the PP3DP filament, I’ll have no qualms about ordering more.\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With some other projects having consumed my attentions for the past few weeks, I was eager to return to more Stratasys experiments.\u00a0 Having acquired enough breakaway support material to last me for the foreseeable future, I could once again be running with both extruders operational.\u00a0 One material that I’ve wanted to try for quite a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1019","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-3d-printing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/haveblue.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/haveblue.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/haveblue.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/haveblue.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/haveblue.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1019"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/haveblue.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1019\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/haveblue.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/haveblue.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/haveblue.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}