No affiliation or anything. I’m simply stoked!
Elegoo Rapid PETG. I like PETG, but with my printer (Ender 5 Plus, slightly tuned; DD, All metal hotend, dual gear extruder, accelerometer…) regular PETG is sloooow. I’m already up to 180 mm/s it prints beautifully. As with all PETG it likes to be thoroughly dry. Once dry it prints like a PLA+. Beautiful definition.
I paid about 15€ per roll, but buying a 4 pack, it comes to about 12,50€ per roll, so about the same as PLA.
I’m just not buying regular PLA, or PETG anymore. The new generation of materials just leave the older ones in the dust. I had a few rolls of standard PETG that I had slowly been using up, but I sold the last 2, I couldn’t bear the waiting times.
I’m going to try a bunch of the new modified materials, like ABS plus and HT, ASA plus, and especially Polymaker’s HT-PLA-GF, a glass fiber high temp PLA that can be annealed in boiling water without deformation to withstand temps like 150º. Nuts! They are basically sold out until August, but once back in stock I’m buying the stuff.
Interesting times to be in the hobby.
So, one thing I did note is that a lot of the PETG vendors these days have been ratcheting up the speed that their normal non-rapid PETG filaments are printable at as well.
For example, Prusament PETG is good up to 200 mm/s and Elegoo’s Pro PETG is good up to 270 mm/s.
These units are somewhat silly IMO. It all comes down to volumetric flow. Big nozzle + thick extrusions + thick layers would probably mean needing to print slower than that speed due to the ability of a hot end to melt the filament.
/ someone who has been mm^3/s constrained for a while now
Totally paranoia fueled here, but I’m thinking along the lines of extrapolating ‘extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence’ into the practical applications space of ‘extraordinary material properties that deviate substantially from baseline must have extraordinary compromises elsewhere.’
You know, like the saying, ‘pick any two engineering targets of three: Good, Cheap, Fast’.
The materials are not magic, so why was this not some baseline for all of these years. Why is it when the world is deregulating and accountability for exploitation and criminality are none existent, suddenly some miracle chemistry product comes along?
As stated, this is probably unfounded paranoia and is entirely baseless speculation. However, I think the prudent course as consumers in the present is to be extraordinarily skeptical of all new products. I want to know exactly what additives and base materials are used, what volatile organic compounds these create at all printing temperatures and well beyond. There is poor actual thermal coupling and feedback between a thermistor and the real melt chamber temperature gradient. The thermistor is only measuring a block’s temp with heat dissipation and averaging, not the cartridge temperature or hottest point in the melt zone. So what happens at higher temps than recommendations is important to know especially with high speed printing where the extrusion is pulling most heat out of the block but super inconsistently for PID control loop stability.
I think about Tetraethyllead in gasoline as the standard of chemistry in capitalism. It was the miracle property enhancer solution to stabilize combustion to avoid premature detonation at the cost of harming every human alive.
Whatever is in these products is in the air inside your home. We live in primitive times where biology is only in a precursor stage of discovery and poorly understood. It is not yet an engineering science where humans can wield the power of a complete understanding to create and modify living systems at will. We have never even created life from precursors and reverse engineering a known system.
Until exceptionally transparent disclosure of materials, and testing are provided, (haven’t looked maybe they exist tbh), I’ll stick to older materials that have been somewhat vetted by time and availability with the public as lab rats showing no particularly concerning health issues. For this new stuff, feel free to be the rat in a cage. I’m watching with popcorn ready (sry).
I can empathize with (part) of your reservations. Others, as you pointed out may be a tad paranoid, and others are simply unfounded, and disregard advancements in general.
Nowhere did I say magic. I said I like the enhanced properties. It’s completely logical to expect enhancements. Progress is littered with unfortunate developments. It’s a price we pay for advancements, but if you assume that by default, advancements are bad, we might as well all just stop breathing and die.
I could spend the next few months listing initial advances or improvements thereof, that are unquestionably good. PLA is such an example, as are other bioplastics, vaccines, seat belts and air bags, air source heat pumps, most renewable energy generation (or rather extraction) methods, BPA free, easily recyclable plastics, like PET, long distance communications both voice and data, accessible long distance travel, fucking tools and fire! And so many more advancements.
Of course there are things like lead in gas, or the systematic attack to efficient mass transport in the US, leaded paint, use of asbestos, hydrocarbon fuels, massively toxic pesticides, PFOAS, Ford Pintos and the corporate decisions behind them, etc.
But the balance I think is positive, and contrary to what many scream, we humans tend to try to redress the harms we cause.
Assertions like “We live in primitive times where biology is only in a precursor stage of discovery and poorly understood.” when we can literally fucking manipulate DNA, is just plain ignorant.
You seem to imply that all advancements are dangerous, or evil. Not so. It may be two steps forward, one back, but we go forward.
BTW, I hope you are making that popcorn from corn you planted from heirloom seeds, and extra virgin olive oil, in a solar oven, else you are probably going to be eating GMO, cooked in fucked-up fats, while breathing fumes from burned hydrocarbons, or being subjected to one of many forms of radiation, etc.
[…] Polymaker’s HT-PLA-GF, a glass fiber high temp PLA that can be annealed in boiling water without deformation to withstand temps like 150º.
That sounds like a microplastic water risk. I hope Polymaker did at least give a little shit about the environmental aspect and made sure the material doesn’t leak into the water during the process. Probably still advisable to pour the waste water through a filter afterwards, just like after sanding & cleaning.
YouWe probably leach more microplastics (I’m guessing, no hard data) by using non-stick kitchenware, including oven trays, air fryers, etc… Also much of our packaging is a source of microplastics. Then there are the microplastics we drag into the environment from our car mats, from out fleece jackets, and soooo many of our activities. I’m with you in the desire to reduce microplastics, but let’s be real, if that is such a primary concern to you, you may have the wrong hobby. I’m working on a prototype of a cheap and cheerful enclosure filter, that I will post in one of the model sites,(about 5-6 € including filament, and about 2-3 € for a hepa + carbon filter), but in the end the filter medium will end up in a landfill. There is no practical solution for recycling or removal of microplastics yet, except elimination of as much plastic production as possible.
