Why aren't more people 3D Printing this Indestructable Filament?

Flexible 3D printing filaments are an underrated material group with a wide range of properties, from super tough to super flexible to super sticky. But how do you choose the right one for your project, and how do you print them effectively? Let's find out more!

🧻Filaments (from SOFT to HARD):

🏜️ Filament Dryers:

💚 Support me 🙏
Join as a YouTube member!

🖨️ Printed Models

*Chapters*
00:00 Introduction
00:40 Sponsor
02:06 What is TPU and TPE?
04:52 Shore Hardness
07:24 How to Print flexibles?
07:56 Dry your filament!
09:39 How to tune the printing profile?
12:30 Prepare your Printbed!
13:11 How strong are flexible prints?
17:57 How tough are flexible prints?
19:28 What friction coefficient do flexible 3D prints have?
22:05 How bouncy are flexible 3D prints?
24:40 Summary
26:27 How well does an airless basketball printed in PEBA bounce?
27:28 Outro

#3Dprinting #tpu #tpe
DISCLAIMER: Part of this video was sponsored by Zellerfeld.
FTC Disclaimer: A percentage of sales is made through Affiliate links

[CNCKitchen]

*What's your experience with flexible materials?*

[villekorhonen]

One thing while printing flexible materials i learned the hard way is to also lower your non-print speeds when printing tall models. Bed slingers tend to cause quite a bit of wobbling and models can get misaligned

[webx]

4:22 "I can't really wrap my head around what to print with this"

Oh I think you already know, judging by what's printing in the background. I'm sure Mrs. Stefan is quite pleased.

[hebijirik]

Someone in the Rat Rig Facebook group gave me great advice that really works: When the print finishes rather than tear it off the bed pour a little bit of isopropyl alcohol or similar around its edges. I had trouble with phone cases that kept getting deformed when pulled off the bed. This solved it completely.
The alcohol gets under the print I think via some capilarry action and almost releases the print from the bed. The force needed to peel it off the bed is reduced to something that feels like 10% of what it was before. I have tried it with several TPUs that before tended to damage my powder coated PEI sheet and it works beautifully. With G10 smooth surface it works too but a bit slower. After getting it off the bed this way I just have to let it dry out the alcohol from its pores.

[ndisa]

4:20 What are you printing there Stefan? 👀

[sdfgsdfg]

Man, I wish there was an ultimate filament properties chart. Where all types and brands can be compared to each other.

[XA--pbni]

I legit allways use TPU when possible. It is basically indesctrucable ! And The Layer adhesion is sooo good. I have 2 Waterbottle holders for my bike printed in TPU, every other material cracked after a while cause of the impacts of the full waterbottle but the tpu one still works just fine!!

[GordLamb]

My favorite use for TPE is printing gaskets, though I'd really like some purpose-built ultra-soft filament with excellent chemical resistance specifically designed for it.

[andreask.]

I actually slightly oil the bed for TPU: Put a drop on the PEI and distribute it. Then wipe it off with a dry cloth. Works great for me. (I use some fine mechanics oil.)

[tenchuu]

I replaced the broken tires on my luggage with TPU. Works a charm.

[ciaduck]

Used TPU to 3D print a door stop. I was looking at all the poor designs and lamenting spending $5 to $10 on crappy commercial one made of rubber that I had already seen fail. So I designed and printed some. The other benefit is that it can be easily modified for larger gaps or heavier doors. They work well out of TPU, and cost me literal pennies to make.

[TheRawketLawnchair]

@4:28 i see what your printing there. lol nice joke

[urmoderngamr]

The current best use for TPU for me personally has been airsoft and cosplay, TPU is fantastic for Absorbing BB's in armor. And the flexability make it super nice to wear aswell

[RocktCityTim]

... and Every Bourbon is a whiskey, but definitely not every whiskey is a bourbon! The maximum volumetric speed was one of the best discoveries that I've made in 4 years of printing.

[tsbrownie]

The flexible filaments can be used to print replacement covers for electronic equipment. For examples, the little "hatches" on cameras that cover the HDMI, phone, mic... plugs. These parts are often not available (especially with older cameras) and so worth printing.

[FilamentStories]

So much information—and work to get this all together for us in a highly organized package. You're the best! (Aside: I've had the Recreus 60A for I think two ears now and I still haven’t decided what to print with it!)

[sasjadevries]

17:54 That moment of inertia formula that you used, works for rigid bodies. For a pipe it's only relevant for determining its resistance to buckling, but for comparing the overall stiffness of the pipe you'd want to use a formula where you take the area times the distance to the centroid axis.

[themoon]

Just a word of caution. 3D printed adult toys are risky. They can break off inside you and cause you to have to make a very embarrassing trip to the emergency room...

[LibertyEver]

I have a small home based business that 3D prints TPU products, so I appreciated this flexible filament video. I'm an engineer so I always like Stefan's data driven approach. I know from past CNC Kitchen videos that I can't get most of these filaments in the US but I appreciate the links to the filaments. I need a more energy absorbing material for a product that hasn't been converted to 3D printing and I need to try the foaming TPU but it's never in stock.

[luke_fabis]

Copolyesters in particular tend to bond really well to PETG. If you have a multimaterial printer, it opens up a lot of design possibilities.