The most underrated filament for 3d printing: PP and PP-CF tested!

In this video, I test PP and PP-CF filament from PPprint.
I discuss the aspects of printability, mechanical and thermal properties and other exciting special features of polypropylene.

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📚 Chapter
00:00 Intro
00:38 What is PP?
02:01 Introduction to PPprint
04:11 First Prints
06:05 Tensile Test
07:33 3-Point Bending Test
08:49 Impact Test
09:23 Temperature Test
10:48 Density
11:33 Food Safety
12:33 Chemical resistance

ℹ️ Disclaimer
The links marked with "(aff)" are affiliate links, which means that I receive a commission if you buy via the link - at no extra cost to you! As an Amazon partner, I earn from qualified sales.
Some of the products shown in the video were provided to me free of charge for testing/promotional purposes.

[JanTecEngineering]

Subscribe or your filament will tangle!

[sombady]

I am impressed how you managed to maintain seriousness after saying PP 100+ times

[findwill]

It’s great to know which conditions make the PP get soft.

[supercurioTube]

Polypropylene is an underrated filament indeed!
A few things that weren't mentioned:
- you print hinges with it: the plastic can bend many times without breaking
- it's very useful when you want a part with low friction coefficient, so much for that it can be considered self lubricating in some use cases
- it's easier than expected to print on clear packing tape. I had great results with Fiberlogy's natural PP on clear tape, 30°C bed.

[Lulzigi]

I recently found out that my employer discards tons of PP in thin strips that would be very easily chopped up into small pieces perfect for a pellet extruder, so I've been curious about PP printing ever since. This looks very promising! I'd love to give this a try!

[KolMan]

Fun fact to note, just since he mentioned that CF filament was black cause of the fibers, most CF filaments are colored black. Naturally filament is translucent or clear, so adding fibers to it just makes it have little specs throughout. Ambrosia Filament actually sells red and blue CF-ASA in addition to their normal black CF-ASA. Really you can dye CF filament any color, just black is the most reasonable color since the dark fibers will naturally make any color darker.

[Garage]

Wow that PP CF filament has some impressive properties. Some properties of both filaments are not that impressive, but the density is! Almost like comparing steel to aluminum in terms of strength per weight. Wow the temp resistance too is quite good, especially for the PP CF. If only it was more affordable and widely available! Thanks for the testing.

[polarfilament]

Great video! In the industrial extrusion world, PP is extremely common, and often used as a purge material for other materials because of how cheap the raw materials are. I haven’t seen someone be able to print with it as easily as you did, and I never really considered that you could just use a different print bed surface.

Also, since PP is less dense than water, it one of the few materials that we have to “weigh down” when making because it wants to float in the water baths used for cooling during production.

Lastly, this is one of those times where I wonder why we sell filament by WEIGHT instead of LENGTH. Since PLA is about 37% more dense than PLA, it means that you’d get about 37% more 3D prints from a 1kg spool of PP compared to PLA. It seems like selling by length (or volume) would make more sense than weight because essentially PP could be 37% “more expensive” than PLA for 1kg, and still be the same price by volume.

I have a few materials I’m saving up for you over here. We should be making the 3rd and final material next week, and then I plan on shipping them out to you (as long as I get the OK from the rest of my team)

[snype]

Clear and concise video Jan - and to the point. It’s a lot of work to print then compile a 13 min vid like this and your voice is calming to listen to. You have got me changing my extruder bearings that I’ve been putting off as I’m keen to print something after watching your vid :) good work mate and cheers from Australia :)

[dmax]

These are honestly the most gorgeous PP prints ive ever seen, and this is one of if not the best PP printing overview videos on YouTube. You should make more in which you push the system to the limit. Its one thing to print benchies and low profile small items, or even the small bed surface contact large manifold part (which was simply stunning) but its another to print something tall, nearly solid, with large surface area on the bed and long corners. I tried this material for the bed, and when stress testing it even with a 20mm brim, i couldn't get a 100*100*30(z) cube like item to print without pulling up the corners.

[Jynxx_]

Magigoo PP on a Garolite bed works on PP and GF-PP for me, even on open machines. PP is such a wonderful material. Almost unbelievably light weight, "slippery" finish, watertight and as tough as they come. GF-PP prints with a very "grippy" texture and really stiffens up the print also doesn't warp as much as PP.

[stratos]

Now a version of PP or perhaps PP-CF that foams in the nozzle like LW-PLA would be the ultimate material for 3d printed rc aircraft. I would love to see that

[MichaelJHathaway]

Polypropylene is a great structural plastic used for rigidity when higher temperatures are not a factor. The audio entertainment industry still uses it in speaker cone manufacture. It exhibits similar light weight, structural advantages that Ultem/PEI exhibits, when not used in higher temperature environments. Adding a composite like carbon fiber will seriously increase rigidity and lower physical density, making it even lighter weight. Modulus tensile strength is just as important in manufacturing of plastics as tensile strength and in my industry it is more important. At @8:05 I remembered this calculation from university and I realize that for most of your viewers, this holds less meaning. For us Engineers, this as common as making a sandwich. Thank you for showing this in the video. Thanks for the video!

[JanTecD]

Watch more tests with English captions on my German channel!

[thenextlayer]

Great video, your audio is really good!!!

[KolMan]

Man I love Carbon Fiber in my PP. Makes it so stiff and looks amazing. Now I wanna put Glass Fiber in my PP.

[brighter]

Fascinating tests you preform! Good to see those mythical materials can be legends.

[riba]

Great testing and thanks for doing these in English! Just a small note, it has been scientifically proven that you can easily clean 3d prints and that layers and pores are not the issue for bacteria as soap can reach anywhere they can.

[Factorian_Designs]

Lots of useful information condensed in a short time. Great video!

[tomjansen]

Got my PP bed tonight so I'm running my first test print. After waiting for 3 months for PP sheets to never arrive from aliexpress, I spent some more and grabbed a different one from amazon. so far it's sticking really well and the purge line peeled right off.