I have a CoreXY machine that I've been using to experiment with higher temp thermoplastics lately and nylon is completely new to me, and after seeing this at around 30 dollars I thought it would be easily worth it to give it a try and have some fun, and fun I had. Don't get me wrong, this filament isn't completely easy, or as easy as others say it is, you'll have problems unless you have a really expensive printer that's already tuned for nylon, that's just how this kind of plastic works, but once you get it to print, you get an incredibly strong and good looking part, that's well worth the effort. Let's go through some of the problems I experienced and how I fixed them.
The first problem I had was that the filament was way too stringy, and popping sounds came from when it was being extruded. Any experienced printer nerd can tell you that my filament was moist and needed to be dried, which I did, by setting it on a glass plate and a cookie sheet in the oven at 180f overnight, go lower if you want to be safer.
Next was when printing, on top of both a pie sheet and an ultrabase style bed at 80c, the parts would always warp off mid-print. This was solved through two fixes, first, in order to get the parts to stick better, I went over to McMasters and ordered a 12x12 1/16 sheet of blue garrolite (link below), and adding that on with a matching size 3m high temp adhesive sheet (linked below) dramatically increased the adhesion of the parts. Also, it's worth noting that McMaster has these sheets for really cheap and they ship very fast, such an amazing tidbit I found through my journey.
That fixed the problems of the parts coming off the sheet, but not the warping issue, which happens when the part is heated to the temp of the build plate which is past the glass transition temperature of the plastic, making it soft and easily susceptible to warping. Luckily, garrolite is an incredible bed material for nylon prints because it's nearly as sticky cold as it is hot. This is good because the first layer of the print with all the fine details and lines needs to be printed well, at higher temps (60-80c) but after that, you can drop the temperature down to below the glass transition temperature of nylon (I set my consecutive layers temp to around 45-55c), and after that, the part remains hard and resists its own warping. Yes, I'm aware that the real solution to this is a heated chamber and I'm only generating internal stresses, but a heated chamber was out of the question for me and a corporeal part was better than one that wasn't.
Next was just the stringiness of the filament, mainly because its a softer filament compared to pla and petg and what have you, so even though I had a direct drive I did have to kick up the retract length and speed a bit, and make sure your combing/wipe settings are on properly.
Also, in some of the pictures, you can see the top surface of the parts doesn't look all that great, that's because nylon is not the best when it comes to bridging (which is what the ceiling layers of a print have to do over the infill) so the gaps in the infill show up clearly on the top surface. This is easily fixable by either increasing your top layer count, or your infill percentage.
After those fixes, this filament started printing some very nice parts, and I'm very happy with their surface finishes now (benefits of corexy w/ linear rails). Also the filament kind of reminds me of a carbon fiber filled filament with how it looks, it's kind of matte a bit with a little sparkle, which does show up nice on the parts.
On another note, you should definitely use this with an all-metal hotend, hardened steel tip, and preferably a geared extruder. I'm using a bmg extruder connected to an e3d v6 all metal hotend.
Here are my current printer settings:
Line width: 0.4mm outer walls 0.5mm everywhere else on a standard 0.4mm nozzle
Speeds: 25mm/s outer walls 70 mm/s everywhere else
Infill: 40% (for roof quality)
Nozzle temp: 260c
Heatbed temp: 80c first layer, 50c rest layers
Retracts: 3mm at 40mm/s (on bmg direct drive with e3d v6 hotend, should be 7-8mm at 45mm/s for bowden)
Cooling fan: None, with a 20s minimum layer time
Layer height: 0.2 mm
Z hop: none
Any other settings could be left stock
Here is the garrolite sheet selection on McMasters:
https://www.mcmaster.com/garolite/multipurpose-flame-retardant-garolite-g-10-fr4-sheets-and-bars/
Here is the adhesive sheet:
https://www.amazon.com/Adhesive-Transfer-Double-Printer-Weupe/dp/B07BK8PHZK/ref=sr_1_12?crid=3M87LNGA7A3KR&dchild=1&keywords=adhesive%2Btransfer%2Btape&qid=1603090828&sprefix=adhesive%2Btrans%2Caps%2C208&sr=8-12&th=1
Have fun printing!
| Manufacturer | OVERTURE |
|---|---|
| Brand | OVERTURE |
| Item Weight | 2.2 pounds |
| Package Dimensions | 8.82 x 8.15 x 2.91 inches |
| Color | Gray |
| Material Type | Nylon |
| Number of Items | 1 |
| Manufacturer Part Number | OVA175 |
