Tough PLA questions



  • I'm a newbie with 3D Printing and just trying to learn about the filaments and how to print them. Currently I'm working with Tough PLA and the printer I have (Raise Pro2 Plus) includes a profile for PLA, and this profile has the Flowrate Compensation is set to 94%.

    I used a copy of the default PLA as a starting point for the MH Tough PLA profile, and

    1. I'm not sure if Tough PLA should have the same compensation setting for Flowrate.

    2. The suggested print speed for Tough PLA (per the spec) is 40 mm/s. Does anyone know if this is the "default printing speed" or the Inner shell speed, or the outer shell speed.

    3. If the default speed, which is currently 30 should be changed to 40, should I also adjust the inner and outer speeds as well?

    Thanks everyone!

    Valerie



  • Your questions are not that easy to answer. "Tough PLA" is PLA with something else added to it to make it "tough" which usually means either more impact resistent at the cost of tensile strength and sometimes with increased temperature stability or other properties. This usually changes the print characteristics like speed and temperature
    1.) You should not exceed the manufacturer suggested print speed then 40mm/s in this case is the max IOW 30 is fine but 50 would not. That speed is usually dependent on how fast the material adheres to the prior layer
    2.) You also should not exceed the max extrusion speed that your hotend/extruder combo is capable at a certain temperature see here as to how to establish that https://grabcad.com/tutorials/dialing-in-a-filament-and-specifying-the-max-volumetric-e-xtrusion-value
    3.) The 3rd max speed would be the one the mechanics of your printer can handle.
    To determine your max speed take the slowest of the ones above. So for example my printer can reliably move without producing artefacts at 60mm/s the extrusion test showed the hotend can melt that particular filament (nylon) at 45 mm/sec the manufacturer suggest 20mm/se so 20mm/s is the smallest so that is it.

    Flow rate compensation is something to adjust for expansion of filament when it comes molten out of the nozzle or to adjust for a spool maybe being mostly 1.77mm instead of 1.75 etc and that is dependent on the filament. You make a test print if the top layer looks like "noodles" lying next to each other with little gaps between them then its too low if you see nozzle tracks like it "plows" through its too high. A little plow might be ok if you are shooting for a very solid part over a very beautiful top layer



  • @mpirringer Thanks so much for your help. I see I have a lot more to learn and I'll have to experiment a little more. Thanks!!


Log in to reply
 

Looks like your connection to MatterHackers Community was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.