Right filament/shore hardness for vacuum nozzles?  

RE: Right filament/shore hardness for vacuum nozzles?

I have some experience with this as Ive made my own vacuum nozzles for the past 4 years or so, when I want something really tough and flexible, very flexible and very tough, I use Ninjaflex from Ninjatek, they have filaments ranging from derometer (85A Ninjaflex) through (75D Armadillo) all of which are tough as nails great products, and if your good at printing TPU's they will serve you well, the products are however expensive, but they hold up to the hype in my experience. as for your normal everyday shop vac attachments I use Prusament ASA, it has proven to have a great abrasion resistance, although its not flexible, so what I have been doing is printing the bulk of my shop vac attachments with ASA bases and doing the ends with Ninjatek products and they have been holding up under heavy use better then anything I've purchased from the store.

A note about Ninjatek products, they do not vacuum seal their filaments, and while this is ok for the Ninjaflex product it is not ok for the Cheetah (derometer 95A product) or the Armadillo (derometer 75D product)  and they will need to be dried before use them, however print perfectly once dried.

If your just needing hard attachments ASA has actually been holding up better then ABS. I still use ABS for this from time to time, however ASA has proven to have much better abrasion resistance.  

My employees are very hard on our tools and I'm constantly preaching to them about the cost of tools, and we have been able to produce our own shop vac attachments for several years and they have been taking a beating, however holding up well.

Good Luck hope this helps and I hope you have a good command of TPU/TPE's your gonna need it. : )

RE: Right filament/shore hardness for vacuum nozzles?

Great tips - thanks for this!

Yes I've got reasonable experience with flippy floppy TPU (ie jelly toy flex), so hoping this should only be easier as that bit more rigid!

RE: Right filament/shore hardness for vacuum nozzles?

I have done a few prints for my stationary saws, but i did them in petg, slight oversized, and use gorilla or electrical tape to get the seal needed.

I usually do them to fit on the outside of the machines outlet, that way i can add a few ribs on the outside to stiffen up the print.

RE: Right filament/shore hardness for vacuum nozzles?

Armadillo 75D is flexible like hard hat material, its not floppy at all but its super tough like nylon. Cheetah at 95A is probably more in the range of what you looking for its flexible like the rubber pipe fittings you find at the hardware store, and frankly there are a lot of cheaper 95A filaments out there that will work great for your fittings, Overture TPU for example, and its at ($24.99 US per kg) on amazon at the time of writing this. I use this stuff like crazy for tests and and mock ups of projects before throwing my more expensive filaments at them. Ninjaflex 85A is as close to rubber as I've found in recent years, many folks seem to have a hard time printing it from what I've seen here on the forums, I love this filament it has never let me down and it prints great on my MK3 and MK3s.

Overture TPU profile?

Can you share your overture TPU profile? I've done fine with solutech and sainsmart TPU, but I'm having a challenge with overture on my MK3S+. I just upgraded the extruder to the + configuration, but that didn't help. The filament doesn't jam, but there's a kink after a bit of printing every time. The overture material is very nice (if I could get the print to finish)

Thanks!