RE: Printing TPU/TPE on Prusa XL
Hi, has anyone printed with flexible filament on the XL? There seems to be a lot of resistance on the filament from the PTFE tube. Do I need to bypass the first filament sensor and just run it without a PTFE tube to the extruder? The filament I am using is a 40D TPU with an average diameter of ~1.67 mm.
Any suggestions would be appreciated.
I had to disable as well the filament sensor, since it could stop printing in the middle of a print for not "sensing" the filament in the sensor right above the extruder tube. maybe the elasticity of the filament when it gets pulled is the problem, and as well the sensor not revealing it correctly.
Is that an overture TPU? If yes, I'm using the same, with the amazonbasics tpu settings.
I have noticed that this TPU from Overture smears the nozzles. It takes a long time for the color to be completely flushed out of the nozzle.
RE: Printing TPU/TPE on Prusa XL
Hi Everybody,
I have to add that I had an issue that keeps occurring. The filament jams in the extruder. By this, I mean that the gear pulls the TPU 95 down from the extruder sensor area, but then pulls it back and away from the hotend / nozzle and into the extruder gear housing. Has anyone experienced something like this?
The friction from the PTFE tubes is too high, the filament is pulled and thinned, and then this happens. That's why Mole Designs hung his spool from the ceiling and I guided the filament over ball bearings.
Has anyone found any solutions for this? For multi-color prints hanging from the ceiling is less than ideal.
RE: Printing TPU/TPE on Prusa XL
Hi Everybody,
I have to add that I had an issue that keeps occurring. The filament jams in the extruder. By this, I mean that the gear pulls the TPU 95 down from the extruder sensor area, but then pulls it back and away from the hotend / nozzle and into the extruder gear housing. Has anyone experienced something like this?
The friction from the PTFE tubes is too high, the filament is pulled and thinned, and then this happens. That's why Mole Designs hung his spool from the ceiling and I guided the filament over ball bearings.
Has anyone found any solutions for this? For multi-color prints hanging from the ceiling is less than ideal.
I don't have a Solution for this but I do have the same problem at times. I print with Filaflex SEBS. I do not use the bowden tube and feed the filament from the ceiling. For now my only suspicion is that the filament gets squished when it sits too long. Then, it gets wrapped around the extruder gears when extrusion resumes. This is typically the case at the start of a print (during probing etc.)
Once the print started succcessfully, it finishes wihout issues.
If anyone has any ideas what to do about this... I'd be very thankful!
RE: Printing TPU/TPE on Prusa XL
I've just printed my first ever flexible filament prints with XL and things worked quite nice. Ok first print failed. There wasn't profile made at all for material I used, but I just took was Colorfabb whatever TPU profile and part printed good looking, but it was like the infill wasn't stuck in print well. Bottom tore off and perimeters weren't well stuck. I made copy of the profile and noticed it had Extrusion Multiplier in value of only 0,85. I changed this EM to 1 as part looked good otherwise and printed part again and it worked out really well. Ok in addition I originally had grid style infill which was obvious that it isn't good if one wants uniform feel to part. Next part was with gyroid and it's quite consistent feel all around the part.
So in short what I did to print TPU95A
- I did put filament to dryer for 12h just be sure it's dry. Around was it 40-45C. (overkill for sure, but I didn't want to risk moisture in filament for my first ever test print)
- I ran filament from the dryer bowden tube to XL's tube. I've made simple conical parts that slip to bowden tube's and kinda straight themselves when ends connect. I obviously pulled tube out from side sensor and bypassed it completely leaving just strand of some other filament in it.
- Satin plate, that might have had magigoo residues still in it. It was pretty damn well stuck in plate, but it worked.
- Had to change Extrusion Multiplier value to near 1 for me to work. Was 0,85
- Changed infill to Gyroid to have more consistent feel to the part.
That's it. No other changes made.
RE:
This was the coupler I used between SpacePi's and XL's bowden tube.
XL/Bowden tube guides for aligning two tubes by Pequ83 | Download free STL model | Printables.com