Broke my x-carriage and reprinted in Tough PLA - good to go?
Hello there, people. A few days ago a received my Prusa MK3S kit and went straight into assembling it. Everything went smoothly. Well, almost everything. I overtightened a screw and whoops, my x-carriage is now broken.
Luckily, I still had my older 3D printer lying around and ready to rescue the part. But with it being less capable than the Prusa, I could only print the x-carriage in Tough PLA - not PETG. I finished assembling the kit and made a few test prints -- everything's fine now!
The big Q is:
Now that I do have the MK3S built and capable of printing stuff, should I reprint the x-carriage in PETG, dissasemble the printer and swap it out? Or we're good to go with the PLA? Although it is Tough PLA, not regular PLA, it still possesses thermal characteristics lesser than that of PETG.
RE: Broke my x-carriage and reprinted in Tough PLA - good to go?
I think you're fine my 1st printer was all P LA Except for the extruder that was a piece of aluminum angle iron and some printed P LA bits
RE: Broke my x-carriage and reprinted in Tough PLA - good to go?
I have an MK2, MK3, Mini, and MMU all with a lot of hours on them. Personally I would print the new part in PETG and here's why - PRUSA has made upgrades to extruder parts because of strength/heat issues. If you look at the original MK3/s the rev of the extruder part is C2 (or something close to 2), over time it was rev'd to R5 to strengthen it because of the heat and relatedly to fix the original design dimensions. Therefore heat (and the design) was enough of a potential issue to for PRUSA to re-design the part.
I don't know the parameters of "tough" PLA but at the end of the day it's PLA - it has _very_ different characteristics than PETG, which is stronger, more flexible and tolerates heat better.
RE: Broke my x-carriage and reprinted in Tough PLA - good to go?
@steve-e3
Yes, PETG is definitely more heat resistant than PLA - whether "Tough" or regular.
As for now, the PLA part withstanded 30+ hours of printing, with one print being 17:30 hours non-stop.
Nevertheless, I'm guessing that you are correct; there has to be a reason these were redesigned and printed in PETG. I decided to take the middle route and re-print the x-carriage in PETG, but since the printer works just fine --for now- I won't be swapping the parts for the time being. I'll just keep the part around in case something goes bang with the PLA part.