NinjaTek Chinchilla TPE (75A)
Hi All,
Anyone brave enough to try to print the very-soft NinjaTek Chinchila TPE? Or is no one a machocist like me? I've had some sucess and I'm still tweaking things, but I've only managed to get my yield to about 50%. This is really anoying since this filament is relatively so expensive.
I've changed all my nozzles to 0.4mm. Then I started with the NinjaTek NinjaFlex preset that comes with PrusaSlicer, and modified a few of the settings. So far I find if I start it really hot at 240'C (which is 10'C above the recommended print range) will give me a good first layer. Then the other layers I drop to 235'C. The max volumetric speed has been lowered all the way down to 0.8 mm^3/s. I completely bypassed the filament tubes, since they added too much friction to the filament, and I'm "direct injecting" the filament into the tool head. The good news is sucessfull prints have almost no stringing.
The bad news is that even with those initial settings, the filament is so soft and it tends to jam in the extruder just around the PETG piece that is above the barrel of the nozzle. I had one jam so bad, it wrapped itself around the gear wheel on the left side gap! I'm wondering if that PETG piece above the nozzle barrel just catches the filament sometimes and causes a jam. Does anyone know if it's safe to use silicone oil with TPE (or TPU) to help things slide along? You know the saying, "If it doubt... lube!"
Ideas?
S.Lam
RE: NinjaTek Chinchilla TPE (75A)
Some updates from tonight’s experiments. I upped the other layer temps to 238’C (8’c above recommended max). I also added a paper towel loaded with silicone oil to lube the filament. It seems to print much better and so far I’m 3 for 3 with my test prints. See attached for the last result. Hopefully my failure rate doesn’t climb back up tomorrow.
If anyone has any other tricks that have worked for them for this 75A TPE, let me know!
RE: NinjaTek Chinchilla TPE (75A)
If anyone has any other tricks that have worked for them for this 75A TPE, let me know!
I made a feed system that's situated above the printer for soft filaments. It reduces the pull on the filament to almost nothing. Couple that with bearings in the reel and the filament flows very smoothly. I've tested it on 95A and 83A without any issues at all.
RE: NinjaTek Chinchilla TPE (75A)
Thanks for that idea. I was thinking last night the tension and then spring back (?) might be causing the occasional jam.
RE: NinjaTek Chinchilla TPE (75A)
I have the design available for purchase in the Printables store if you're interested.
https://www.printables.com/model/684159-prusa-xl-soft-filament-holder
Thanks for that idea. I was thinking last night the tension and then spring back (?) might be causing the occasional jam.
RE: NinjaTek Chinchilla TPE (75A)
I don't actually own an XL but I had to make it work reliably on many mk3s+. When I had to create my preset and setup on the printer I found that this article was really nicely done and gave a lot of information.
https://recreus.com/gb/content/23-how-to-print-with-filaflex
Biggest problem is the all metal hotend. You really have to compensate on speed, force applied to the filament, nozzle type, etc... But I'm not really gonna be of any help until I receive the XL.
RE: NinjaTek Chinchilla TPE (75A)
I just ordered a spool of it to play with. I’ve gotten reasonably good results with ninjaflex now so I figured I’d try some pain with the softer stuff lol
RE: NinjaTek Chinchilla TPE (75A)
I just got a spool in today in fact. I'm trying an xyz cube on my MK4 first and so far it's going fine. I took the ninjaflex profile I use and dropped the MVS to 2.5 from 3. and it's about half way through the cube and looks good. On the XL I do a way lower MVS now for ninjaflex since it's more reliable that way. temp is the same, 238. I"ll probably try chinchilla on the XL this weekend.
RE: NinjaTek Chinchilla TPE (75A)
Not bad first result on the mk4. This weekend I’ll try on the xl.
I just got a spool in today in fact. I'm trying an xyz cube on my MK4 first and so far it's going fine. I took the ninjaflex profile I use and dropped the MVS to 2.5 from 3. and it's about half way through the cube and looks good. On the XL I do a way lower MVS now for ninjaflex since it's more reliable that way. temp is the same, 238. I"ll probably try chinchilla on the XL this weekend.
RE: NinjaTek Chinchilla TPE (75A)
and I did a filament swatch with it. This stuff has a nice feel to it. I need to do a little more tuning, but it really printed surprisingly well for being 75A the first two prints!
RE: NinjaTek Chinchilla TPE (75A)
Doing this now with same xyz cube from above. Your 1.2 MVS at 238. Seems good so far! it's 47min print at that speed, but slow and steady successful print is better than the filament wrapped around your gear. The swatch above worked but did wrap around the gear but that was at like 2.5 MVS on the MK4. I think 1.2 could be upped some, but this stuff is flexible as hell. I do like the texture though. Too bad there aren't more color options.
RE: NinjaTek Chinchilla TPE (75A)
So no bad, a little under extrusion on the top layer.
So basically the same settings I print ninjaflex at now
238C with MVS at 1.2
RE: NinjaTek Chinchilla TPE (75A)
So something I'm noticing.
In this picture, the bottom yellow cube is ninjaflex sun(yellow), printed on MK4 with 1.2MVS at 238C. Extrusion multiplier 1.12
The second from the bottom is Ninjatek Chinchilla and was printed on MK4, at 2.5 MVS at 238C, Extrusion multiplier 1.2 This Worked, but the filament swatch above was printed at same settings and did start to back up into gears so that 2.5 MVS is too high.
The top cube is Ninjatek Chinchilla and was printed on XL, 1.2 MVS at 238C, Extrusion multiplier 1.12. I've not tried reprinting the chinchilla cube with these settings on the MK4 yet. I might do that today just to see.
What's interesting is that even though they all have the same extrusion multiplier, there are dimensional differences between the two chinchilla cubes, one from xl and one from mk4. I'm curious if the extrusion multiplier needs to be higher on the xl by some small amount.
RE: NinjaTek Chinchilla TPE (75A)
so I'm curious now and I'm printing another chinchilla cube at the same settings as the XL. 238C 1.2 MVS and 1.12 Extrusion multiplier
RE: NinjaTek Chinchilla TPE (75A)
Ok so the cube ended up looking better on the MK4 than it did on the XL using same temp and mvs settings.
However when things were done and and went to unload the filament, I heard the familiar sound of filament being wound up in extruder gears. I'm not 100 % certain but I think temp and speed are good, maybe it's amount of retraction and the speed of the retraction. I have some work to do so I won't probably mess with this more today, but I feel like retraction could cause problems here and cause the filament to catch on the gear. Just spit-balling here. I certainly won't depend on this for any large prints right now.
RE: NinjaTek Chinchilla TPE (75A)
So just for grins I was looking at retraction settings between Sainsmart tpu, which I like and print with often, and the ninjaflex profile.
Couple interesting things:
Retraction length for Sainsmart is 1.5mm, and for Ninjaflex stock profile it's 3.5.
Retraction speed for both is 60 mm/s(which seems REALLY fast to me for flexible filament).
Detraction speed for both is 20 mm/s
So for really soft stuff like ninjaflex and chinchilla, wouldn't really fast retraction potentially cause jams? I'm not an expert on this stuff so I'd be curious if anyone else could weigh in. It seems like you want consistent flow with no back-pressure, and as low a temp as you can get away with, in particular for tool changes on the XL. it seems like retracting at 60mm/s with soft tpu would could maybe create some excess bend in the filament enough for the gear to catch it.
What do you guys think? I might mess with this a bit later.
RE: NinjaTek Chinchilla TPE (75A)
So I have some pretty good progress. This is for ninjaflex but I feel like it's also going to be similar for chinchilla.
Reducing the ninjaflex retraction amount to 1.5mm from 3.5 and the speed from 60 to 20, got me better results. if you look at this picture. you can see a coaster I printed with the previous settings where there are gaps in the top fill for both the red and white ninjaflex. and I put a xyz cube printed in white ninjaflex that used to show the same problem, but now with the updated retraction settings.. it looks good!, about to fire off another coaster with with these settings and see if that translates to the finished coaster. I think not retracting as much or as fast SHOULD help with jams. fingers crossed.
