annealing the transparent 3d prints ? maybe it helps with the clarity ? if 100% infill was used also maybe try upping the flow rate to compensate the tiny air bubbles?
This looks really interesting. I recently switched to a 0.6mm nozzle and printed some parts with a blue-transparent PETG filament. I was surprised that they looked much more transparent than parts I've printed with almost the same settings on a 0.4 mm nozzle. I guess that makes sense as the extrusion width is greater, leading to fewer boundaries. With the new Arachne slicer engine, bigger nozzles could be very interesting to achieve more transparent prints. A while back I read from someone that he achieved more transparent parts by ironing every layer, although that sounds like it would take forever. But it might be worth it for just the top layers.
This matches my experience too - wider extrusions + thicker layers + higher temps + more perimeter/infill overlap seemed to help with clarity. I usually print at 20 or 30mm/s so not a lot to say there. I think the key is as Stefan hinted - as few transition boundaries as possible and making them as solid/complete as possible where they do occur.
You might be going the right direction with this, at least to speed it up, with a wide nozzle and good heading you could probably maintain the results with better speed or get better results for low detail parts at similar speeds, course bigger nozzles will struggle with finer detail as a cost
0.6mm nozzle with 0.2mm layer height has extremely good properties. The layer lines are still there but feel more like a texture than full bumps in the part
Even with a 0.4 nozzle i’m certain that the effect of the light refracting is much less apparent in pigmented transparent filaments. Printed some transparent yellow recently, went a bit hot, took it slow, and i Can almost read through it in like a size 15’ish font
I guess this just confirms what we already knew, for better layer adhesion, print slow, print hot and avoid gaps, the clear filament is just better in showing how good of a job you did on those settings.
@@ipodtouchiscoollol Здравствуй. Я видел сравнение характеристик пластика с пигментами и без. Пластик без пигментов на тех видео обладал лучшими свойствами и прочностью.
I wonder if strength or even internal clarity could be even further increased by combining this with the technique that I think you explored awhile ago of packing the printed part in salt and reheating it.
I have tried it, spending about two weeks working on it and I ended up with nicely transparent prints with accurate dimensions to get rid of bubbles for salt remelting. Turns out that once I got layer adhesion that good, there was no need for salt remelting. Feel free to test it of course, but the improvement in terms of strength will be likely unnoticeable and for me not worth the extra work and time of a salt melt, which has a decent failure rate depending on the object's shape.
There's a really cool parallax effect you can get by printing a couple layers of PETG flat with perpendicular infill. I used it to create holiday tree ornaments that play with light in some really interesting ways. Printed hot and slow with esun translucent green PETG
Awesome video! It's really interesting to see that such simple change within the settings and using the same filament can bring such visual but also technical improvements. I love this channel!
What if you try doing the print homogenization thing by casting the part in sand and putting it in the oven. Doing that might yeild even clearer results
Nice video! I recall you discovered thicker layers had better interlayer strength. So then why not print .2mm or even use a larger nozzle like .6 or .8 to see how strong this can get? And how about using an enclosure to keep a sort of heated chamber effect? Might an acetone vapor or heat gun add any strength via inter-layer melt?
So am I getting this right..... 59 Megapascals translates to 8557 pound force/square inch???? The yield strength of annealed 6061 Aluminum is only 55 MPa. This seems quite remarkable.
I think I will try this on My ender 3 (When I have the time), with DAS-filament to try and recreate your settings, but I am intersted in other transparent materials which are colored, so fisrt DAS as reference and then maybe some Extrudrs transparent red, green and Yellow
@@kaihorstmann2783 It's wouldn't be impossible but it would be very very expensive to do and would probably need a one of one state of the art 3D printer to the nano scale ✌️
@@kaihorstmann2783 I think he meant deliberately creating small voids to create a 3D "holographic" structure in a clear part. Like those plastic cubes they sometimes sell at fairs with 3D "images" inside.
My best transparent prints are done with a 0.8 Nozzle and 0.4 mm layerheight. In my opinion: thicker layers -> higher transparency. But we have to try more. ;)
Same here, using PC filament. There also seems to be an effect where bubbles are mostly present at the start of each line, then disappearing along it, regardless of nozzle size. Maybe it is possible to start each line slowly and then speed up. I do wonder why this happens though. I believe that air gets into the nozzle after each line ends, especially when stringing or drooping during the travel. No idea how to test this theory though, since this would require a transparent nozzle....
The issue with thick layers is mostly that you get a bigger rounded edge on the Extrusion which leaves much more space for potential bubbles. With thin layers the holes underneath the rounded end of the Extrusion are much smaller leaving less air gaps. Thicker extrusions help a lot to and thicker layers do too to a degree if you can remelt the previous Extrusion on time.
(side note on the yellowing: using a UV blocking overcoat helps significantly with the yellowing.) This is really excellent for making 'optics'. While you're not going to get a perfect TIR lens, this will get you 90% there for prototyping and diy flashlights and fiber optic and light pipes for light transmission for indicator LEDs or models, etc. Rad stuff.
@@tachywubdub2469 ya know, I don't know if foggy would be the issue as much as the distortion from surface irregularities. BUT - if you put enough elbow grease into it and if the interior is fully bonded, you can get an almost perfect lens.
I wonder if polishing, applying uv protection, then further polishing, refilling imperfections with uv protectant, and further polishing. Rinse lather repeat.
My jaw hit the floor after like 15 seconds when the vertical test sample necked and the rest of the video did not disappoint - awesome stuff! I've been playing with mirrors instead of lenses because I figured this was impossible!
Also for my mirror samples, I've been printing them almost vertical so that I minimize the effect of layer steps after smoothing. what do you think about printing your lenses vertically? (other than taking forever, I'm curious about the accuracy of the final shape)
I saw a wild test print on Thingiverse a few years ago to a challenge print a solid cube with a sphere hole in the center. The image made it look totally transparent. I followed the instructions, although they suggested a lot of sanding and polishing, which I did, it came out pretty much transparent! Big thing I learned here was to align all the infill lines. Can’t wait to try it!
I'm guessing CHT would be worse for transparency, because of the split path. PETG beats into a foam, like egg whites, so you don't want to disturb it with fast retractions, high E-acceleration or split nozzles.
@@thedamnone as you said.... You are guessing. We will know it for sure if someone will test it. I do have a 1.4mm CHT and clear PETG at home, but I'm not feeling confident doing the test and everything correct
I wonder if slicer modding to interlace fill paths every other layer (with a slight reduction in layer height?) could also help make prints more monolithic like this by directly filling voids in the previous layer.
Weirdly enough, I wondered the same thing last night. I've been asked to make a model of a part of a homing missile's guidance system and it needs a translucent window, and I was idly wondering about ways to print that rather than doing the easy thing and just using acrylic or whatever.
@@finlaygreenaway193 It might come with slightly faster speeds as it would require less smooshing. It's still the same amount of plastic so who knows? Maybe it just averages out the same.
Very good point, though that might require half width extrusions at the start of every other layer. Maybe just varying extrusion with on every other layer might be something that's very easy to implement.
This was a super helpful video. First of all, the fact that those bubbles are so visible and due to poor drying really helps to reinforce that drying the filament matters... I didn't really consider drying my PETG in the past because I conflated "water proof" with not retaining much water. Now I see that PETG can be both water proof and also retain moisture... and the proof is in the bubbles. (Thanks for showing that). The fact that the parameters that improve transparency also improve the strength of the print is also really amazing. Thank you again!
Again one of the "Stefan and the Quest for the Holy Grail" Videos which I like most. 🙏 Thanks. I once used this method with transparent PP filament which also gave excellent transparent results and almost isotropic properties. I smoothed the part by "shock heating" (how I called it) the surface with a heat gun on 500°C . This quickly melted just the surface to a liquid state but kept the part integrity. By some kind of surface tension this totally smoothed out the layer lines and the part looked injection molded afterwards. Hope this helps in future endeavors. It might also help with vertical impact strength because besides molecular orientation the surface roughness also might have it's "impact" on those results.
I recently noticed when printing with transparent PLA, that layer adhesion was much better than coloured PLA. When i printed parts in different colors and I almost couldn't remove supports of the transparent ones, when the coloured ones just broke off easily.
If you want the strongest materials, always avoid black, they are the worst, natural color is the strongest. Slightly colored tranparent ones are good too
@@dtibor5903 Black can be plenty strong, since relatively little pigment is needed to absorb a lot of light, but also sometimes you get repigmented regrind and other shit, it can be difficult to trust. White has a scary amount of pigment, since the pigment is transparent. Highly opaque light colours can have that same issue. The absolute worst is silk PLA, that's got little rubbery bits of filler to make it behave this way, and just doesn't bond well at all.
pigments can have a huge effect on the properties of a material. Back when I was into knot tying, I came across some research that found pigments in the nylon fibers of the rope could affect tensile strength by as much as 30%. If adhesion and tensile strength are a priority, unpigmented is generally the way to go.
We use a lot of these same parameters to make prosthetic sockets as strong and clear as possible. The main difference is that we use large nozzles to go with our big parts. I usually go for layer heights up to 1.0mm as opposed to something like 0.6mm not necessarily for speed (added benefit though!) but because it creates less light refraction opportunities and we can see through the sockets pretty well, especially when looking at them straight on through the layers.
I started 3d printing 1 year ago, and I quickly realised that transparent PETG is much more stronger than opaque ones. Now I have a lot of slightly colored transparent PETG filaments from Devildesign, and i'm really happy with the results for functional parts. Still it is not strong as ABS, it is way more brittle, but much convenient for printing in an apartment. I print with absolutely normal settings at 50-80mm/s on ender 3v2 w volcano, just the extrusion multiplier is raised with 5-10%. Usually I don't care to be perfectly tranparent.
I don't hear about many people using the stuff, but Devil Design has the nicest PETG I've worked with. Very consistent, and flows nicely. I print it no slower than 150mm/s, pushing past 200mm/s when I need something done quickly. Nice colours too.
There is this experiment where you can see internal stresses in acrylic glass over polarized light while bending or other stress. I wonder if that is also possible with the clear prints it should be quite interesting if it works because of the inhomogenity
What excellent timing for me with this video. I need to make safety guards for abrasive polishers in a medical device company i am work for. I have the designs made and PETG and 3d printing will be acceptable. However i was about to abandon the idea it was not transparent enough for the operators. I am now going back to the drawing board! 😁 And Wow, the layer adhesion there is something i have never seen but only with pp. Thanks very much Stefan. From Ireland.
For me the transparency is a secondary feature, the more interesting outcome here is the layer bonding. A few thoughts that I have: Would printing in an enclosure allow for faster print speed? Because the printed part temperature is higher it needs less time to heat up enough to bond with freshly extruded material. To improve bridging, cooling could be enabled only during bridge features. A comparison of extrusion width would be interesting. I think this would have a huge impact. Parts would finish faster and could have even better bonding. Great videos as always! I really enjoy these investigations.
A related topic I've been interested in is 3D printed diffusers for LED light strips that are customized for the actual strips so can perhaps do a better job evening out the light than off-the-shelf uniform diffusers.
2 года назад
I find that unlikely, but it's still very useful having custom diffusers!
Very interesting! As a skateboarder I noticed that the wheels which are colored wear off faster than the uncolored ones. I assume that the color particles weaken the material.
Printing like this and then salt remelting it with ultra fine salt would make some glass clear prints! You would have to sand and polish the outer surface however.
I wonder if you came across my projects, that I think are extremely good in terms of transparency, if not even the best, especially the cube, that I've designed. I was researching and testing this topic over half a year
@@CNCKitchen I'm glad You liked it. It was over a two years ago, but as I described on Thingiverse page, to achieve this kind of transparency are needed some quirks, and tips. First of all to be clear, that is not how it came exactly from the printer, but I've polished all sides(but from bottom, and mostly from top, are close to the end product). Layer lines should be really small and I was recommending 0.03mm. Flow rate was above 100%, more like 102%, but as You said in your video it depends. Infill type was actually Rectilinear, and infill overlap was around 6%. I did use for all parts, clear PETG, that was beforehand dried pretty long. Temperature was at lowest as manufacture said, and sometimes below that, usually around 210C. Bed temperature was 80/90C. No cooling, but with diamond model, I did use some minimal cooling because of overhangs. And last but not least printing speed was around 24mm/s. In this printing technic retraction is turned off, and pretty much it can print mostly simple objects, at least on the surface, due to need for sanding and polishing. Also printing times were horrible. For example for printing 15x15x15mm cube, it took around 8h to print. And also printing parameters, especially flow rate mostly depended on model. Bed levelling was also crucial, and must be on spot, otherwise print will not succeeded. First I was trying to test it myself, but when I did show results to company that produced that filament, I get some kind of verbal agreement, that I will do more testing and send them(I've also tried their unique filament "Lucent PLA"). But due to time, and that this technik is not reliable enough I've stopped. Summarizing. Lower layer height, printing cooler, flow up to 102%, no retraction, infill overlap around 6%, Rectilinear infill pattern, and mostly ideal calibration of print bed. Then only hours of sanding and polishing, and voilà. So it's only valuable for prearticular cases. Type of printing, that You showed is much more user friendly, and can be used for cases where my method doesn't have sense, though I'm not sure how strong parts are from my side, I didn't really w as think of that back then, but I assume they are close to truly solid. If something is unclear just ask, I will be happy to answer, though I'm not sure if there is anything else to say :) Kindest regards
Interesting observation about the polymer chains. Do you think they are being aligned during the extrusion process and then changing orientation by 90 degrees when the extrusion is laid down? I would have assumed that the polymer chains in an FDM part are randomly aligned because it has been melted and deposited with little strain applied during deposition or cooling.
Now I'm curious as to whether _lenses_ can be made this way. I'd imagine clear polycarbonate would be insanely hard to print, but I bet it would be incredibly good if one could get it printed completely solid and in roughly a lens shape that could then be polished and vapor smoothed. This would definitely be a place where a dedicated drybox would be ideal in addition to the filament dryer.
PC is pretty handy to print with. It wants an enclosure, and to print a little hotter than a stock ender 3 can print (metal hotend is enough). I get good results with an unheated enclosure, 270c nozzle, 80c bed (covered in kapton tape).
You absolutely can make a lens like this. The surface and voids are the biggest problem for home lens creation, imo. using a wet sand method coupled with a UV inhibitor clear coat in a couple layers can do AMAZING things. Enough elbow grease post processing and you can create excellent TIR like lenses or at least a lens close enough to a cast or molded in lens to work well for prototyping and small production where true optical clarity isnt a necessity.
Can you make a video baking these pieces in salt to see how clear they get? You will probably have to polish them after baking but I think the result would be spectacular.
Would you be able to do a video like this but for transparent PLA? I have some amazing transparent red PLA that I've been trying to get transparent prints with
When I did your max flow tests on my printers, I noticed that on CHT nozzles there is no underextrusion at all for a long time, while on a regular V6 nozzle from very low flow there is already a slight underextrusion and this can cause worse transparency and strength. I would also be quite interested to know what effect changing the hotend to hight-flow or ultra-high flow would have on the print speed. Maybe then it would be possible to maintain reasonable speeds.
A CHT volcano would likely allow you to print wide lines, high layers AND pretty fast, too... ok, maybe not latter. I suspect that there is "ironing" effect from nozzle conducting heat into the part, ensuring that plastic is fully melted as it is deposited, AND previous layer also melts and fully fuses with one you are printing. For best "ironing" effect you want a very large outer diameter "flat" on the nozzle with normal-sized hole. This way you'll be able to print "almost isotropic" parts considerably faster, at the cost of print melting if you print high details at slow speed.
This is something I'll like to chalenge you long time ago .. But only using transparent PLA ... In fact my chalenge is more to print part for the same weight as displayed by your slicer .. (but you have to print a big piece to be able to adjust that) In my case I have to set flow 110% to have the same weight as displayed in my slicer (in spice of my extruder count properly 1 meter of filament)
Could the extra static load performance in the XY samples come from the alignment of all infill in the direction of the load? Would the same gains be seen if all infill was oriented perpendicular to the loading direction?
Having your layers perpendicular is always going to hurt strength and performance. But that's the beauty of 3d printing, aligning your infill and Z direction make parts essentially as strong as injection molded ones.
6:36 pro english tip - where you were stressing the end part fifTEEN and fifTY (because they sound similar) we would normally do the same for fifteen but then instead stress the FIF part of fifty. idk if this is a real rule but it sounds better this way to my ear anyway.
I share your thoughts about the Laser but that will only influence the adhesion between layers and the printing speed. The problem in optics is the empty spaces and the only thing that solves it is the baking, but first the impression has to be as good as the one achieved in this video. Great job by the way!!!!
I'm going to buy transparent (pink or purple) filament (haven't decided which mark shall i choose) and try to make it as much transparent as my Bambulab X1 Carbon Combo can do, yet I'm still waiting for DHL to deliver this 3D printer to me and i already saw that article from Prusa printables site and your video makes it so much easier to understand how to print "glass" if i make 3D print which look like almost glass, i will pin here my settings which i would use, (maybe you can pin this comment when I add my settings haha :)) ) yet, very good video you are making so good content, it's amazing to see someone well qualified in 3D printing talking about the best topics you can choose, have a good day, and may the filament be with you :))))
You could try printing a dyed version of the material with the same settings and use strength testing to compare. If the presence of dye changes the behavior then you can see a clear difference in the strength and failure behavior. Another idea is to use a sensitive light detector to measure the light transmission of less transparent samples. Shine a bright light (of well know brightness) through a thin sample and measure the light intensity on the other side. Higher measurement on the sensor means higher clarity, and thus stronger parts!
Great work, thanks @CNC Kitchen! ps. How have your Bambu Lab X1 Carbon worked? I have it on preorder and I make mostly ASA automotive products. Any comments on suitability?
I did the same sort of experiment 3 years ago. I wanted to make diffused LED covers and then replacement lenses for cars. I was using red clear and red LEDs. It looked really good. I ended up adding more extrusion and increased temperature until the parts swelled too much. I was using transparent PLA and even tried with a 0.25mn nozzle. 0.6 nozzles were not available at the time. My thought was that although there would be more interfaces but each interface is a smaller gap to fill in the 3rd dimension.
I have recently been printing clear crystals that I light up with an LED RGB puck, I found that differing temperatures and layer heights helped with clearer parts although they seemed to light up better with a frosting effect acheived with higher temps in PLA.
It would be interesting to see if annealing these parts has an impact on transparency. I'd also be interested to see if there is a relationship between layer adhesion and loss of coherence during annealing.
I have found that transparent or natural filaments tend to be stronger than those with added pigments. PETG is less sticky or sloppy in the clear or natural variant.
I wonder if some of the techniques here solve some problems @Integza is running into in creating his transparent turbines, rocket nozzles and other stuff he's doing.
To be honest, I like using PETG way better than the other filaments. Transparent filaments seem to have a different melting point than their colored counterparts. Also, I read that post from dude on transparent parts. One key is making sure that all the lines go the same direction. No cross-filling. Speed, layer height, and temp are some of the other factors.
SuperSlicer, a PrusaSlicer fork, has a few settings specifically for this purpose that may produce better results, like infill ironing to really fill up the gaps (but also more difficult to print)
In hindsight this is VERY logical -> transparency shows the amount of defects in the material, the more transparent the less defects. The fuller & more consistent the base material is. Hence most transparent print -> the strongest. Further, pigments DO decrease strength typically, this is very well known in the lamination industry (ie. carbon fiber parts). There are very few exceptions, for example graphene. Especially with functionalized graphene you get a covalent bond with epoxy -> it's not separate material anymore, but actually the base material is transformed, the molecules are different.
Thanks very much for that useful comment! Do you think mixing functionalized graphene powder or the like into 3D printing resin will also strengthen the bonds?
I did one from the website, I used PLA, funny though it does work up to half way and it became fogged. That was I tried on Cali-dragon, almost see through.
I have a transparent PLA I want to try this with. The one I have is already more transparent than I expected, but I will definitely try this and see if it improves transparency even more.
Printed a gear with transparent parameters about a month ago and it still works great 2 prev samples from same transparent petg with default parameters broke
I wonder if you could take advantage of the lenticular effect the parts have. Also: if you are making parts for strength would printing like this with a bigger nozzle make them stronger?
In my experience: yes. The bonding between the layers is a lot better and there are fewer gaps. I have been printing everything with a .6 mm nozzle at 105% extrusion. Now I may try .8 and use a roll of transparent petg. This stuff is exciting!
The possibility of someday printing optic is just incredible. Imagine if you could print your reading glasses. Yes that may be in a way a bit extreme but it's be basically free glasses for everyone. Improving strength is nice but recently I started printing parts at 45° which often solves strength issues.
The almost-perfect transparent printing of SLA also creates weird problems. Parts with flat faces printed at an angle get an undesired fresnel lens effect, where if you look through the part (or to what is inside) everything looks strongly shifted to one direction. It's similar to water diffraction, but it happens at any angle you look from. Sanding and polishing removes that distortion, but it's yet another messy processing step. I haven't used DLP printers and I wonder if the same issue happens.
Hey! I really love everything you do on this channel! I have a very important question! Do different colored PLA filaments have different strengths or brittleness??? Does pigment affect how strong or brittle the part will be ??? I would be really happy if you could answer me or make a video about it :)
I use transparent and coloured/translucent PETG regularly. Fresh from the store, and even if it comes in a foil bag, it typically needs 8-12 hours in my food dehydrator at 60-65C before that haziness is completely gone.
I did similar testing a few weeks ago, but using Sunlu's transparent PLA (which was *not* great for maxing out transparency) on an X1 Carbon using Bambu Studio, and while Rygar's guide was extremely useful, I actually found that transparency increased *with* cooling! I tried it several times and got consistent results, but I suspect it maybe only applies to PLA? Further findings: - Lower layer height = the better, but the difference between 0.04mm and 0.08mm is so marginal that it's probably more worthwhile to just use 0.08 and avoiding doubling the print time - Print speed around 10mm/s gave best results, lower didn't really make a difference (and I tried all the way down to 2.5mm/s) - but I think you can go up to 15mm/s like you did without losing too much transparency - Aligned rectilinear infill (at least in Bambu Studio) leaves small air pockets around the perimeter as the nozzle turns around - you can bump up transparency quite significantly by using two perimeters, but setting your infill/wall-overlap quite high, like 60%-ish, then setting your inner-wall-line-width really, really low - like 0.1mm on a 0.4mm nozzle. This causes only a small gap between the infill and the outer-most wall, and then the inner wall can fill that gap almost perfectly using very fine flow-rate. This *seriously* helped, although I wasn't able to completely eliminate the air pockets, but I think it's just a matter of playing around with the parameters more.
I should add that I noticed just yesterday that Bambu Studio *has* a feature for ironing every layer! That would make my third find useless and may well boost the transparency immensely, but I haven't had a chance to try it yet :)
This seems like it would drastically increase warping on anything larger or with warp-prone geometry. And doesn't increasing internal stress degrade impact performance? Were these worse than with normal printing settings?
Great point! From my experience printing slow tremendously reduces internal stresses that come from melt swell, though the thermal stresses obviously will remain. It might be interesting to see how the performance change once the parts got annealed.
what would happen if you was to put the parts in a oven to melt it into one solid part with the whole salt method packed around or using sodium silicate and sand to make a solid mold so the part will be fully support as it melts fully into a solid part? they do this in lost PLA casting and metal casting for example to make metal parts
yeah, I've been playing with transparent petg for a while. the slower the better and you probably can achieve stunning results with some parts. but when I want something really transparent I'll use my sla.
Clear prints have transformed the prototype development at work, when its suddenly super fast and easy to make see through parts. Though i think they are SLA prints that are polished and clear coated, they look really good !
By printing in a vacuum, could you get higher layer adhesion (therefore more strength and clarity)? Could you print in metal by getting metal particles to cold weld in a vacuum?
I was on a quest to print clear parts 2 years ago and discovered that it's a very good way to calibrate your settings as well since it's a sure fire way to see if your layers are properly bonding as they should be.
What I found most fascinating about this is that an exploration that started out for aesthetic reasons (pretty see-through parts) ended up having mechanical implications as well.
Hi Stefan, this video is very interesting. As I was watching the portion about strength testing, it dawned on me that most tests of FDM parts focus on expansion strength, but it seems compression strength is almost ignored. I would like to see how orientation of the printing matters for compression strength of a rod. Intuitively it seems like the compression strength would be best where expansion strength is the worst, because stacked layers won't have a tendency to split outwards. Are there some previous videos on this subject?
At one point i was considering investigating 3d printing polymer scintillation material for radiation detection, the thinking being easy custom shaped detectors may be valuable for scientists and researchers. Never took the idea anywhere, but it would absolutely work with that level of transparency. Keep it up, you are really are about the top 3d printing channel for makers.
Oooh! I love this idea! With a dual material printer, I bet you could even do multi-cell/pixel detectors. Although, might be way too small for those kinds of measurements.
@@BRUXXUS Yeah i think the main problem would be plastic scintilators just aren't very good, unless you are looking to detect fast neutrons. maybe one could make a neutron camera with 3d printed pixels and a nice big beryllium concave mirror to focus an image :D
I've been doing a trick for stronger prints for a while. I don't have any transparent filament, but would be interesting to try. Set the slicer to a nozzle size half what you really have. Adjust extrusion rate, and set model inset to half the difference.
Hmm that sounds like an interesting hack. Seems like it would come out even, but I imagine once you tune the extrusion rate, you are doing a better job of getting perfect flow. Do you "adjust the extrusion rate" mathematically or do you do additional tuning manually by how the extrusion looks?
The idea is that each line in a layer is overlapped. As you say, it should come out even, but I adjust to maximise density. About 200% works for my machine.
This was great. Another thing to think about, don't know if it's been addressed, is I'd love to see some sort of variable flow implementation. If there was a way to actively sense what the current diameter of the filament being fed into the extruder was, maybe the flow parameter could be varied to compensate for filament variations, potentially leading to even more uniform extrusion.
For parts that will allow it, I wonder if a larger nozzle would also allow thicker layers. Doubling the nozzle diameter and layer height would do obviously nice things to the volume per second, even with slow linear speed.
I can’t wait to see what is in store for the future of 3D printing! Of of the fun parts about 3D printing is all the engineers from different fields that use them and can find flaws and fixes as they work with them on projects. When you have a ton of engineers in a hobby, things seem to progress pretty steadily. With the changes to 3D printing in just the last 5 years, it makes me excited to see what is to come in 10-15 years down the road! Who knows, 3D printing with metal might actually become obtainable for hobby makers without using metal impregnated plastics
I was just thinking about this today, i had made some key caps in transparent petg, i made sure to use concentric layers and infill for best transparency.
What applications do you see for transparent FDM 3D prints? Are you just looking for clarity or are you excited about the strength?
I’d say if you are doing a model of a house or something with a window, you could use it for that
Making lenses for lasers, some lighting system etc.
this would be sick for a beetleweight combat robot
annealing the transparent 3d prints ? maybe it helps with the clarity ? if 100% infill was used
also maybe try upping the flow rate to compensate the tiny air bubbles?
Machine safety guards is my main application anyway.
This looks really interesting. I recently switched to a 0.6mm nozzle and printed some parts with a blue-transparent PETG filament. I was surprised that they looked much more transparent than parts I've printed with almost the same settings on a 0.4 mm nozzle. I guess that makes sense as the extrusion width is greater, leading to fewer boundaries. With the new Arachne slicer engine, bigger nozzles could be very interesting to achieve more transparent prints.
A while back I read from someone that he achieved more transparent parts by ironing every layer, although that sounds like it would take forever. But it might be worth it for just the top layers.
This matches my experience too - wider extrusions + thicker layers + higher temps + more perimeter/infill overlap seemed to help with clarity. I usually print at 20 or 30mm/s so not a lot to say there. I think the key is as Stefan hinted - as few transition boundaries as possible and making them as solid/complete as possible where they do occur.
You might be going the right direction with this, at least to speed it up, with a wide nozzle and good heading you could probably maintain the results with better speed or get better results for low detail parts at similar speeds, course bigger nozzles will struggle with finer detail as a cost
0.6mm nozzle with 0.2mm layer height has extremely good properties. The layer lines are still there but feel more like a texture than full bumps in the part
Even with a 0.4 nozzle i’m certain that the effect of the light refracting is much less apparent in pigmented transparent filaments.
Printed some transparent yellow recently, went a bit hot, took it slow, and i Can almost read through it in like a size 15’ish font
How does stringing and oozing look on that nozzle?
I guess this just confirms what we already knew, for better layer adhesion, print slow, print hot and avoid gaps, the clear filament is just better in showing how good of a job you did on those settings.
Agreed. I made similar experiences printing vases in PC. I guess with a heated chamber faster speeds yield comparable results to said 15 mm/s.
@@haraldhimmel5687how fast are you printing?
I wonder if the lack of contaminants such as pigments in clear filaments also contribute to stronger bonds between layers
@@ipodtouchiscoollol Здравствуй. Я видел сравнение характеристик пластика с пигментами и без. Пластик без пигментов на тех видео обладал лучшими свойствами и прочностью.
@@defan123321 me no speak ruski me no understand
I wonder if strength or even internal clarity could be even further increased by combining this with the technique that I think you explored awhile ago of packing the printed part in salt and reheating it.
It probably would and PETG was a very good candidate for that.
I have tried it, spending about two weeks working on it and I ended up with nicely transparent prints with accurate dimensions to get rid of bubbles for salt remelting. Turns out that once I got layer adhesion that good, there was no need for salt remelting. Feel free to test it of course, but the improvement in terms of strength will be likely unnoticeable and for me not worth the extra work and time of a salt melt, which has a decent failure rate depending on the object's shape.
This was so much fun to watch! Thanks for the detailed research into the specific functionalities of FDM printed parts.
Glad you enjoyed it!
There's a really cool parallax effect you can get by printing a couple layers of PETG flat with perpendicular infill. I used it to create holiday tree ornaments that play with light in some really interesting ways. Printed hot and slow with esun translucent green PETG
Someone FINALLY covers this, the pigment vs. transparency difference in strength.
Awesome video! It's really interesting to see that such simple change within the settings and using the same filament can bring such visual but also technical improvements. I love this channel!
I'd like to see this done with salt bath re-melts done after with some polishing done.
Look into ironing every layer!
@cnckitchen Use bigger nozzle to speed up process and maybe get more clarity
If you have criss cross prints and fill gaps with water surely your prints would look transparent no matter the angle.
What if you try doing the print homogenization thing by casting the part in sand and putting it in the oven. Doing that might yeild even clearer results
Nice video! I recall you discovered thicker layers had better interlayer strength. So then why not print .2mm or even use a larger nozzle like .6 or .8 to see how strong this can get? And how about using an enclosure to keep a sort of heated chamber effect? Might an acetone vapor or heat gun add any strength via inter-layer melt?
So am I getting this right..... 59 Megapascals translates to 8557 pound force/square inch???? The yield strength of annealed 6061 Aluminum is only 55 MPa. This seems quite remarkable.
I think I will try this on My ender 3 (When I have the time), with DAS-filament to try and recreate your settings, but I am intersted in other transparent materials which are colored, so fisrt DAS as reference and then maybe some Extrudrs transparent red, green and Yellow
you won't have to glue the bed if you used a satin or textured sheet
I'm kind of wondering if you could vary extrusion width extremely finely to create holographic effects within the glassy print
No way. This would require modulation in the range of the wave length of visible light, i.e. fractions of micrometers.
@@kaihorstmann2783 It's wouldn't be impossible but it would be very very expensive to do and would probably need a one of one state of the art 3D printer to the nano scale ✌️
@@kaihorstmann2783 I think he meant deliberately creating small voids to create a 3D "holographic" structure in a clear part. Like those plastic cubes they sometimes sell at fairs with 3D "images" inside.
could be done. You'd have to have tiny voids or bubbles in the model
@@gonun69 those little plastic cubes are exactly what i was imagining
My best transparent prints are done with a 0.8 Nozzle and 0.4 mm layerheight. In my opinion: thicker layers -> higher transparency. But we have to try more. ;)
I had my best results with a .4 nozzle going down to .05 layer height.
I use .6
That's likely due to there being less inter-bonding layer gaps since each layer is taller so it can't refract light as much.
Same here, using PC filament. There also seems to be an effect where bubbles are mostly present at the start of each line, then disappearing along it, regardless of nozzle size. Maybe it is possible to start each line slowly and then speed up. I do wonder why this happens though. I believe that air gets into the nozzle after each line ends, especially when stringing or drooping during the travel. No idea how to test this theory though, since this would require a transparent nozzle....
The issue with thick layers is mostly that you get a bigger rounded edge on the Extrusion which leaves much more space for potential bubbles.
With thin layers the holes underneath the rounded end of the Extrusion are much smaller leaving less air gaps.
Thicker extrusions help a lot to and thicker layers do too to a degree if you can remelt the previous Extrusion on time.
(side note on the yellowing: using a UV blocking overcoat helps significantly with the yellowing.)
This is really excellent for making 'optics'. While you're not going to get a perfect TIR lens, this will get you 90% there for prototyping and diy flashlights and fiber optic and light pipes for light transmission for indicator LEDs or models, etc.
Rad stuff.
Which one do you recommend? I've used krylon transparent uv resistant and it's been in the Florida sun for a year with only a little yellowing.
I was personally wondering how foggy something like glasses would turn out (to the human eye) with these
@@tachywubdub2469 ya know, I don't know if foggy would be the issue as much as the distortion from surface irregularities.
BUT - if you put enough elbow grease into it and if the interior is fully bonded, you can get an almost perfect lens.
I wonder if polishing, applying uv protection, then further polishing, refilling imperfections with uv protectant, and further polishing. Rinse lather repeat.
This is yellowed car headlights all over again.
My jaw hit the floor after like 15 seconds when the vertical test sample necked and the rest of the video did not disappoint - awesome stuff! I've been playing with mirrors instead of lenses because I figured this was impossible!
Also for my mirror samples, I've been printing them almost vertical so that I minimize the effect of layer steps after smoothing. what do you think about printing your lenses vertically? (other than taking forever, I'm curious about the accuracy of the final shape)
I saw a wild test print on Thingiverse a few years ago to a challenge print a solid cube with a sphere hole in the center. The image made it look totally transparent. I followed the instructions, although they suggested a lot of sanding and polishing, which I did, it came out pretty much transparent! Big thing I learned here was to align all the infill lines. Can’t wait to try it!
Testing bigger nozzles might be interesting. Especially CHT nozzles.
I'm guessing CHT would be worse for transparency, because of the split path. PETG beats into a foam, like egg whites, so you don't want to disturb it with fast retractions, high E-acceleration or split nozzles.
@@thedamnone it does not - flow stays laminar. Cnc kitchen already tested that.
@@thedamnone as you said.... You are guessing. We will know it for sure if someone will test it. I do have a 1.4mm CHT and clear PETG at home, but I'm not feeling confident doing the test and everything correct
@@spedi6721 already tested my guy
I wonder if slicer modding to interlace fill paths every other layer (with a slight reduction in layer height?) could also help make prints more monolithic like this by directly filling voids in the previous layer.
Yeah, or what's with layer ironing for each layer?
Would take ages though
Weirdly enough, I wondered the same thing last night. I've been asked to make a model of a part of a homing missile's guidance system and it needs a translucent window, and I was idly wondering about ways to print that rather than doing the easy thing and just using acrylic or whatever.
@@finlaygreenaway193 It might come with slightly faster speeds as it would require less smooshing. It's still the same amount of plastic so who knows? Maybe it just averages out the same.
Very good point, though that might require half width extrusions at the start of every other layer. Maybe just varying extrusion with on every other layer might be something that's very easy to implement.
This was a super helpful video. First of all, the fact that those bubbles are so visible and due to poor drying really helps to reinforce that drying the filament matters... I didn't really consider drying my PETG in the past because I conflated "water proof" with not retaining much water. Now I see that PETG can be both water proof and also retain moisture... and the proof is in the bubbles. (Thanks for showing that). The fact that the parameters that improve transparency also improve the strength of the print is also really amazing. Thank you again!
Again one of the "Stefan and the Quest for the Holy Grail" Videos which I like most. 🙏 Thanks.
I once used this method with transparent PP filament which also gave excellent transparent results and almost isotropic properties.
I smoothed the part by "shock heating" (how I called it) the surface with a heat gun on 500°C . This quickly melted just the surface to a liquid state but kept the part integrity. By some kind of surface tension this totally smoothed out the layer lines and the part looked injection molded afterwards. Hope this helps in future endeavors. It might also help with vertical impact strength because besides molecular orientation the surface roughness also might have it's "impact" on those results.
@@JayDee-b5u Thanks. 🤗
I recently noticed when printing with transparent PLA, that layer adhesion was much better than coloured PLA. When i printed parts in different colors and I almost couldn't remove supports of the transparent ones, when the coloured ones just broke off easily.
If you want the strongest materials, always avoid black, they are the worst, natural color is the strongest. Slightly colored tranparent ones are good too
@@dtibor5903 Black can be plenty strong, since relatively little pigment is needed to absorb a lot of light, but also sometimes you get repigmented regrind and other shit, it can be difficult to trust. White has a scary amount of pigment, since the pigment is transparent. Highly opaque light colours can have that same issue.
The absolute worst is silk PLA, that's got little rubbery bits of filler to make it behave this way, and just doesn't bond well at all.
pigments can have a huge effect on the properties of a material. Back when I was into knot tying, I came across some research that found pigments in the nylon fibers of the rope could affect tensile strength by as much as 30%. If adhesion and tensile strength are a priority, unpigmented is generally the way to go.
Should investigate that at some point!
@@SianaGearz it really depends on the manufacturer tbh as to how much the pigment will impact the strength
We use a lot of these same parameters to make prosthetic sockets as strong and clear as possible. The main difference is that we use large nozzles to go with our big parts. I usually go for layer heights up to 1.0mm as opposed to something like 0.6mm not necessarily for speed (added benefit though!) but because it creates less light refraction opportunities and we can see through the sockets pretty well, especially when looking at them straight on through the layers.
I started 3d printing 1 year ago, and I quickly realised that transparent PETG is much more stronger than opaque ones. Now I have a lot of slightly colored transparent PETG filaments from Devildesign, and i'm really happy with the results for functional parts. Still it is not strong as ABS, it is way more brittle, but much convenient for printing in an apartment. I print with absolutely normal settings at 50-80mm/s on ender 3v2 w volcano, just the extrusion multiplier is raised with 5-10%. Usually I don't care to be perfectly tranparent.
I don't hear about many people using the stuff, but Devil Design has the nicest PETG I've worked with. Very consistent, and flows nicely. I print it no slower than 150mm/s, pushing past 200mm/s when I need something done quickly. Nice colours too.
@@thegribbs especially the galaxy colours looks quite good, great for toys!
There is this experiment where you can see internal stresses in acrylic glass over polarized light while bending or other stress. I wonder if that is also possible with the clear prints it should be quite interesting if it works because of the inhomogenity
Good point!
What excellent timing for me with this video. I need to make safety guards for abrasive polishers in a medical device company i am work for. I have the designs made and PETG and 3d printing will be acceptable. However i was about to abandon the idea it was not transparent enough for the operators. I am now going back to the drawing board! 😁 And Wow, the layer adhesion there is something i have never seen but only with pp. Thanks very much Stefan. From Ireland.
For me the transparency is a secondary feature, the more interesting outcome here is the layer bonding. A few thoughts that I have:
Would printing in an enclosure allow for faster print speed? Because the printed part temperature is higher it needs less time to heat up enough to bond with freshly extruded material.
To improve bridging, cooling could be enabled only during bridge features.
A comparison of extrusion width would be interesting. I think this would have a huge impact. Parts would finish faster and could have even better bonding.
Great videos as always! I really enjoy these investigations.
Printing in an enclosure might help a bit but will cause on the other hand cooling problems with the PETG again.
A related topic I've been interested in is 3D printed diffusers for LED light strips that are customized for the actual strips so can perhaps do a better job evening out the light than off-the-shelf uniform diffusers.
I find that unlikely, but it's still very useful having custom diffusers!
Very interesting! As a skateboarder I noticed that the wheels which are colored wear off faster than the uncolored ones. I assume that the color particles weaken the material.
Printing like this and then salt remelting it with ultra fine salt would make some glass clear prints! You would have to sand and polish the outer surface however.
I'm curious if the impact performance could be improved through either annealing or salt re-melting.
Unfortunately I didn't test that last time. Will include these specimens in the next test series.
I wonder if you came across my projects, that I think are extremely good in terms of transparency, if not even the best, especially the cube, that I've designed. I was researching and testing this topic over half a year
Thank you very much, you just got me to subscribe after I looked at your channel.
@@retromodernart4426 Thanks, though I'm not sure when I will upload the next video
@@Gejuch2233 No problem, what you already did is great!
Great work! Can you share more information on your process?
@@CNCKitchen I'm glad You liked it. It was over a two years ago, but as I described on Thingiverse page, to achieve this kind of transparency are needed some quirks, and tips. First of all to be clear, that is not how it came exactly from the printer, but I've polished all sides(but from bottom, and mostly from top, are close to the end product).
Layer lines should be really small and I was recommending 0.03mm. Flow rate was above 100%, more like 102%, but as You said in your video it depends. Infill type was actually Rectilinear, and infill overlap was around 6%. I did use for all parts, clear PETG, that was beforehand dried pretty long. Temperature was at lowest as manufacture said, and sometimes below that, usually around 210C. Bed temperature was 80/90C. No cooling, but with diamond model, I did use some minimal cooling because of overhangs. And last but not least printing speed was around 24mm/s.
In this printing technic retraction is turned off, and pretty much it can print mostly simple objects, at least on the surface, due to need for sanding and polishing. Also printing times were horrible. For example for printing 15x15x15mm cube, it took around 8h to print. And also printing parameters, especially flow rate mostly depended on model. Bed levelling was also crucial, and must be on spot, otherwise print will not succeeded.
First I was trying to test it myself, but when I did show results to company that produced that filament, I get some kind of verbal agreement, that I will do more testing and send them(I've also tried their unique filament "Lucent PLA"). But due to time, and that this technik is not reliable enough I've stopped.
Summarizing. Lower layer height, printing cooler, flow up to 102%, no retraction, infill overlap around 6%, Rectilinear infill pattern, and mostly ideal calibration of print bed. Then only hours of sanding and polishing, and voilà.
So it's only valuable for prearticular cases. Type of printing, that You showed is much more user friendly, and can be used for cases where my method doesn't have sense, though I'm not sure how strong parts are from my side, I didn't really w as think of that back then, but I assume they are close to truly solid.
If something is unclear just ask, I will be happy to answer, though I'm not sure if there is anything else to say :)
Kindest regards
Interesting observation about the polymer chains. Do you think they are being aligned during the extrusion process and then changing orientation by 90 degrees when the extrusion is laid down?
I would have assumed that the polymer chains in an FDM part are randomly aligned because it has been melted and deposited with little strain applied during deposition or cooling.
Now I'm curious as to whether _lenses_ can be made this way. I'd imagine clear polycarbonate would be insanely hard to print, but I bet it would be incredibly good if one could get it printed completely solid and in roughly a lens shape that could then be polished and vapor smoothed.
This would definitely be a place where a dedicated drybox would be ideal in addition to the filament dryer.
PC is pretty handy to print with. It wants an enclosure, and to print a little hotter than a stock ender 3 can print (metal hotend is enough). I get good results with an unheated enclosure, 270c nozzle, 80c bed (covered in kapton tape).
I was seeing fresnel lenses as soon as I saw the thumbnail.
It's an interesting thing to consider.
If you get PC to properly print it's also a great contestant! But dry it! Bed adhesion can be tackled with Magigoo PC or similar.
You absolutely can make a lens like this. The surface and voids are the biggest problem for home lens creation, imo. using a wet sand method coupled with a UV inhibitor clear coat in a couple layers can do AMAZING things. Enough elbow grease post processing and you can create excellent TIR like lenses or at least a lens close enough to a cast or molded in lens to work well for prototyping and small production where true optical clarity isnt a necessity.
I had a respirator and gave it away, because it’s just too much of a hassle for casual prints
Can you make a video baking these pieces in salt to see how clear they get? You will probably have to polish them after baking but I think the result would be spectacular.
Would you be able to do a video like this but for transparent PLA? I have some amazing transparent red PLA that I've been trying to get transparent prints with
Transparent PLA will be challenging, because it would probably anneal during that process and become opaque.
When I did your max flow tests on my printers, I noticed that on CHT nozzles there is no underextrusion at all for a long time, while on a regular V6 nozzle from very low flow there is already a slight underextrusion and this can cause worse transparency and strength. I would also be quite interested to know what effect changing the hotend to hight-flow or ultra-high flow would have on the print speed. Maybe then it would be possible to maintain reasonable speeds.
A CHT volcano would likely allow you to print wide lines, high layers AND pretty fast, too... ok, maybe not latter. I suspect that there is "ironing" effect from nozzle conducting heat into the part, ensuring that plastic is fully melted as it is deposited, AND previous layer also melts and fully fuses with one you are printing.
For best "ironing" effect you want a very large outer diameter "flat" on the nozzle with normal-sized hole.
This way you'll be able to print "almost isotropic" parts considerably faster, at the cost of print melting if you print high details at slow speed.
Good point! Might be worth investigating.
This is something I'll like to chalenge you long time ago ..
But only using transparent PLA ...
In fact my chalenge is more to print part for the same weight as displayed by your slicer ..
(but you have to print a big piece to be able to adjust that)
In my case I have to set flow 110% to have the same weight as displayed in my slicer (in spice of my extruder count properly 1 meter of filament)
Could the extra static load performance in the XY samples come from the alignment of all infill in the direction of the load? Would the same gains be seen if all infill was oriented perpendicular to the loading direction?
Excellent point! I would certainly be concerned about this. There are now two weak axes, not one, even if "weak" is not as bad as usual.
The infill in the test section was oriented along the loading axis for both samples (I used 6 perimeters), so there shouldn't be a huge difference.
Having your layers perpendicular is always going to hurt strength and performance. But that's the beauty of 3d printing, aligning your infill and Z direction make parts essentially as strong as injection molded ones.
While yes this is cool, I have to agree, the print time hit is just too much.
6:36 pro english tip - where you were stressing the end part fifTEEN and fifTY (because they sound similar) we would normally do the same for fifteen but then instead stress the FIF part of fifty. idk if this is a real rule but it sounds better this way to my ear anyway.
👌 appreciated
I keep wondering if there is a way to use a low powered laser to re-melt a previous layer just before, or as the nozzle lays down the current layer.
FDM printer with an SLS laser
I share your thoughts about the Laser but that will only influence the adhesion between layers and the printing speed. The problem in optics is the empty spaces and the only thing that solves it is the baking, but first the impression has to be as good as the one achieved in this video. Great job by the way!!!!
@@BrazenRain Exactly. Tricky though with how many different directions a print head moves.
I'm going to buy transparent (pink or purple) filament (haven't decided which mark shall i choose) and try to make it as much transparent as my Bambulab X1 Carbon Combo can do, yet I'm still waiting for DHL to deliver this 3D printer to me and i already saw that article from Prusa printables site and your video makes it so much easier to understand how to print "glass" if i make 3D print which look like almost glass, i will pin here my settings which i would use, (maybe you can pin this comment when I add my settings haha :)) ) yet, very good video you are making so good content, it's amazing to see someone well qualified in 3D printing talking about the best topics you can choose, have a good day, and may the filament be with you :))))
You could try printing a dyed version of the material with the same settings and use strength testing to compare. If the presence of dye changes the behavior then you can see a clear difference in the strength and failure behavior. Another idea is to use a sensitive light detector to measure the light transmission of less transparent samples. Shine a bright light (of well know brightness) through a thin sample and measure the light intensity on the other side. Higher measurement on the sensor means higher clarity, and thus stronger parts!
Great work, thanks @CNC Kitchen! ps. How have your Bambu Lab X1 Carbon worked? I have it on preorder and I make mostly ASA automotive products. Any comments on suitability?
clean video
I did the same sort of experiment 3 years ago. I wanted to make diffused LED covers and then replacement lenses for cars. I was using red clear and red LEDs. It looked really good. I ended up adding more extrusion and increased temperature until the parts swelled too much.
I was using transparent PLA and even tried with a 0.25mn nozzle. 0.6 nozzles were not available at the time. My thought was that although there would be more interfaces but each interface is a smaller gap to fill in the 3rd dimension.
The replacement lens part caught my attention. Did you succeed?
I have recently been printing clear crystals that I light up with an LED RGB puck, I found that differing temperatures and layer heights helped with clearer parts although they seemed to light up better with a frosting effect acheived with higher temps in PLA.
Pushing the limits of FDM! thanks for your enormous time investment on this one!
You're welcome! Happy that you enjoyed it.
It would be interesting to see if annealing these parts has an impact on transparency. I'd also be interested to see if there is a relationship between layer adhesion and loss of coherence during annealing.
I have found that transparent or natural filaments tend to be stronger than those with added pigments. PETG is less sticky or sloppy in the clear or natural variant.
Just use a resin printer if you need transparent parts!
Great work! I'd really like you to try and print optics with this setup
Resin is too brittle, especially for my application. It would shatter and explode all over my employees faces if I tried. So there you go.
I wonder if some of the techniques here solve some problems @Integza is running into in creating his transparent turbines, rocket nozzles and other stuff he's doing.
To be honest, I like using PETG way better than the other filaments. Transparent filaments seem to have a different melting point than their colored counterparts. Also, I read that post from dude on transparent parts. One key is making sure that all the lines go the same direction. No cross-filling. Speed, layer height, and temp are some of the other factors.
SWIM is used to printing receivers at 0.1mm 100% infill already, so hearing someone else share the pain of the price of quality is kinda comforting.
Could you use this with your plastic bottle filament experiment? I'm curious if you can make the green plastic bottles print clear.
I love that Japanese kanji book! (Kanji pictographics) ガンバて❕
SuperSlicer, a PrusaSlicer fork, has a few settings specifically for this purpose that may produce better results, like infill ironing to really fill up the gaps (but also more difficult to print)
So what is the effect of using aligned rectilinear on the strength? Is there a measurable difference lengthwise vs across?
Should try making a MK4 gearbox cover using this method 😊
You think it would make a good firearm receiver?
...Asking for a friend.
In hindsight this is VERY logical -> transparency shows the amount of defects in the material, the more transparent the less defects. The fuller & more consistent the base material is.
Hence most transparent print -> the strongest.
Further, pigments DO decrease strength typically, this is very well known in the lamination industry (ie. carbon fiber parts). There are very few exceptions, for example graphene. Especially with functionalized graphene you get a covalent bond with epoxy -> it's not separate material anymore, but actually the base material is transformed, the molecules are different.
Thanks very much for that useful comment!
Do you think mixing functionalized graphene powder or the like into 3D printing resin will also strengthen the bonds?
I did one from the website, I used PLA, funny though it does work up to half way and it became fogged. That was I tried on Cali-dragon, almost see through.
PLA will probably anneal during that process and become opaque.
Have you followed up the investigation on this? Found better settings?
Wow i thought you could print a fresnel lens this way maybe.
I have a transparent PLA I want to try this with. The one I have is already more transparent than I expected, but I will definitely try this and see if it improves transparency even more.
Printed a gear with transparent parameters about a month ago and it still works great
2 prev samples from same transparent petg with default parameters broke
This was very impressive and surprising! What incredible layer adhesion. I'd love to achieve anything near that on a normal PETG print!
I wonder if you could take advantage of the lenticular effect the parts have.
Also: if you are making parts for strength would printing like this with a bigger nozzle make them stronger?
In my experience: yes. The bonding between the layers is a lot better and there are fewer gaps. I have been printing everything with a .6 mm nozzle at 105% extrusion.
Now I may try .8 and use a roll of transparent petg. This stuff is exciting!
Bro just uncovered the secret to near-injection molded strength prints!
The possibility of someday printing optic is just incredible. Imagine if you could print your reading glasses. Yes that may be in a way a bit extreme but it's be basically free glasses for everyone.
Improving strength is nice but recently I started printing parts at 45° which often solves strength issues.
The almost-perfect transparent printing of SLA also creates weird problems. Parts with flat faces printed at an angle get an undesired fresnel lens effect, where if you look through the part (or to what is inside) everything looks strongly shifted to one direction. It's similar to water diffraction, but it happens at any angle you look from. Sanding and polishing removes that distortion, but it's yet another messy processing step.
I haven't used DLP printers and I wonder if the same issue happens.
Hey! I really love everything you do on this channel!
I have a very important question!
Do different colored PLA filaments have different strengths or brittleness???
Does pigment affect how strong or brittle the part will be ???
I would be really happy if you could answer me or make a video about it :)
*Pirnt in the thumbnail :D
I use transparent and coloured/translucent PETG regularly. Fresh from the store, and even if it comes in a foil bag, it typically needs 8-12 hours in my food dehydrator at 60-65C before that haziness is completely gone.
Sponsored by Squarespace but really it's an ad for Prusa I3 Mk.3 and Printables "By Josef Prusa."
I did similar testing a few weeks ago, but using Sunlu's transparent PLA (which was *not* great for maxing out transparency) on an X1 Carbon using Bambu Studio, and while Rygar's guide was extremely useful, I actually found that transparency increased *with* cooling! I tried it several times and got consistent results, but I suspect it maybe only applies to PLA?
Further findings:
- Lower layer height = the better, but the difference between 0.04mm and 0.08mm is so marginal that it's probably more worthwhile to just use 0.08 and avoiding doubling the print time
- Print speed around 10mm/s gave best results, lower didn't really make a difference (and I tried all the way down to 2.5mm/s) - but I think you can go up to 15mm/s like you did without losing too much transparency
- Aligned rectilinear infill (at least in Bambu Studio) leaves small air pockets around the perimeter as the nozzle turns around - you can bump up transparency quite significantly by using two perimeters, but setting your infill/wall-overlap quite high, like 60%-ish, then setting your inner-wall-line-width really, really low - like 0.1mm on a 0.4mm nozzle. This causes only a small gap between the infill and the outer-most wall, and then the inner wall can fill that gap almost perfectly using very fine flow-rate. This *seriously* helped, although I wasn't able to completely eliminate the air pockets, but I think it's just a matter of playing around with the parameters more.
Thank you for sharing your detailed findings Stefan! \o
I should add that I noticed just yesterday that Bambu Studio *has* a feature for ironing every layer! That would make my third find useless and may well boost the transparency immensely, but I haven't had a chance to try it yet :)
This seems like it would drastically increase warping on anything larger or with warp-prone geometry. And doesn't increasing internal stress degrade impact performance? Were these worse than with normal printing settings?
Great point! From my experience printing slow tremendously reduces internal stresses that come from melt swell, though the thermal stresses obviously will remain. It might be interesting to see how the performance change once the parts got annealed.
You should give Durabio a shot with this method. The material itself is one of the clearest of any on the market.
You're right! Simone regularly raves about it as well.
Guten tag, Stefan! Thanks for doing the research; it benefits the entire community.
You're welcome!
what would happen if you was to put the parts in a oven to melt it into one solid part with the whole salt method packed around or using sodium silicate and sand to make a solid mold so the part will be fully support as it melts fully into a solid part? they do this in lost PLA casting and metal casting for example to make metal parts
yeah, I've been playing with transparent petg for a while. the slower the better and you probably can achieve stunning results with some parts. but when I want something really transparent I'll use my sla.
followed your instruction: no way to get this results
Clear prints have transformed the prototype development at work, when its suddenly super fast and easy to make see through parts. Though i think they are SLA prints that are polished and clear coated, they look really good !
By printing in a vacuum, could you get higher layer adhesion (therefore more strength and clarity)? Could you print in metal by getting metal particles to cold weld in a vacuum?
I was on a quest to print clear parts 2 years ago and discovered that it's a very good way to calibrate your settings as well since it's a sure fire way to see if your layers are properly bonding as they should be.
What I found most fascinating about this is that an exploration that started out for aesthetic reasons (pretty see-through parts) ended up having mechanical implications as well.
Hi Stefan, this video is very interesting. As I was watching the portion about strength testing, it dawned on me that most tests of FDM parts focus on expansion strength, but it seems compression strength is almost ignored.
I would like to see how orientation of the printing matters for compression strength of a rod. Intuitively it seems like the compression strength would be best where expansion strength is the worst, because stacked layers won't have a tendency to split outwards.
Are there some previous videos on this subject?
Unfortunately my rig isn't made for compression tests, why I never really took a look at that property.
@@CNCKitchen True. Time to add a new rig? Maybe compression strength isn't as important.
At one point i was considering investigating 3d printing polymer scintillation material for radiation detection, the thinking being easy custom shaped detectors may be valuable for scientists and researchers. Never took the idea anywhere, but it would absolutely work with that level of transparency. Keep it up, you are really are about the top 3d printing channel for makers.
Oooh! I love this idea! With a dual material printer, I bet you could even do multi-cell/pixel detectors. Although, might be way too small for those kinds of measurements.
@@BRUXXUS Yeah i think the main problem would be plastic scintilators just aren't very good, unless you are looking to detect fast neutrons. maybe one could make a neutron camera with 3d printed pixels and a nice big beryllium concave mirror to focus an image :D
I've been doing a trick for stronger prints for a while. I don't have any transparent filament, but would be interesting to try.
Set the slicer to a nozzle size half what you really have. Adjust extrusion rate, and set model inset to half the difference.
Hmm that sounds like an interesting hack. Seems like it would come out even, but I imagine once you tune the extrusion rate, you are doing a better job of getting perfect flow. Do you "adjust the extrusion rate" mathematically or do you do additional tuning manually by how the extrusion looks?
The idea is that each line in a layer is overlapped. As you say, it should come out even, but I adjust to maximise density. About 200% works for my machine.
This was great. Another thing to think about, don't know if it's been addressed, is I'd love to see some sort of variable flow implementation. If there was a way to actively sense what the current diameter of the filament being fed into the extruder was, maybe the flow parameter could be varied to compensate for filament variations, potentially leading to even more uniform extrusion.
For parts that will allow it, I wonder if a larger nozzle would also allow thicker layers. Doubling the nozzle diameter and layer height would do obviously nice things to the volume per second, even with slow linear speed.
I can’t wait to see what is in store for the future of 3D printing! Of of the fun parts about 3D printing is all the engineers from different fields that use them and can find flaws and fixes as they work with them on projects. When you have a ton of engineers in a hobby, things seem to progress pretty steadily. With the changes to 3D printing in just the last 5 years, it makes me excited to see what is to come in 10-15 years down the road! Who knows, 3D printing with metal might actually become obtainable for hobby makers without using metal impregnated plastics
I was just thinking about this today, i had made some key caps in transparent petg, i made sure to use concentric layers and infill for best transparency.