3d print filaments
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SgtSaint
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Material choices quickly become a heated discussion - be forewarned.
There's plenty of us that advise against any of the flavors of PLA because its a lower temperature material more susecptable to warping in typical summer temperatures. Then there's folks that will extol on how they printed 5 suits in PLA and never had a problem.
Part of that is going to be location: London weather versus Las Vegas for example.
My view: Go with at least PETG. There's no 'gain' to staying with the lower grade material. Its not like you're comparing $10 to $50 a roll - or 1/2 the print speed etc. There's just no material advantage to PLA like its 5x stronger or anything.
There's plenty of us that advise against any of the flavors of PLA because its a lower temperature material more susecptable to warping in typical summer temperatures. Then there's folks that will extol on how they printed 5 suits in PLA and never had a problem.
Part of that is going to be location: London weather versus Las Vegas for example.
My view: Go with at least PETG. There's no 'gain' to staying with the lower grade material. Its not like you're comparing $10 to $50 a roll - or 1/2 the print speed etc. There's just no material advantage to PLA like its 5x stronger or anything.
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Do normal printers interchange filaments easily or do i need to go digging around for whether my printer of choice can run PETG instead of PLA or other choices of filaments?
BlazingForge
Active Member
you'll have to do some tuning either way. since your oklahoma i definitely would recommend PETG as a better option. wont warp and deform as easily as PLAs. i definitely recommend Elegoo's rapid PETG since its a very easy PETG to work with, Cheap and affordable, And overall is a great filament!
SgtSaint
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Based on that inexperience with materials I'm going to guess 3d printing in general is new to you as well. I'm going to urge you to not start your learning journey on armor.
Printing is a skillset you learn over time and by doing and failing and doing again. Like driving or cooking. Nobody starts their cooking adventures with beef wellington or 7 tier wedding cakes. You start with boiling an egg and go from there as you learn the art and science and chemical reaction nature of it all and 3d printing is very much the same. I would urge you to spend a week binging YouTube instead of Netflix. Absorb as many "my first 3d printing" videos as you can. And when you start printing start small. Learn the software, learn the nature of what a 3-wall print feels like versus 1 or 5.
Maybe start with a lot of the typical new-to-printing stuff like fidget spinners and a couple flexi dragons. Just to get your feet wet and dial in your printer. If a flexi doesn't flex, its a good sign your printer or settings need tuning so it not over extruding. If walls aren't meeting and your simple toys break, you'd rather have that happen on a 100 gram toy than 5kg of armor. Build up some understanding just like everyone else before you by printing small simple stuff and working upward.
• Print a few test XYZ cubes in a larger size like 100mm. When you have tuned and dialed in so you can print without a bunch of defects, echoing, pits, bad seam location choices and so on use them for finishing practice.
They're quick to print, no supports and flat faced making them good learning subjects for your sanding and spot filling. Get where you can finish them off to look like milled metal. This also gives you 6 faces per cube to use for paint testing/samples. You'd much rather see bad paint interactions here than on your real parts.
• Then move to printing something more complex like a speed shape with curves and grooves. Same as above, learn to sand, smooth and paint curves and engravings. https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4826498
• Then move on to things that require supports and maybe more dimensional accuracy. Props for your armor might come in here. Grenades and pistols and rifles that have moving parts. See how we're adding just a little bit of complexity with each tier of new printing challenge. With a UNSC magnum you'll have to make sure your parts fit, the slide can actually slide, you can remove supports without scaring the heck out of the prop and so on.
Then when you're feel ready to move on to armor... Here's some tips in another post:
SgtSaint's FAQ post
So I tend to post this response to the common or Frequently asked questions when people ask on the various social media channels. I copy/paste it to Facebook, or the Discord server and some folks urged me to post it here and just link it in the future. Ok, here goes. These are my tips and how...
www.405th.com
