Z-Temp Products > Materials Compatibility

Strongest material holy grail

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paulo:
I doubt I'm the only one but still have spent countless hours and money trying to find the strongest material. Fit what I generally do the parts I produce are not generally flat and regularly require support so support removal is important.

Materials I've tried.
Z abs. Basic and brittle
Z .ultrat. Best compromise of quality, consistency and strength.
Z pcabs. Really good but only comes in ivory and can split on the layers.
Z petg can be really strong if printed as single part but hard to remove support
Z hips. Pretty similar to z abs.
Colorfabb xt cf - comes very hard with hard material support. Can be brittle. Really good for gears
Colorfabb ht - the strongest material I've found but really hard to remove support and raft.
Poly max- I've experimented a bit but it seems very similar to z ultrat but with harder to remove support
Pc max - no played with enough but has been hard to remove support.

My conclusion after all this is the fundamental weakness is either the layers delaminates through stress or the depositing of material is so good that the material is truly welded but results in hard to remove support.

Before buying the m200 I was quite close to buying the inventure but that has only the one material still. However if the inventure could print colorfabb ht with its dissovable material may well be the best thing ever.

The only other thing is post processing. I've tried baking prints but that dries the material out so much that it is brittle. I've tried chemicals but that is messy. I've thought about boiling parts but not got around to it yet.

Thoughts anyone?

Julia Truchsess:
I suggest you give regular colorFabb PLA+PHA a try. It's very strong, a lot less brittle than regular PLA, and when printed at 195-200º, support removal is usually quite easy. Meltink also makes PLA+PHA and it's less expensive, but I'd start with colorFabb.

3dom's glass-filled PLA is also extremely strong, dense, and stiff, but you may need to use a 0.5mm nozzle to avoid clogs.

Proto-Pasta's carbon-fibre PLA is very stiff, but "strength" is a catch-all term and I'm not sure it will meet your particular requirements.

And then there's the new glass-wool-filled polypropylene from Nanodax, but I'm not sure if it's available yet and it also may have too much flex for your application. Haven't done much support with it yet.

I'm surprised you find UltraT as "strong" as PolyMax. In my experience PolyMax is much stronger, but yes, support removal can be difficult.

The key to support removal is often printing at as low a temperature as possible while maintaining layer bonding.

MikeHenry:
Julia - why do you prefer colorFabb PLA+PHA over Meltink's PLA+PHA?

I've been using Meltink's filament lately and have yet to try colorFabb's so maybe the difference will be obvious in use, but so far MeltInk's prints have been mostly quite good.

Julia Truchsess:
There's only so much time to do comparisons, and habit is strong. I have done some good prints with Meltink's PLA+PHA and have nothing against it, I just have more experience with colorFabb, and sometimes (often) I just need something to come out right without a lot of experimentation, so I go with what I know best. Meltink is certainly a lot less expensive for U.S. users.

MikeHenry:
Thanks - I understand completely about lack of time to experiment.  I recently printed 25+ parts in Z-PETG because some were subject to warping and then discovered how well PLA+PHA does and re-printed all of them in that filament to much better success.  I need to find a test part that is quick to print to test out new (to me) filaments, preferably something that takes less than an hour and is typical of the mechanical stuff I usually do.

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