Printing PETG (Teflon) on other plastics? Possible?

[Dr. Woo @dr-woo I have several Robox units Kickstarter and Commercial Frankfurt/Main, Germany]

I have a project for a plastic enclosure which needs to have PETG edges/elements. My plan is to make use of the dual material head, once it becomes available. AFAIK the Robox print head temperature can be adjusted high enough to fuse and print PETG. But can anyone tell me if PETG sticks to any other plastics, as long as it’s hot? We all know that PETG (aka Teflon) is known for its non-stickiness.

[Patrik Lundgren @patrikl My Robox is a Green Kickstarter Limited Edition]

I was told once that it needs to be done in several layers where the teflon is increasingly mixed in with a more compatible plastic. The first layer containing very little teflon and the last all teflon since it would otherwise not adhere. Might have been a simplified explaination I got, not sure. Maybe some else knows more?

[Chris White @chrisyt]

I think PETg is Polyester Terephthalate Glycol, Teflon is PTFE Polytetraflouroethylene - dramatically different plastics. PTFE has a melting point ~320°C and is therefore not feasible to print with the current head design, due to the max temperature of the thermistor used to control nozzle temperature (300°C). There are a number of other flouroplastics including FEP, ETFE and PFA that often have lower melting points, but we have done no testing on these types of material (I’ve also never seen any in the 3D printing community generally…) - I would imagine there are huge problems with inter-layer bonding and indeed adhesion to the bed, but just guessing here… I think you would suffer similar issues if trying to get it to bond to anything else too i.e. ABS/PLA/Nylon due to the very low coefficient of friction, but it remains to be seen. The suggestion from @patrikl seems reasonable, I think there is as similar process for bonding PTFE to frying pans etc. using a metal oxide as a boundary layer.

PETG (well PET generally) however is a different story, as there are already a number of filaments in the market which make use of this material. One of particular interest is a new one from ColorFabb called Amphora/XT which is based on a Kodak Eastman PET specifically designed for 3D printing - check it out:

http://colorfabb.com/xt-copolyester

We anticipate this to be fully compatible with the Robox print head, and we’re trying to obtain some samples at the moment. I think some users have already done some testing with T-Glase from taulman (which I think is a polyester of some sort) with some great results - see:

http://taulman3d.com/t-glase-spec.html

http://www.cel-robox.com/groups/robox-beta-phase-1/forum/topic/latest-prints/page/3/

http://www.cel-robox.com/groups/robox-beta-phase-1/forum/topic/taulman-t-glase-settings/

http://www.cel-robox.com/groups/robox-beta-phase-1/forum/topic/taulman-t-glase/

We actually spoke to the rep from Kodak at CES last year, and I have his card on my desk - looks like we need to look at sourcing some of their new resin for filament…

[Michael Gordon @mikeg]

Of course PLA is also a polyester.

[gid @gid My Robox is a Green Kickstarter Beta]

Well, there’s polyester and there’s Polyester.

Tom Gidden -- Bristol, UK

[BHudson @bhudson I have several Robox units Kickstarter and Commercial Arizona, USA]

T-Glase is PETT, a version of polyethylene terephalate (PET) which is used in water bottles. It is a subset of polyester.

I operate two Betas and one Production Robox.
See my 3D Hub site at https://www.3dhubs.com/phoenix/hubs/ben

[Dr. Woo @dr-woo I have several Robox units Kickstarter and Commercial Frankfurt/Main, Germany]

I totally mixed up PETG and PTFE … it all sounds the same 😀 So I meant Teflon.

Imagine an ABS- or Polycarbonate-like plastic box which has an edge made from a Teflon-like material, which then touches and moves along an external, say glossy plastic surface. The goals are as follows:

• the Teflon-like edge should not scratch the external plastic surface on which it is moving along
• the Teflon-like material needs to bond to the material of the said plastic box
• box material and edge material should have the same color
• both materials need to be printable with my – hopefully soon to be delivered — Robox (£700 pledge here)

Any recommendations on a filament combination?

[Pete @pete My Robox is a Blue Commercial Version CEL HQ Bristol UK]

http://www.mousetape.com/

[Dr. Woo @dr-woo I have several Robox units Kickstarter and Commercial Frankfurt/Main, Germany]

Is it Robox-printable? 😉 But seriously… recommendations anyone?

[Pete @pete My Robox is a Blue Commercial Version CEL HQ Bristol UK]

Rather than printing in all these materials at once how about designing the part so it can fit an off the shelf part such as the mouse tape or perhaps just a screw on teflon shoe?

[Dr. Woo @dr-woo I have several Robox units Kickstarter and Commercial Frankfurt/Main, Germany]

For hygienical reasons, the design has to be gap-less. In mass-production this can be achieved with overmoulding, my question is how to mimic that in FDM. Of course one could print the parts separately and then glue them together, depending on the construction, but doing in directly in the printing process would be … desirable.

[Roman @romanv825]

Does anyone happen to have any success with Taulman T-glase? I’m not a beta user, so I don’t have access to the beta posting. I’m attempting to use the clear filament and my Robox will perform the initial nozzle clean, move to the middle of the print bed and then freeze. Automaker then becomes “non-responsive” and I have to either turn off the machine or end task. I’m using the info that I found on both http://taulman3d.com/t-glase-features.html and http://taulman3d.com/t-glase-spec.html. Any suggestions?

Thanks!

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