So, the next part of the stool project will take around 11 hours to print, so I need to start the print earlier than 10:19 pm when I’m writing this post haha. Because of that, I decided to talk about another interesting experiment I did over the weekend: printing with my Hyrel and PETg filament! Hyrel had settings for PETg already, so it was fairly easy to dial in. Printing a sample object produced a very opaque piece, which seemed odd to me because I have a friend (who exclusively uses PETg to print), and he always gets very shiny and translucent surfaces.
My friend suggested that I ramp the temperature up from 205c to around 240c and the results were dramatic! I got the sheen and translucency my friend had with his prints at 240, so it seems that an increase in temperature translates to an increase in transparency of PETG. Here are the results of the two experiments (205c print on the left and 240c print on the right):
It’s definitely clear that the 240c print is shinier than the 205c print. However, I think 240c was a little too high of a printing temp. I was getting some oozing when the extruder moved between sides of the wall, so I think I have to bump it down to 230c. I’m hoping that will clear up the ooze problems.
So, back to the stool, I’ll start the next piece soon! And then I can talk to you about the process of joining two pieces of PLA together. Stay Tuned!
John (aka The Mad Printer)
The Mad Printer 