Hi everybody, Erick Wolf here from Airwolf 3D. Today
I'm going to talk to you about the strength of commonly and not so commonly
3d printed materials specifically we'll be talking about PLA nylon 910, abs and
polycarbonate. We'll test each material by 3d printing a common hook and then
loading the hook until it fractures. The hook that holds the most weight will
correspond to the material that has the highest tensile strength and to back it up
they'll pull some information from a great article from 3d print com
specifically talking about the tensile strength of all the different 3d printed
materials that we discuss today to keep it interesting we set up a fun
experiment using our 3d printed hook to pick up a tractor tire that weighs 150
pounds loaded with hundreds of more pounds of weight from our local and
favorite gym precision Fitness in Costa Mesa California so let's get on with it
and start talking about our 3d printing materials the most popular desktop
filament is polylactic acid or as we commonly referred to it PLA we print PLA
at about 190 to 200 C with a bed at 60 C and we apply wolfbite nano to that bed
to help with adhering it. The wolf bite Nano adheres the PLA to the glass
printing surface and after the prints done its easy to remove the part.
Now some commonly 3d printed objects in PLA or toys and figurines PLA is used
all the time in schools it's environmentally friendly its compostable
and it prints easily and low temperatures in all sorts of different
environments it's also pretty strong you may be surprised at just how strong it
is so let's check the video
pretty darn impressive PLA survived up to and 285 pound lift with a small hook
and bringing simulate to be able to survive 285 pounds is pretty darn
impressive truth be told we were surprised for the strength of PLA
however when we look back at that article we mentioned earlier from 3d
print com PLA has a very high tensile strength in fact it is rated to 7,250
pounds per square inch this is a strong material but with that comes a
caveat there's a reason PLA is mostly used for
toys and figurines PLA by its nature degrades in sunlight and degrades in an
outdoor environment so with that said please don't make any structural parts
at a PLA because in only a matter of a couple hours your PLA part can entirely
transform. Let's talk about real engineering materials.
let's start off with ABS. ABS next to PLA is one of the most common materials
printed on the desktop here at Airwolf we were one of the first companies five
years ago in this industry to start printing with ABS on the desktop
why because ABS is a strong material but it is a stable material also it can be
sanded it can be painted it's used in numerous automotive industrial and
home applications you can find ABS in all sorts parts. Now when printing with
ABS please keep in mind that there are several things your printer needs to
have to get the best quality parts. First you need to print at 240 c or higher
your printing bed needs to be at a 120 C or higher and you
should really have a closed environment to avoid cracking and warping finally we
use Wolfbite on our glass bed to adhere the ABS and to minimize the chance of warping on
the part with those criteria taken care of you can produce very nice end use
products with ABS. As a matter of fact we optimize the AXIOM 3d printer for
printing in abs with the enclosed environment now for the real test how
does ABS compared to PLA as ABS and PLA are the most frequently used
materials which one is stronger let's watch the video
as you notice the ABS hook snapped right away
we didn't bother to reduce the weight on the hook because we're interested in
finding out the ultimate 3d printing material with that said you can increase
the cross-sectional area of your abs to make it as strong as you need and the
beauty of abs is it's easy to print it lasts for a long time and it's easily
workable. Meaning sandable, paintable etc. but abs does have a lower tensile
strength than PLA in fact ABS's strength 4700 psi compared to PLA
which comes in at 7,250 psi but we're really here to find the strongest
desktop 3d printing material and abs and PLA aren't gonna cut it so what's up
next there is a wonderful material that I'm sure you all have heard of and it's
called nylon but nylon is traditionally very difficult to print on the desktop
at Airwolf 3D we did a number of things to solve that first we invented a
material called nitro wolfbite nitro this is applied to the surface of a bed
the bed is kept between 70 and 100 C and the cart is printed on between 250 and
276 we have been using nylon and Airwolf 3d to
make functional parts of our 3d printers since 2014 and this nylon gear is a
great example of it weve printed thousands of these gears and they are some of the
strongest and most reliable components of our 3d printers. so after that brief
description of nylon let's take a look at the video and see how it performs as
a hook now looking at the video nylon is a great material to make structural
parts with the nylon hook lasted much longer
than than abs or the pla parts that's because nylon has a very high tensile
strength nylon in fact is rated for 7000 psi compared with 4700 PSI for ABS and
one of the beautiful things about nylon is when it breaks this doesn't give
right away it slowly elongates into a predictable
failure notice how the hook initially bent but didn't yield until hundreds of
pounds later while the PLA hook broke at 285 pounds our nylon hook lasted until 485
pounds as we can see nylon is a predictable material that works great in
load applications in fact every Airwolf printer built since 2014 uses nylon
gears for incredible reliability and precision but we're not here just to
talk about nylon we're here to find the strongest desktop 3d print material and no
discussion would be complete without a mention of polycarbonate. At Airwolf 3D
since 2014 with the introduction with the Airwolf HDX we've
been printing polycarbonate extensively polycarbonate prints at 290 to 315 c
with a bed temperature of 145 c we'll use Wolfbite Mega to adhere
the polycarbonate parts to the glass printing surface
now polycarbonate is a very strong material to work with this in fact is
made out of polycarbonate right here and one of my favorite things to do with polycarbonate
to demonstrated strength is to drop it or to throw it or to bounce it off
cement floors because polycarbonate is very difficult break see after
bouncing this hook it looks identical how it looked before you just can't do
that with other materials. So the question is it looks great here we use it in our printers all the
time we've been printing with the material since 2014 but how much weight
can we lift with this tiny hook let's take a look at the video to find out
polycarbonate is the undisputed king of desktop 3d printing materials not only is
it incredibly strong it's print great it also has a great heat deflection
temperature in comparison to nylon polycarbonate has a tensile strength of
9800 psi whereas nylon is only at 7000 psi when we design the axiom 3d
printer we designed it to print materials like polycarbonate we've
designed it to 3d print these materials for hours and hours and time in a very hot
environment that is how you achieve uniform finish and the strength
throughout the part when printing Polycarbonate so can you believe it we
lifted 685 pounds with this tiny polycarbonate hook in summary
polycarbonate is the undisputed king of desktop 3d printing materials
to get this spool of filament free go to airwolf3d.com/free shipping and
get a free wolfbite