Have you ever wanted to print wood on your 3d printer? I mean actual wood that
you can sand and you can stain. I'll show you how
on today's Filament Friday. This week's Filament Friday is brought to you by
these patreon supporters. I'm gonna be using this hatchbox PLA
wood filament. Now they didn't send me this. This isn't a sponsored video. This
is my preference for printing wood. Here's a range of filaments that I've
used. Filamentive at the top. I've printed with this. It's a little bit rough. You
have to use a bigger nozzle and such, but it does print pretty decent. Esun at the
bottom is more of a wood color it's not really wood.
It prints smooth but you can't really sand it or stain it. Hatchbox is a
compromise between the two. It's smooth and you can actually stain it and sand
it. And it prints really well on a standard nozzle.
Here's a few examples. This shelf I made out of wood filament many many videos
ago and these knobs that are on all my cabinets in my shop. These are actually
two color. It's wood knob with a glowing a dark filament insert. The print quality
with the wood is not quite as good as pure PLA but then you can sand it and
stain it or paint it so who really cares. And I love the fact that I can use wood
for like brackets if I'm making something out of wood. I don't have to use little
plastic black brackets. I can actually make them in wood and then stain the
whole thing. So they all look the same. It's really a cool option. The first
print I'm gonna do with the hatch box PLA wood is my CHEP cube. I'm gonna slice
it here in Cura 4.0 using my magic profiles. Here I'm gonna use the magic 0.2 profile
I share all these in the description below. 0.2 layer height 25%
infill and 50 millimeters per second. So we'll slice this up and then we'll see
how it turns out when I print it on the Ender 3. And here's the result. If you
look close it's a little bit grainy. It's got a little bit of rough spots. It's
even got some splitting in it like you would get in wood. The top of it's a
little bit rougher, but it's kind of what you'd expect for a wood print. That
roughness can easily be sanded out because you're sanding wood and it feels
just like wood as you're sanding it. Now you can't really use a belt sander or
nothing because its still got plastic in it. It'll get too hot and the plastic will
soften. But sanding by hand there's no problem. I can get every corner and round
it up and then when it's done it looks like it's got sawdust in it. So all I've got
to do is blow on it and the sawdust goes away. And I have this wood block leftover.
Doesn't this look like a wood block that was carved? But it's not, it's actually a
wood block that was 3d printed on a printer and then sanded with actual
sandpaper. I love the way this looks. And as far as printing I don't recommend you
mounted up here if you have it Ender 3 or any printer like this. Mount
your spool close to the extruder so it goes in straight. I print on the Bowden
tube and with a stock nozzle I've had no issues. This stuff prints beautifully
with that set up and it doesn't tear everything up. Now what about printing
detail? Well it's wood so you gotta print of baby groot right? So I
found this smiling baby Groot on Thingiverse by using Raxian. So I
imported that in to Cura 4.0 and I downsized it to 50% of its original size
and then i'm going to use my magic 0.12 profile for Cura. So it's a 0.12
layer height 25% infill, 50 millimeters per second just like before. I could print
this a little bit slower but I wanted to see how it would do at this standard
speed. And once I sliced it, it said it would take about 3 hours to print so
realistically about 4 hours to print this thing and I will see how it turns
out. And here's the results. It's not a
perfect print by any means. It's got a few little zits on its arms and legs but
overall I think this is a pretty good print especially for actual wood print. I
may up size it or print a little slower in the future but I like how this turned
out. Some people recommend you up size your nozzle to 0.5 or 0.6 and then use
a hardened nozzle. That may be true if you use Filamentive or
filaments similar to this that's really rough, but that's what I love about the
hatchbox. It's so smooth I can print it on a standard machine with standard
Bowden tube, brass 0.4 nozzle, I get great results and I don't see any damage
And I mentioned that you could stain it or paint it, well here's an example. I
like using Minwax water-based stain. This is a pecan color. All you do is you
rub it on and then wipe off the excess. The cube on the right has one coat of the
stain. The one on the left is fresh off the printer. If I want it
darker I just add another layer. The wood that's in the 3d print actually absorbs
the stain the way regular wood does.
If you only want a mild color change you can do that right on the 3d printer.
Here's a block that I printed at 180 degrees C for the lower third, 200
degrees C for the middle and 220 degrees on top. You can see that the top higher
temperature is lighter than the cooler 180 degrees C on the bottom. If you
talk to anybody that does woodworking they'll have certain woods that they
like to work with. Some like maple, some like pine, some like oak, it depends on
the project but they still have certain woods that they like to work with. Hatchbox
is the wood filament that I prefer to work with. Again this filament was not
donated to the channel. This isn't a sponsor in any way shape or form. I've
just done a lot of wood printing and this is the filament that I recommend