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