{"id":1491,"date":"2021-12-18T17:34:40","date_gmt":"2021-12-19T00:34:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.davidgunter.com\/?p=1491"},"modified":"2022-03-13T17:57:19","modified_gmt":"2022-03-14T00:57:19","slug":"3d-printing-with-wood-fiber-pla","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davidgunter.com\/es-mx\/2021\/12\/18\/3d-printing-with-wood-fiber-pla\/","title":{"rendered":"3D Printing with wood fiber PLA"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As a woodworker, I like the idea of being able to print with wood fiber embedded filament. A few of the YouTube videos I have watched on the subject have been very creative, notably this one<\/a> by The Swedish Maker<\/a>. The final prints are sandable and take stain reasonably well. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unfortunately, wood fiber filament is notoriously difficult to work with. The material is brittle and many people have issues with stringing, the wispy strands that form as the print nozzle moves from one part of the print to a new part. I found a well reviewed (as much as Amazon reviews can be trusted) wood filament<\/a> and proceeded to print a small part and ended up stopping it long before it finished. The stringing and layer quality were abysmal. Thus began a series of experimental prints in order to find a good profile for using this filament. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before getting into the experiments, here is my setup. I have a Creality Ender 3 v2<\/a> printer with the stock 0.4 mm nozzle and hotend. I’ve replaced the glass bed plate with a flexible magnetic plate. The extra magnetic layer means I tend to run the bed at a higher temperature than others might use. I also like to print PETG filament and I want to be able to print ABS, both of which require higher nozzle temperatures. For that, I upgraded the Bowden tube to a more tolerant PTFE one. I also made a hack<\/a> that prevents the tube from ever slipping away from the hotend, as it can do during high retraction prints. Finally, I installed Creality’s auto bed leveling sensor. The last one isn’t important for this work but it does give me spot-on bed adhesion for most of the work I do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No matter what software slicer one uses, there are dozens of settings that govern the quality of a 3D print. I use Ultamaker Cura<\/a>. It is freely available and came with a default set of filament profiles for my printer. It also had a hardware profile for my printer (and for most others on the market). I primarily use PLA in my prints, often use PETG, and PLA+ recently. For these, I have separate profiles that I have tuned to the point where I get consistently great print results. The wood filament I purchased is from Sunlu and is based on PLA. Therefore, I started with my default PLA profile and commenced developing a specific wood-PLA profile from there. Stringing is the issue I want to deal with and the following settings are the ones that I varied throughout this parameter search. Again, this is using the stock brass 0.4 mm nozzle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Parameters of Interest<\/h3>\n
\n \n\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n
\n Parameter Name <\/td>\n \n Default PLA Value <\/td>\n <\/tr>\n
\n Layer Height <\/td>\n \n 0.16 mm <\/td>\n <\/tr>\n
\n Print Speed <\/td>\n \n 80 mm\/s <\/td>\n <\/tr>\n
\n Nozzle Temperature <\/td>\n \n 220\u00baC <\/td>\n <\/tr>\n
\n Bed Temperature <\/td>\n \n 60\u00baC <\/td>\n <\/tr>\n
\n Retraction Distance <\/td>\n \n 5.5 mm <\/td>\n <\/tr>\n
\n Retraction Speed <\/td>\n \n 45 mm\/s <\/td>\n <\/tr>\n
\n Z Hop Enabled <\/td>\n \n No <\/td>\n <\/tr>\n
\n Outer Wall Wipe Distance <\/td>\n \n 0.0 mm <\/td>\n <\/tr>\n
\n Wipe Between Layers Enabled <\/td>\n \n No <\/td>\n <\/tr>\n <\/table>\n<\/div>