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Nylon problems

A project log for Stratasys Dimension SST

Get a scrapped Stratasys Dimension SST running

captmcallisterCaptMcAllister 02/03/2016 at 02:120 Comments

February 2, 2016: I tried to print with Nylon filament, Taulman 645 Alloy, and it gave me nothing but problems. It kept getting jammed in the extruder. Fortunately, if I understand the design correctly, Stratasys has made an amazing extruder. It seems like it's fairly hard to jam up the nozzle. The jam seems to happen right where the full filament diameter feeds into the liquifier. This means that the jams were pretty easy to clear. Just back the filament out of the head.

I tried a ton of different temperatures for the enclosure and the extruder, but I could never get it to extrude more than a few inches. Ultimately, I measured the filament diameter and found it was off by as much as 0.2 mm. That means my 1.75 mm filament was up to 1.95 mm. The extruder couldn't handle this larger diameter, so it would just squeeze the filament out the side of the pinch rollers. I have started to politely register my discontent with the supplier. We'll see if they let me return it.

I'm also aware that Nylon is incredibly hygroscopic so i am drying the filament in my build chamber overnight. I'll measure it again after this to see if the diameter changes. I think it's unlikely though because when it did extrude, it wasn't popping as far as I could tell, and it also arrived in a sealed bag in the middle of winter and went right into a sealed Stratasys cartridge filled with dessicant. We'll see though.

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