Aurarum VBee VINYL PVC 3d printer filament – 1.75mm Black

Description

Akdeniz Chemson’s VBee® VINYL is a unique polymer for 3D printing. It has many superior qualities by nature of its chemistry but also significant advantages for 3D printing. Overall, these properties make it perfectly suited for serious 3D printing of parts that are meant to last – an ideal industrial 3D printing material.
The following recommendations and technical guidelines have been derived from extensive hands-on 3D printing experience, gained by Akdeniz Chemson technical personnel and in cooperation with external field testers.
The majority of the information provided here focuses on Akdeniz Chemson VBee® VINYL technology specific to filaments but many of the core fundamentals will apply to all forms of VBee® VINYL (also granules/pellets).
Printer size and actual printing filament diameter, whether supplied as filament or generated in situ from pellets, also have an important influence on the 3D printing of VBee® VINYL. These will be highlighted in more detail below.
It is important to understand that Akdeniz Chemson VBee® VINYL is not quite as easy to print as some other polymers, mainly due to its thermostability limitations. It should thus not be the material of choice for the casual 3D printer but rather for users that want to achieve excellent results for applications that would normally use Vinyl or require technical properties that Vinyl can provide. VBee® VINYL can be printed successfully and with excellent results if basic guidelines are followed.

Some Vinyl/PVC fundamentals
Vinyl/PVC differs from most other synthetic polymers in that it incorporates chlorine in its polymer molecule. Along with the multitude of engineering and manufacturing benefits that make it the third most used plastic worldwide, PVC has an inherent reduced thermal stability at processing temperature, when compared to most other plastics. Akdeniz Chemson VBee® VINYL for industrial Additive Manufacturing/3D printing thus requires a different degree of attention to 3D printing details than most of the other AM/3DP polymer materials.
The sensitivity to processing heat means that prolonged exposure will cause “thermal degradation”/colour change which may result in decomposition into hard, carbonised residues. Akdeniz Chemson is the specialist for stabiliser design for conventional PVC processing used in industrial manufacturing and was therefore ideally suited to develop a PVC formulation especially formulated for use in the Additive Manufacturing/Industrial 3D printing environment.
Akdeniz Chemson’s advanced, benign stabilisation technology has provided remarkable and unprecedented thermostability for the Akdeniz Chemson VBee® VINYL materials. However, it is important to understand that even with superior stabilisation technology, the thermal degradation of PVC cannot be completely arrested, only significantly delayed.
Other polymers used in Additive Manufacturing/3D printing, such as ABS, PET/PETG, PLA, etc. degrade less visibly and can be left in the printing head at printing temperature without noticeable degradation (but they also do degrade). If Vinyl is left exposed to the printing heat while it remains static in the hot head, significant discolouration and degradation may occur.
Due to these requirements, VBee® VINYL is not recommended for small and delicate objects and for use with fine, under 0.5 mm diameter, nozzles.
4 Hardware and peripherals considerations for successful 3D printing of Akdeniz Chemson VBee® VINYL
As stated earlier in this guide, Akdeniz Chemson VBee® VINYL is a specialised 3D printing material that can provide a unique range of benefits, however it requires some special attention and technical arrangements compared to other 3D printing polymers.
Careful and well-informed selection of appropriate hardware platforms and peripherals to use with this technology is important. Nevertheless, VBee® VINYL can basically be printed on any commercially available or designed 3D printers if certain adjustments, especially of temperature parameters, are possible.
4.1 Selection of the appropriate nozzle or “hot end”
The copper in brass is chemically antagonistic to PVC and promotes degradation. Thus, the use of brass nozzles is generally not recommended when 3D printing VBee® VINYL and stainless steel nozzles should be used instead.
Next to the hot end material, the aperture diameters are also important. Over several thousand 3D printing hours with VBee® VINYL on various 3D printers large and small, it became evident that small/fine nozzle diameters are not well suited for Vinyl 3D printing. The surface/melt volume ratio is not sufficient. It is therefore recommended to only print VBee® VINYL with nozzle diameters larger than 0.5 mm.
The user has the choice to use high quality, even coated steel nozzles to avoid adhesion (PVC/Vinyl is a polar plastic and adheres to metal surfaces). For more industrial 3D approaches, inexpensive stainless steel nozzles are also a viable option. They can be discarded once they develop a surface stickiness thus avoiding cleaning which may be required when using more sophisticated nozzles over a longer time period.
The recommended hot end temperatures for VBee® VINYL are 225-235 °C. On industrial printers, higher temperatures up to 280 °C can be achieved in fast printing of larger objects if the process is properly optimised and controlled.
4.2 Sufficient drive in the drive/extruder mechanism: geared extruder heads
Many trials with a multitude of 3D printers have resulted in the conclusion that a geared-extruder head (3:1 ratio or better) is essential to successfully 3D print VBee® VINYL.
Vinyl has a higher melt viscosity compared to several other 3D printing polymers and thus controllable forces are needed to provide an even, uninterrupted flow from the nozzle. This also avoids build-up of material on the hot surfaces. As the advantage of this forced filament “extrusion” has been proven for most 3D printing filaments, geared extruder heads are standard in many printers. They are also required if flexible materials are 3D printed. Precision extrusion heads are supplied by e.g. Bondtech/Sweden and Dyze Design/Canada.
All larger 3D printers using 2.85 mm filament or compound pellets have extruder-like printing heads that push the filament at an even pace, or even at an automatically adjustable pace to give sufficient flow in areas of higher printing speeds.
It should be also mentioned here that, for industrial (and self-made) printing heads, the residence time for VBee® VINYL at elevated temperatures should be kept to a minimum. Vinyl does not need to be pre-dried like some other polymers and thus pre-drying “heat chambers” are not needed and their use with Vinyl is strongly discouraged.
VBee® VINYL performs best if the material is only heated where required (extruder/printer head) and kept cool in all other areas. It can be left in the printer head (if cooled down quickly enough) and printing again restarted immediately, even after weeks, without any filament drying needs.
4.3 Performance improvements with an enclosed/sealed build envelope and heated chamber
In many trials with different platforms it became clear that an enclosed chamber has advantages for 3D printing VBee® VINYL (and many other polymers). The more controlled environment allows undisturbed fan use and avoids cooling influence from the environment.
As the melt of VBee® VINYL is highly viscous, little fan action is required for achieving objects’ dimensional stability. In larger printers often no fan action is used to maintain highest adhesion between the layers (z-axis adhesion).
In order to achieve superior z-axis adhesion, a heated chamber is recommended. A chamber temperature of about 50-60 °C proved to increase tensile strength across the z-layer by around 40%. This phenomenon can be observed with many 3D printing polymers.
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4.4 Heated bed adhesion
We recommend using a heated bed with 60 °C temperature. VBee® VINYL has very little tendency to warp, so surface adhesion is not a big problem.
Surface-roughened (sandpapered) PET tape or fibreglass build plates also perform well, using an ‘Extra Strength’ glue stick for adhesion.
VBee® VINYL printed parts can be easily removed from the base plate.
4.5 Surface modification after printing
The finished VBee® VINYL print has the typical 3D print layered surface. Depending on the nozzle diameter, this can result in an almost precious stone sheen, or simply a rippled surface.
Other polymers are restricted to the use of solvents to smoothen the surface. VBee® VINYL objects can also be smoothed with appropriate solvents but preferably sanded wet or dry, filed, sand-blasted, and even machined into exact shapes. When printing a 100% infill solid object, this can then be machined into a precision shape.
5 Important technical guidance notes for special printers
5.1 Multi-extruder/multi-material systems
High-quality dual, or multi-extruder FFF systems are becoming more common and more reliable, however the fundamental architecture of these platforms rarely varies from one basic design: while one extruder is working, the other extruder will wait in its “ready” state.
This programming approach, common to nearly all dual/multi-extruder platforms, is not suited for printing with VBee® VINYL. As explained above, keeping Vinyl continuously at printing temperature causes thermal degradation.
5.2 FFF platforms that use standard gcode
If the embedded processor in the FFF system in question is capable of running standard tool path instruction sets (gcode) from commonly available software, then printing VBee® VINYL may be possible if the gcode program will issue extruder travel and temperature commands that allow for the extruder loaded with Akdeniz Chemson VBee® VINYL NOT to be left in a stationary “primed” state.
In many cases, features to facilitate this are available. Recent versions of S3D, Slic3r and KissSlicer will allow for custom profiles to achieve these results or get close enough to then edit the resultant gcode in a standard code editor, by changing the M104 and associated “S” values.
For those with more advanced gcode editing skills, greater customisation of the machine instruction set will greatly increase the quality of results and allow for far greater levels of optimisation specific to VBee® VINYL.
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5.3 FFF platforms that use proprietary machine instruction sets
If the embedded processor in the FFF system in question has proprietary, specialised or heavily customised tool path instruction sets, then in most cases the manufacturer of that particular system will need to become involved. This could prove costly.
5.4 FDMTM (Stratasys) platforms that use proprietary machine instruction codes
The term “FDM” is an abbreviation for the process known as Fused Deposition Modelling and is a registered trademark of the Stratasys corporation. Therefore, anyone using the term “FDM”, whether they realise it or not, is technically referring to a Stratasys product and the associated systems.
All Stratasys FDMTM systems use a proprietary file format, “.cmb” (Coordinate Machine Binary) to drive their platforms.
The Stratasys ecosystem referred to here includes a proprietary materials portfolio, with associated cartridges equipped with individual EPROMS.
Akdeniz Chemson VBee® VINYL material is currently not available in Stratasys cartridges. Also, VBee® VINYL is not compatible with Stratasys FDM platforms due to the inability to customise suitable settings for printing VBee® VINYL.
6 Desktop printers – Toolpath generation and slicing considerations
The following advice covers mainly desk top and slightly larger 3D printers. More industrial printers often have different, sometimes proprietary software, where changes and adjustments are not easily possible or require different approaches.
VBee® VINYL prints in a temperature range similar to ABS, however the heated bed temperatures are closer to those used with PLA (see below).
Parameters and values recommended for VBee® VINYL material printing
Parameter
Values
Hotend temperature range
225 ˚C – 235 ˚C
Bed temperature
60 ˚C – 75 ˚C
Print speed
50mm/s throughout i.e. 50mm/s infill, 50mm/s external and internal perimeters. 30mm/s for bottom and top solid layers
Fan
70-100 %
The remaining slicer conditions such as retraction, infill density and layer height can be set to your preference, and as always with 3D printing, trial and error is the best way to optimise a particular system.
6.1 Fan cooling, temperature ramping and purging
Once the model has completed printing, it is wise to avoid additional material solidification on both the internal and external surfaces of the nozzle. This phenomenon occurs with most 3D printing polymers as a result of extended heating and is correlated to the length of the printing time.
When using Akdeniz Chemson VBee® VINYL, it is advisable to program the gcode so that
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hot-end temperature is reduced at the earliest appropriate line of code as soon as the model is completed.
6.1.1 Ooze control
Because Vinyl has a tendency to ooze and string due to its high melt viscosity, it’s highly recommended that the ooze control features in Simplify3D are optimized.
Navigate to the ‘Ooze Control’ panel; below is a screenshot of the default ooze control settings:
Parameter settings should be changed according to the values and settings shown below
In the case of usage of a Boden Extruder with a PTFE Teflon lining, the retraction distance should be set from 1.5 mm to 8 mm instead.
7 Clog and blockage recovery and cleaning
As explained before, the choice of the nozzle when printing VBee® VINYL is important.
If an expensive nozzle is used in private printing, the following procedure may be used. For anybody 3D printing many objects or printing (semi-) professionally, we would recommend using cost-efficient stainless-steel nozzles which can be discarded at no significant cost when blocked or tarnished.
7.1 Unclogging or clearing a blocked nozzle
This method is not recommended for coated steel nozzles as the coating could be scratched or destroyed.
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The easiest way to unblock a nozzle is to use a hand drill to carefully bore out any carbonised material out of the hot-end – do not use a power drill as this may chip your nozzle. Use an appropriate drill bit for a 1.75mm bore or a 3mm bore, as required.
An example of a hand-drill is shown below:
Once you have removed most of the degradation, flush the nozzle with ethanol and repeat until you can see that the inner bore is clean. Use a light source to help you check that the inside walls are clean. Then use a micro drill to clean out the nozzle orifice, the front end of the hand drill should become visible when leaving the nozzle:
Again, use a light source to ensure that the nozzle orifice is completely open.
We trust that this basic guideline will support the use of Akdeniz Chemson’s VBee® VINYL filaments in your additive manufacturing activities.
If you have any suggestions on how to improve this brochure or queries about 3D printing VBee® VINYL, please contact us via sales.au@akdenizchemson.com
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Akdeniz Chemson holds international patents covering the use of PVC/Vinyl in 3D printing. Printing PVC/Vinyl with other materials than VBee® may violate patent rights.
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