Good recommendations for mechanical parts with strength

[Wardad5]

Hello all,

I have a friend designing a bike saddle and he is wanting me to 3D print his prototype. I am wanting to see what filaments would work well for high strength? He wants to be able to sit on it and see how it feels. I am worried that ABS will not cut it. I have a Voron 2.4 so looking to print it on that. As a follow-up question, I have the Phaetus HF hotend and am wondering with whatever filament is recommended if I need a better nozzle (mine is stock) and if so, what nozzle type does this hotend use? I have looked all over online and cannot seem to find a clear answer. Thank you all in advance. 

[smirk]

The Phaetus dragon is compatible with (E3D) V6 Nozzles.If the chosen filament is something with additivies (Carbon Fibre or Glass Fibre) then you'll need a hardened nozzle at the least (like this one)....and at a minimum 0.4mm but perhaps larger like 0.6 to prevent clogging and aide with print speed.

As to filament, perhaps some sort of reinforced filament like ABS+CF, but that's harder to recommend.Depends on the design of the seat and your friends expectation for the testing (whether they're going to gently sit on it for shape/fit/relative comfort; or want to fit it to the bike and have a good bounce on it). I'm not a cyclist but a lot of the saddles I've seen are not simply hard plastic (migtht be a hard sub-shell covered in some form of padding) so I imagine there's a fair bit to select/choose for comfort and fit. It might be a matter of expectation setting rather than filament selection.  If you were designing a part purely to be 3D-printed (on your Voron) then that would involve very different design decisions from something that was a prototype to give someone an idea of "what it looks like" before being manufactured by some more appropriate mechanism (SLS, say)

To be honest there would be nothing wrong with printing it in PLA (or ABS ) for your "this is what it looks like" prototype and if it looks/feels good then follow that wiith something produced in a reinforced filament for a bit more functional testing.However, I think you need to ascertain the "testing parameters" as it were. I don't think a saddle printed (on a Voron) in any filament will be particularly robust if it's been designed like a saddle that will be produced by other means....(if you follow what I mean)

 

[claudermilk]

I am a cyclist, and your guess is pretty good @smirk. A hard(ish) base usually of plastic or similar with some padding. Counter-intuitively less padding can be better than more. There is a ton involved in picking a comfortable saddle--swapping from the stock one to the next wider similar model made a huge difference with my bike.

Anyway, with limited experience in materials I would think for a "here's what it looks like" print anything would do--PLA probably the easiest. For a possible test fit I'd think ABS should be fine. Picking the print settings is important. For this I'd start with Voron specs (4 walls, 40% infill), maybe more walls for additional strength.

I suspect printing a saddle shell on a FDM printer is going to be...challenging. Lots of supports most likely.

[Maurici]

On 2/28/2023 at 11:18 PM, Wardad5 said:

Hello all,

I have a friend designing a bike saddle and he is wanting me to 3D print his prototype. I am wanting to see what filaments would work well for high strength? He wants to be able to sit on it and see how it feels. I am worried that ABS will not cut it. I have a Voron 2.4 so looking to print it on that. As a follow-up question, I have the Phaetus HF hotend and am wondering with whatever filament is recommended if I need a better nozzle (mine is stock) and if so, what nozzle type does this hotend use? I have looked all over online and cannot seem to find a clear answer. Thank you all in advance. 

was this ever sorted?

I can offer a few meters of PC10 from stratasys free of charge... if you are uk based... you won´t do better than this.

I do print that stuff witht the exact same hot end as you do. 335degrees nozzle temperature and no cooling at all with a very well soaked chamber and ST nozzle... Is that good that probably would even do as the real thing, not only as a proto, but either way.

Is a genuine offer and to anybody else too (within reason). I do have around 2.5kg of that stuff and I won´t ever use it all before it goes bad.

It tends to wrap, but as I assume for your application you are only bothered about the upper side, it can be easily printed over a 10 layers raft in a lightly Elmers glue covered smooth PEI sheet. (in fact, even stratasys prints by defect over a 10 layer raft for big parts).

You are likely to ruin the smooth part of your PA sheet, however, in all honesty, I´m sure your mate will be happy to replace it!

Edited March 20 by Maurici

[Wardad5]

I think I am going to go with some ABS or ASA with multiple perimeters. The offer for the filament is nice but sadly I am in the USA. Thank you for the insights and advice.

[Penatr8tor]

On 3/22/2023 at 9:45 AM, Wardad5 said:

I think I am going to go with some ABS or ASA with multiple perimeters. The offer for the filament is nice but sadly I am in the USA. Thank you for the insights and advice.

If you do... I've had very good results with Polymaker and Prusament both of which can be acquired on Amazon. I currently print with ASA as ABS doesn't offer any properties better than what ASA offers, so why bother with ABS. I mean if there's some color you can't get in ASA.