Just from a material point of view, your findings don’t seem THAT wrong. nGen has a lower tensile strength and E-modulus than their PLA-PHA for instance (according to data from the MDS on Colorfabb.com). This might be the price you pay for higher temperature resistance.
Have you tried thicker layers? The thinner the layers, the weaker the part, even when printed in the same material.
Sincerely,
Jonas
Joerg_4
22
really good point, thank you. Sounds absolutely correct.
Will try thicker layers tomorrow.
Cheers,
Joerg
MB3D
23
Did you try XT at 235C ?
XT is ment to be printed at 240C at least, due to the fact that this filament takes up heat poorly you should go to 250-260C, maybe even a bit more if you print fast.
Printed two Marvin yesterday, one at .1mm and one at 0.05mm (FF creator X)
225° head
80° hot bed
60mm/s
3 shells, hollow
It is indeed very brittle at high resolution. My 0.1mm sample lost is feet a few time after I removed in out of the bed, my 0.05mm one was so brittle that both legs stayed on the bed only after a very gentle pull. and I can remove every 0.05mm layer my hand one after another, I could literally pell him down.
Of course, 0.05mm is a bit too extreme for my printer but a good indication about brittleness I suppose! Classic (non colofabb) PLA was not doing that!
I’ll try higher resolutions and other temperatures, but so far I have had better experience with the classic PLA (from good brands)
2 Likes
Hi,
Printed this design (Daedalus from Star Gate by ash2002 - Thingiverse) today in NGen light gray @ 100u at 238C with bed at 87C on a UM2 with cooling fans at 80%.
Compared to PLA and XT it has less of the ‘visible layer lines’ and is very suited for steep overhangs as there is no warping at the edges during overhangs.
I really like the material so far!
Cheers,
Alain
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I found nGen to be very easy to work with. On the LulzBot Mini, I printed well at 220-235°C, print bed at 75°C and with reduced fan speeds of 50% (depending on the piece being printed). I didn’t experience any warping or cracking issues. The finished parts look beautiful with a slightly glossy finish. What I like most with nGen is the great inter-layer adhesion (printed some water-tight vases) and the fact that it is odor-less when being printed. In terms of challenges, I found that nGen can led to ‘hairy’ prints (very fine filament strands that stay attached to the print) and that the filament can become almost too liquid (had some oozing issues with nGen coming out of the top of the extruder).
I hope it’s ok for me to share my findings which I recently compiled into a review that you can find here: http://3dprintingforbeginners.com/colorfabb-ngen-review/
Hi,
Another print in Colorfabb NGen, this time Silver Metallic. Printing at 228C, bed temperature at 85C. Fans at 50%.
The finish is really nice, however still a couple of bulky lines protruding out, but that could be due to the weak stability of this model (hence the glued wooden sticks :))
One interesting find is the absence this time of burned (blackish) NGen residue during the print. It’s not there this time at 228C.
No warping issues on small overhangs in this print. It performs nicely!
Hope this print completes well… still going strong for 6 hours now…
