One of the things that continues to amaze me about companies working in the 3D printing industry is the sustained determination to push things forward and to keep improving things. One of those key “things” is materials, and one of the best examples of determination and improvement in this area is taulman3D. The company is at it again, even while running its Kickstarter campaign for its new ToolBox of high strength filaments, but this time the 3D printing material developer is branching out in order to offer a nylon 3D printing material in powder form for sintering platforms.
Even in the last month or two, the surge in announcements of new lower-cost laser sintering 3D printer platforms has been significant. Taulman3D obviously had its finger on the pulse in this regard, because the company first put out a call for testers of the nylon 618-s powder material back in February. And, they tell me: “our entire test stock was requested and shipped out within four weeks.” Because of the nature of the laser sintering process and the fact that it is undoubtedly more complicated than extrusion 3D printing processes with inherent health and safety issues, there are still many that doubt it can proliferate in the way that FFF platforms have. However, as more options emerge it seems that desktop laser-sintering has the potential to gain some serious traction, and the uptake of this new material from taulman3D also points quite clearly to the fact that the technology is moving forward, and quickly.
This is because laser sintering 3D printers offer some notable advantages that are difficult to achieve with filament extrusion 3D printers — in particular with regard to the negation of support material whereby the powder bed of material acts as a non-binding support. This permits more dimensionally accurate internal channels compared with FFF printers.
Following a successful testing period taulman3D’s Nylon 618-s 3D printer sintering powder is available now, direct from the company. It is a fully processed material with the characteristics you would expect — high strength, superior impact resistance, lack of odors and slippery surface properties. Testing has provided excellent feedback from the 3D printing community, and has resulted in two iterations of colour and average granularity (following retesting to meet developer’s requests).
The specifications of 618-s are:
- Size = ~30 mesh
- Tensile (PSI) = 4,575
- Elongation = 82%
- Modulus (PSI) = 22,190
- Color = Dark Gray
- Melt Temperature = 217C
- Tg = 50C
- Weight/Pkg = 1.1lb – Vacuum sealed w/desiccant
- Shrinkage in/in = 0.0074
- Flammability = UL 94 HB – UL 94 V2@ 3.2mm thickness
- FDA – This material has yet to be submitted for approvals.
Furthermore, because taulman3D has experience in “point source deflection,” “point source reflection” and raster and vector laser positioning, the company is able to provide insight on both optical and bitmapped correction systems to meet pincushion and linearity correction requirements.
