After I received X1C, and then another one, and third… I was mostly printing just PLA and then some PETG until I discovered PETG-CF. Which looked stunning. And from that time on, PETG-CF was my main filament.
But PETG-CF, to all it’s greatness, it is not perfect for mechanical parts that need to endure temperatures of 70+ C. I found a solution - PET-CF!
Printing PET-CF may be a bit trickier; it needs to be dry, you may have dimensional issues with holes and it needs heated chamber and bed with 100+ C. Also, it needs to be printed slow. But once you master it, X1C can produce awesome prints that are quality wise - almost at par with PETG-CF. What I’ve discovered also is that Bambu must have switched formula for PET-CF recently, because if you purchase PET-CF now, it doesn’t print with so rough surface anymore.
Here are some of my projects, completely functional, made out of PET-CF.
Voron0.2 with structural parts printed out of PET-CF:
Mind showing your filament settings? Are they bambu filament stock settings?
I assume you’re using the 0.6 nozzle?
NB: I’m not sure I love the hole it digs in my wallet
Bumping this to see if you’d be willing to share your settings for PET-CF? I’m getting ready to print some fairly tricky components and I’d like to start off on the right foot. Thanks!
Regarding slicer profiles for printing PET-CF - just use stock one by Bambu. You may want to tweak cooling params depending on what kind of part you print. But generally, it sticks well to any surface and it doesn’t warp, so there aren’t any issues with printing. Just make sure you dry it well before printing.
However, I must take back some things I said before. This material, to be great, absolutely needs annealing. Without annealing, it cannot sustain high temperature under load, meaning, it creeps.
If annealing is something you can’t do, then I suggest you to rather use ezPCCF from 3DX, which is of similar mechanical properties but can take over 100 C without annealing. It is also fairly easy to be printed.
That’s the hard part about all annealing. You have to make the plastic malleable to anneal it, meaning it will likely alter the geometry. Never tried it, but I’d imagine trial and error can help you to creep up on a setup that works well, but I’m not expecting it to stay true to shape without significant efforts to counter act the sag and bend of overheated polymers.
When I look up the annealing temps for PET, its pretty high (140C). So if you have sensitive geometry, annealing might pose significant barriers. But I’d imagine, simple geometries can be braced to limit warping with relatively simple means.
Sand annealing is the first thing that comes to mind, but everything I’ve seen on that, still has some distortion or surface issues.
I would assume vacuum bagging could help, but I’m not sure it would be better or worse than sand (dimensionally)… again trial and error would be needed.
People use water for lower temp annealing but for PET temps, not sure that would be worth anything.
I tried this once with PLA. It wasn’t a complicated part, just a simple technical part, but it still collapsed. I imagine it will be the same with other materials.
The only good experience I’ve had with PLA is heating the outside of a housing with thick walls with a hot air gun (about 60°C air). This softens the outer layer and the other remains stable.
I don’t know what to expect. Tg is something like 79C, so at 140C won’t it more or less flow into a puddle if it isn’t supported from all directions? On the other hand, since it prints at 245-270C, maybe not?
My guess is the Tg is useful for amorphous materials and the crystallization temp is likely more useful for semi-crystalline materials. At least, that would be my guess as when you consider annealing is largely to crystalize the structure to strengthen it (correct me if I’m over simplifying it).
Most PET’s can take around 180C in the heat deflection test (if I recall correctly, its effectively measuring both 66 and 264 psi of pressure deflecting a test piece 0.25mm at whatever temp), so I wouldn’t expect it to melt, but it very well can warp. However, I doubt you’ll see warping under that crystallization temp. I’d imagine it can hold up pretty well under 100C (without annealing), but I can’t say for sure.
