Went to the Rocky Mountain RepRap festival yesterday. At the Big Tree Tech booth they had a spool of TPU filament running through an AMS with no problems.
They actually call this nTPU. It’s different from your normal TPU. It prints like PLA because, on the spool, it’s hard like PLA. They had it printing on a P1S using an AMS system. They were printing the typical benchy. One of the interesting things when looking at the printing process was the lack of stringing. The benchy also came out as a pretty good quality print.
When you take it off the build play, it feels almost like a typical PLA print. It’s both hard and rigid. The softening process occurs after the print is finished. They said there are two ways to get the filament to become soft like typical TPU. They also said it’s equivalent to between an 80 and a 90 rating.
The two methods they mentioned are:
Allowed to absorb humidity from the air. Depending on where you live will determine how long it takes to soften the object.
You can place a printed object in a container of water and allowed to remain in the water for about 10 minutes, or a little longer. Talking with the reps at the show, it seemed like this would be the option that I would need because of the low humidity here in Colorado.
I was pretty jazzed by this new development, but was bummed to find out it’s not available yet.
It’s going to be sold under the BiQu name, rather than the Big Tree Tech name.
Interesting. Does it reharden when in dry environments or does it remain permanently soft?
If it rehardens then that mean a spool exposed to moisture can be dried and printed but that also means items printed in it won’t remain soft which limits their usefulness.
Thermoplastische Polyurethane have interesting properties that are not just based on their rigidity - That’s why I keep my eyes open for TPUs that get even harder than 58D which you actual can get.
There are already methods for getting to 58A with real TPU with under-extrusion …:
The problem still is at Bambulab only which simply reject all types of TPU without apology as soon as you want to load it into the AMS - So the solutions have been there for a long time:
And because of the poor description of this new “Big Tree Tech” fillament, the fillament is useless at all… UV resistance? Resistance to solvents? Splitter properties? Standards met for possible residues? And so on… They can sell this on Amazon as far as I’m concerned. At least for me, just good enough for the trash can due to missing specification and 3 batch checks…
My understanding is it’s supposed to stay flexible because the melting causes a change in the properties. How does this affect storage? Don’t know. Since it’s still in development like a couple other things I saw for Bambu, the reps didn’t seem to have the kind of in depth info you’d have with a finished product.
We’ll know more once a final product is released so all of the information is available. I’m interested in the potential, which is why I’m not going to dismiss it right out of the gate.
I posted this to make people aware of what’s being worked on. When the final product is released we can hit BTT with all of these questions and others. I will more than likely get a spool to do some testing on. My guess is a bunch of youtube viewers will do the same thing.
Been hoping to find out more since I saw it flashed on screen on a couple of youtuber’s vids about RMRRF, but either BIQU didn’t want to discuss it on camera or none of the YouTubers asked about it. Here’s a screen cap from edge of tech’s latest vid:
“nTPU”
“PRINT TPU IN YOUR AMS!
USE BIQU nTPU.”
At least we know it’ll be available in blue
TPU is working, it`s just blocked. Especially the harder TPU versions, just blocked unnecessarily. Can’t even be decoupled at own responsibility.
If Bambulab just bring there own TPU into the AMS they will get the “red flag” from me. I really hope that no one even starts to play with this idea… It takes a lot but this could be a marketing idea that says goodbye to me.
Than they don`t get the yellow card, the red one will show up with an extended very long playing time ban… could even result in a lifetime ban.
So it’s understandable that they don’t want to talk about it yet, because they’re definitely playing with fire on this.
And on the other hand, any TPU spool that doesn’t have an FDA stamp on it can be thrown into a river with dead fish, there are enough dead rivers… I don’t need trash, there are enough people selling garbage and I don`t look for a new one on this topic…
You can disable the blocking with a single checkbox in Bambu Studio: settings>Skip AMS Blacklist check
TPU doesn’t function in the AMS because it’s too flexible, if you search YouTube or this forum you’ll see two videos of modders who’ve both gotten normal TPU including Bambu tpu to work with heavy modification to the AMS (one with a heater, the other with a change to the Bowden routing inside the ams), BBL aren’t blocking it because they’re evil, they’re blocking it because it will jam and you’ll blame them.
I have no idea what you’re talking about with flags and colors,
Most of us here just want to know the latest on solutions, not rage.
I’m hopeful about it still, and the Biqu option sounds interesting. In the meantime, try flexible PLA
After you’ve read here from top to bottom, read also the thure this from top to bottom
and then we may can talk about, but don’t give me 4 clues that I already know and read the things you overlookd
And by the way: Since I’ve been on the forum, I’ve only blocked one single user - that more or less means I’m a very open person to other opinions. Maybe also because I was already in the navy business - 12 men on the high seas who can only help each other. So when I talk about giving/threaten someone a red flag, it doesn’t just happen. Than there must be a lot off where I am very sure about… And if they come up with the idea of simply getting their own TPU into the printer (which is just a guess of me, not based on facts - doom and gloom), then at least from me there will be no more questions.
I hope that the hurdle in the printer will soon disappear and that you can easily select TPU in the printer, at least for hardness like 58D
can the flash forge flex pla really be used in the ams? this stuff is like spaghetti! i went through that article and did a web search and cant find anyone that is using it in their ams.
