I'm thinking of getting some parts made for a 1:200 Space Shuttle, in Nylon12 using SLS. Has anyone worked with this stuff, and have opinions about it?
3D Printing Does anyone have experience with SLS Nylon?
- Thread starter Jeff Lassahn
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Might help if you explained what SLS is. Selective Laser Sintering (SLS) technology is relatively expensive so I suspect there will not be many.
I'm asking about Selective Laser Sintering. The thing where they make stuff by fusing powdered plastic with a laser.
The equipment to do it is definitely expensive (apparently the cost for a printer has recently come down to the bargain-basement of $20,000 or so) but it's not insanely expensive to get it done as a service.
I had CraftCloud3D do a quote for a set of parts, and it was about $37 in PLA, and $46 in SLS Nylon. So totally doable if it's a good design choice.
Someone I work with showed me a sample part made by SLS a few days ago, and it got me thinking that direction. Advantages seem to include:
Nylon is stronger, handles high temperatures better, etc than PLA or ABS
Finer detail is possible than typical with FDM.
The surface roughness is grainy, rather than stripy, with the layers not showing much. Probably easier to clean it up for a nice finish.
And one cool special feature, you can print a thin (~ 0.3mm) sheet parallel to the layer orientation and end up with a strong but flexible piece. I'm hoping that's a good starting point for making scale wraps for intertank stringers.
So it all seems like it's worth a try, but I'm probably missing some downsides.
The equipment to do it is definitely expensive (apparently the cost for a printer has recently come down to the bargain-basement of $20,000 or so) but it's not insanely expensive to get it done as a service.
I had CraftCloud3D do a quote for a set of parts, and it was about $37 in PLA, and $46 in SLS Nylon. So totally doable if it's a good design choice.
Someone I work with showed me a sample part made by SLS a few days ago, and it got me thinking that direction. Advantages seem to include:
Nylon is stronger, handles high temperatures better, etc than PLA or ABS
Finer detail is possible than typical with FDM.
The surface roughness is grainy, rather than stripy, with the layers not showing much. Probably easier to clean it up for a nice finish.
And one cool special feature, you can print a thin (~ 0.3mm) sheet parallel to the layer orientation and end up with a strong but flexible piece. I'm hoping that's a good starting point for making scale wraps for intertank stringers.
So it all seems like it's worth a try, but I'm probably missing some downsides.
I finally gave this a try, with mixed results.
The overall print quality was quite good, the surface texture is grainy but the layering is much less visible than with FDM methods, and resolution of fine details is also good.
I began this after seeing a test print from an unknown source that has a region printed very thin (nominally 0.010 inch) which results in a still strong but flexible sheet. Here's the test piece:
I hoped that I could do something similar to make a corrugated intertank wrap, which would be printed flat but thin enough to flex and conform to the body tube. That so far hasn't worked out so great.
Here's the prints I ended up with:
The wrap has lots of voids and cracks in it, and ended up being both much stiffer than the test piece above and also too damaged and fragile to be usable.
Everything else came out very nice though. Not sure if it's enough nicer than FDM to be worth the extra trouble.
The overall print quality was quite good, the surface texture is grainy but the layering is much less visible than with FDM methods, and resolution of fine details is also good.
I began this after seeing a test print from an unknown source that has a region printed very thin (nominally 0.010 inch) which results in a still strong but flexible sheet. Here's the test piece:
I hoped that I could do something similar to make a corrugated intertank wrap, which would be printed flat but thin enough to flex and conform to the body tube. That so far hasn't worked out so great.
Here's the prints I ended up with:
The wrap has lots of voids and cracks in it, and ended up being both much stiffer than the test piece above and also too damaged and fragile to be usable.
Everything else came out very nice though. Not sure if it's enough nicer than FDM to be worth the extra trouble.
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