Nylon 12 Purchasing Down?

[henryqiu]

Toughness is a specifically defined property that measures the amount of energy a material can absorb before fracture. Strength (whether in tension or flexure) is measured in terms of stress (force per area), while toughness has units of energy (commonly J/m or J/m²). In polymers, toughness is typically evaluated by hitting a notched or unnotched specimen with a hammer on a pendulum and seeing how much energy is absorbed.

If you compare the Notched Izod impact strength between Nylon 12 (32 J/m) and Nylon 12 Tough (60 J/m), you can see that Nylon 12 Tough is almost twice as tough as standard Nylon 12. So, while it may not be stronger in terms of stress, it’s significantly tougher.

This is a pretty common confusion. For example, people often say “ABS is stronger than PLA,” when actually PLA is generally stronger, but ABS is much tougher.

Let me know if you have any further questions!

[eaglechen]

This is the ideal material for me, unfortunately it does not seem like it is available on Fuse 1… 1+ may be slightly out of my budget. I am going to guess it is going to be impossible to bring this to Fuse 1 due to laser power?

I assume nitrogen is not required for printing this? Is there anyway to order sample parts?

[LEADNAV]

I have been hitting up support and sales with no solid answer yet…

We have been running Nylon 12 GF for the past few years in our desert racing vehicles due to its higher heat tolerance and strength. However, the 70% refresh needed to get consistent printing without fails, all the extra sifted powder going in the trash, and with that level needed to keep the parts from getting brittle…just entertaining other options.

We do batches of smaller parts (100 per chamber) where they have some mechanical spring action built in

But also we are looking at this for larger flat surface parts/cases that take up the entire chamber

I just wanted to know if we should stick with the Nylon 12 GF… or if Nylon 12 would be “good enough” and not warp more than Nylon 12 GF across the chamber.

Now with the launch of Nylon 12 “Tough”… announced literally the week we are testing all that… it is a little more confusing.

These parts get beat up and sit in the desert sun inside vehicles… you say “Tough” is stronger in ways but not others? Also I see it does worse in the heat at the low end compared to even Nylon 12 alone?

What material would you suggest… for what we are doing…?

Current Nylon 12 GF and CNC aluminum hybrid example

[eaglechen]

The Formlabs staff above are right, but that was an essentially complex way to say that Nylon 12 GF is stiffer but less flexible than nylon 12. Here is my “bro science” explanation from my impression:

1. Nylon 12 GF: most stiff, least flexible from the glass particles.
2. Straight Nylon 12: a little less stiff, but bit more flexible.
3. Nylon 12 Tough: even less stiff, the most flexible, but not very heat resistant.

Flexibility can be good because flexible things can bend a bit more and absorb more impact before breaking.

Looking at your part, they seem to be device mounts of sorts and equipment to support desert racing. I would personally just make everything above in nylon 12. I think since you need the mechanical springey-ness and people just beating these parts around, nylon 12 is probably good enough or even better from a little added flexibility/ ductility. I personally don’t think you need the stiffness (or headache) associated with nylon 12 GF. Straight nylon 12 should also print a little better in regards to warping as well.

Straight nylon 12 does not lose enough heat deflection compared to GF to matter in your use case. Per the Formlabs datasheets, straight nylon 12 still handles 87 degrees Celsius before beginning to deform, only losing out to nylon 12 GF by like 20-25 degrees. 87C is 188F, something I doubt you will encounter in your desert vehicles. Nylon 12 is also reliable and mature printing wise from what I have heard and you can probably realistically go down to the 30% refresh rates and see similarly strong and flexible parts, a big advantage over GF.

I don’t think nylon 12 Tough is good for your use case. It begins to soften at 46C or 114F, something you will probably see in desert racing. It is also more flexible and most importantly brand new, and you will have to gamble on the new beta print settings and reliability.

makes sense?

edit: I’m assuming several things about your use case, if I am wrong please let me know.

[LEADNAV]

That’s everything I was thinking… I am finding the Nylon 12 versions of my parts definetly feel lighter (they actually are… I weighed them) and more “plasticky” feeling…less substantial versus the Nylon 12 GF. They actually “feel weaker” because of their lighter weight but so far in initial test the flex before breaking may help in some cases over GF. Visually wise they are nearly the same however with a slight slicker shine in the GF. GF kind has a slight vapor smooth look to it where as standard Nylon to me looks a little grittier but honestly you have to really stare at them to notice a difference.

It actually gets up to 200 degrees inside some vehicles due to the combination of desert heat and race engine heat up against the dash… so Nylon 12 is right on that line but with these being cases… the object inside of them should hold some form to them.

Yea I have no desire to even try Nylon 12 Tough until some serious user testing is done but with the super low heat deflection it is not an option for me.

[eaglechen]

Keep in mind that the 87C number is heat deflection testing at 1.8GPa, the top end. At less force of like 0.4Gpa towards the lower end nylon 12 and 12GF still holds form at equivalent 170C ish. I think even at like 200F you should be fine, I would considering the 87C to be where nylon 12 just barely begin to deform, and beyond 170C to where it starts to seriously become soft.

Sounds pretty extreme… best of luck with making your parts. Sounds like you done your due diligence and testing.

[LEADNAV]

We will see. First two chamber tests with Nylon 12 were at 100% fresh. After this, I will Sift down to the 30% rate n see how brittle they become down that low. Compared to Nylon 12 GF at 70%.

[Kostbone]

I will only add this information - For standard Nylon PA12, the manufacturer writes a temperature limit of 87C, however, I print some large thin-walled parts and then dye them. Correctly I should dye at a temperature of 80-115C, unfortunately at such a high temperature the parts deform. That’s why I dye them at 60C, but at such a low temperature they don’t dye perfectly and I have to spray paint them additionally. Temperature resistance before deformation - internal stress will therefore be far lower than the indicated 87C.

[Kostbone]

I came across this today. Is Formlabs really kidding us?!

How low would the price of the third party powder have to be to make paying for the software worth it?

Almost 10,000 EUR to open the system. Even if I could find a powder that would be €40 cheaper, I would have to print a quarter of a ton to break even. And I’m not talking about unsuccessful attempts to print powder from another manufacturer.

Open Material Mode

[Kostbone]

My mistake. It’s more after you add it to your cart.

[eaglechen]

Wait… it costs more than the Fuse 1 (not 1+) with a build chamber lol.

You could buy another Fuse for the price of this. I don’t know if anyone would realistically utilize this, considering the only academic relevance of printing with other powders not to mention the pretty arduous process of making SLS print settings.

[br4n_d0n]

Well, some people on this forum, won’t name anyone at the moment, finds value in being extorted by Formlabs and is more than happy to pay for a feature they artificially locked consumers out of.

[Kostbone]

Good point

It would be enough for me if they canceled the need for RFID cards.

[LEADNAV]

At that cost…maybe just hack the card reader…and if you break the machine on a third party material it may just be cheaper to buy a new printer haha

[Kostbone]

True

I have already found a compatible powder. I just need to open the RFID cards.

[LEADNAV]

Bout to try and dye these Nylon 12 test parts the same way I do the GF parts…so we will see. I am hoping Nylon 12 is “good enough” because if I have to stick with Nylon 12 GF at the current cost and 70% refresh…it just is not cost effective to run even with the bulk discounts.

So much for their “production part” materials being at a reasonable “production cost” to make…

[LEADNAV]

I can tell you…I honestly went a while without even inserting a card for all the Nylon 12 GF I was running. I was wandering if the card credits even did anything at all or just a fear tactic…

[CARLAYERS]

The powder credits are required by the printer in any case and are used up over time. We do not insert the cards into the printer regularly, but only when the amount credited to the printer approaches zero again. Only the powder actually sintered is deducted from the powder credits. As powder is lost over time (sucked out in the sift, printer sucked out, waste during sandblasting, etc.), you accumulate more powder credits over time than there actually is powder. We currently have around 20 kg of powder credits left, even though we don’t have 20 kg of powder in stock.

[CARLAYERS]

By the way, we are very interested in the PA12 Tough. As already described, toughness describes the property of absorbing more kinetic energy, ergo impact strength through higher flexibility. Higher flexibility always means lower heat resistance. That is why it is always the reinforced materials that have the highest temperature resistance (glass-filled, carbon-filled).
Although PA12 is very reliable for us, with a success rate of over 95%, PA12 is also quite brittle with thinner geometries at a new feed rate of 30%.
If we were only printing brackets or molds that didn’t have bending details, this would still be the go-to material.
But we often print components that have smaller spring elements or thinner wall thicknesses that range between 1-2mm. With these parts, you have to be careful in post-processing and dropping them can quickly lead to broken parts.

We have considered PA11. However, we were not sure enough about the additional nitrogen and significantly higher flexibility. We were also told that PA11 is not necessarily an easy material to print.
We are currently saturating our parts with water during the dyeing process in an attempt to achieve slightly greater flexibility. However, this doesn’t really improve the components.

A really tough material that can be printed just as easily and reliably as normal PA12, which can also be used to print thinner and finer details that don’t break when dropped, seems to be a very interesting thing for us.
The fact that there is now also a new white powder is also interesting, but with similar properties to gray PA12 it is less interesting than PA12 Tough.
If there were to be a white PA12 Tough, we would probably try to use it successfully as soon as possible.
In fact, I have to say we are quite impressed with the new product launches. At Formlabs, you still get the feeling that there is constant development going on. Yes, admittedly a lot of the development and customization happens after the launch of the products. But we can understand that somewhere.

[LEADNAV]

Carlayers

That’s where we’re kinda scratching our heads in what to do. In our own parts we deal in Offroad automotive in the desert. That combined with a race engine can some times put temps near 200 degrees. We are mostly making housing for electronics so the item itself can help maintain structure a bit even when softening but there are bolt holes in the design where you have 1mm between the bolt and brackets etc…

We also do some consistent outside contracts for thinner items to include blade/knife handles and sheaths where there are 2mm springs n thinner walls.

Honestly Nylon 12 GF has been working very well all around even though occasionally we get cracked springs on those smaller parts. However, sticking to the 70% refresh (while tossing 20%+ of our never used sifted powder in the trash) has made printing this material very consistent without failure and without it getting too brittle. If we dip below 70%, we start to get more print failures and more breaks in the parts when used.

Here’s the problem… COST.

We can’t scale this outside the premium market and direct to higher end consumers. Material cost n all that waste is insane.

So this week I dedicated to trying nylon 12 to see if it is acceptable for both use cases. However, while I too can appreciate seeing Formlabs still innovating…they couldn’t have launched these materials at a worse time to confuse the hell outta us. Haha

“Tough” sounds like it may be great for our smaller parts/outside contracts for our smaller end us knife handles n sheaths as you suggest… but for our own parts sounds like it would soften to much possibly… we were already concerned with nylon 12 being lower than GF.

Also, at what refresh we’d need to print at with Nylon 12 is still undetermined. I’ve done two 100% chambers of test parts n they seems good if not slightly better for our parts in strength…but we will see at lower refresh. I just did a 40% refresh chamber to try but even at 50% it would be half the cost of Nylon 12 GF. (Still ridiculously expensive but at least way more feasible).

The other thing I’ve found as I sit here staring back n fourth between the two… Nylon 12 feels like a toy. Lighter and lot more “plastic” feeling. Feels weaker. Whereas Nylon 12 GF feels almost like stone and more substantial. It also has more of a finished look to it with a slight sheen and less “powdery”.

On that note… did you ever invest in the Blast? Wandering how the fit n finish would compare out of that and if people are happy with it or not.

So yea…cool to see the new materials. I am leaning towards the compromise of switching down to Nylon 12 from GF strictly due to parts costing half between the two but still unsure on all the push/pull compromises between the two.