Probably like lots of people, I’m trying to get my head round tough vs tough 1500. I’ve made this https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1811192 previously in FDM, but the bottom part (that connects to the batter) in particular would be well served by resin. You will tend to put batteries in fairly enthusiastically. Also, the tabs (the yellow bits, which are sprung on conventional springs) that hold the unit in are need to hold a heavy battery onto the tool fairly well. I’ve previously printed this in ABS.
Which would be better suited to this application, Tough or Tough 1500? Or, for that matter, durable since it is a sliding bit, though I’d be concerned that excess flex would allow the battery to unclip. As an aside, has anyone painted tough?
As always, keep in mind that the HDT (heat deflection temperature) for all of these materials is really low, between 43 and 52 °C. So if you leave the parts in your car in the summer (or expose them to high temperatures in other ways), they will deform if they are under load.
@MrPaul For the battery adapter, I think Tough 1500 is probably a better bet than Durable if you’re concerned about the extra flex causing the battery to unclip. Also, related to @P3D’s comment about HDT, Durable has the lowest HDT out of these 3 materials. So if you plan on leaving this in a hot car, it’s another strike against Durable.
Tough might be too brittle because it has lower elongation and lower impact strength than Tough 1500. Unless you really need that extra stiffness from Tough, I’d go with Tough 1500. It also has higher HDT than both Durable and Tough.
Not sure if you care about color or not, but the neutral gray from Tough 1500 would blend in well too. Just an added bonus.
Just to be clear - for leaving the parts in your car, none of the mentioned materials is particularly suitable. You may get away with it if the part has next to no load on it, though.
I increasingly believe HDT is very flawed for a measure for more flexible materials. If I read correctly, it is a measure of absolute deflection under load. Some of these materials have significant deflection, by design, at room temperature. It isn’t surprising that almost all the flexible materials have very low HDT. I suspect we need some kind of measure of relative deflection or something. Of course, I’m no materials engineer, so could be way off base here.
I think you’re generally correct here for acrylate based resins. In the case of Durable resin, this is definitely the case. I think there’s no HDT number for Durable at 1.8MPa load because it deflects more than 0.25mm at room temperature (0.25mm is the deflection at which HDT is determined per ASTM D648). It’s not a always true though because look at Carbon’s FPU 50 tech data sheet, its flex modulus is ~0.8GPa but its HDT is 78C at 0.45MPa load. It has to do with the chemical make up of the resin and how long/much temperature it takes for the material to soften and deflect all the way to the 0.25mm.
Maybe a better metric would be Vicat softening point (the point at which the material loses its ability to hold its form)?