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Thoughts on NinjaFlex filament

Experimenting with NinjaFlex which as the name implies is a flexible 3D printing filament. So far my impression is that it’s a great product if not a little difficult to work with. I’m guessing a Bowden would be even more difficult as this stuff is really, really bendable. I found my standard “Go To” setting for my printer just did not work. So to save anyone some time who might read this here is my quick list.

  • This material seems to melt slower than normal PLA or ABS so I really had to slow my extruding down. I set all slicer settings to 15 mm per second and that seemed to get things going. Funny as it sounds even my manual extruding using “PrintRun” to get my printer set up extruded too fast.
  • If you extrude too fast the extruder will bend the material so if you do start to see slippage in the extruder just give it up, pull out what is in there cut off the 2 inches and re-thread and try again. Once there is slippage the material deforms and the extruder can’t grip it anymore.
  • This stuff needs to run hot. I found 250 was a good number with 50 for the bed
  • Give up using Kapton tape or some type of hair spray to cause it to stick to the bed. The only way I got things to work was Blue carpenters tape.

If it sounds like a pain to work with then, yea maybe just a little but the results are great. To print something with a little give and bounce is really a trip compared to standard hard plastic and by controlling the infill you can create objects that can go all the way from almost soft to hard as normal plastic.

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OpenSCad and integration with notepad++ text editor

OpenSCad is a great open source 3D modeling tool for 3D printable models but it’s weak point is the code editor and since everything is code based with no GUI tool set you have to look elsewhere for a good editor. I’ve found for myself that Notepad++ has some great plug-ins. It’s a windows tool but Ubuntu has “Wine” a windows compatibility emulator that works great with it and is available in the Ubuntu Software Center.   After installing OpenSCad and Notepad++ go to Thingiverse to pick up the XML Config files  for OpenSCad and follow the directions provided along with them. Remember to configure OpenScad for Automatic Reload and Compile and also in the view tab you can hide the default OpenSCad editor which you won’t be using anymore. I’ve found the whole experience of using OpenSCad to be much better since I moved on from the default editor.