Succsessful Soft-PLA Printing

[ETHub]

Lately I experimented with soft-PLA from Orbi-Tech and would like to share my (very useful) results with you:

The first prints were really bad. I couldn’t even load the filament. Because it is so soft, the Printer (in my case a Witbox) wouldn’t take it into the hotend. So my hotend was blocked several times.

So I decided to put the soft-PLA in the fridge for a night. The next day it worked marvellous.

For your slicer, I recommend the following options:

• 100% fill. Otherwise the layers won’t stick together very well. Smaller objects get perfectly flexible. Very solid objects tend to loose their flexibility because they are filles 100%
• 20mm/s printspeed. This way the soft-PLA gets applied carefully and the layers stick better together
• 235°C temperature. This will make the filament more liquid and it flows better trough the hotend.
• 125% flow makes the filament go smoothly trough the hotend.

I hope I could help you with your soft-PLA prints.

Find more about my 3D-printing shop at www.brap.ch

Michael

[gabriela3d]

Well, now it sounds easy Thanks for sharing this super-useful tutorial on 3D printing with soft PLA, @Aravind_Rajkuma! What did you print with it?

[boydconnor]

Wow, this is brilliant! It could have taken a while until I’d thought of the fridge hack - good call!

[ETHub]

You’re welcome! I made a key fob with the letters brap.ch. It’s really cool because it flexes a bit. Then I tried to make a Soft-PLA Marvin. Some parts are really nice but others failed. I think I’ll have to try it again. Maybe my printbed wasn’t levelled that exactly. Have you already tried soft-PLA?

[gabriela3d]

Nope, never tried it myself! But you’ve got my attention