Be careful with your 3d printed parts!!!
 

Be careful with your 3d printed parts specifically wheels. Much to my dismay i was messing with my K5 Blazer mega truck this evening and found that all of my one off 3d printed wheels were now warped to hell. These wheels were made by Joshs4x4toys. None of this was his fault but he no longer makes wheels so i have to fix them. I have to assume that they got warped while sitting in my hot truck at the mud bog the one day i took it(normally never leaves its shelf). That being said i guess being 3d printed the melting point of the material is lower and just a hot day or sitting in the hot sun could warp your parts. Just a warning for yall. Some materials may be worse than others. Thankfully i was able to carefully heat them in a boiling pot of water (only took about 5 sec) and pressed them over the lid of my yeti bottle which just so happened to be the right size. Whew thank goddness ��

Re: Be careful with your 3d printed parts!!!
 

I'm starting to see more warnings about this on shapeways with printed parts. I have some printed front fender liners on my K10 Ascender and I make sure to never let that truck sit in the hot sun or in a hot car for very long. Most of the warnings state that you can use a heat gun or hair dryer to heat them up and work them back into shape but that doesn't really help with a wheel that needs to be perfectly round.

Re: Be careful with your 3d printed parts!!!
 

I have a 3D printer and I'm a huge advocate of the technology, but I have publicly stated that 3D printed parts are still not viable for items on RCs that need a lot of durability and strength. You can get away with more on a crawler if you use the right material. It looks like he used PLA and that's why it melted so easily.

Re: Be careful with your 3d printed parts!!!
 

Yea i never intended on running these wheels and he told me he had the file if i needed a replacement. I was still blown away with how little heat it took to get them back soft. PLA must have a real low melting point. I am happy with how true i got them back but it will be returned back to the shelf 😅

Re: Be careful with your 3d printed parts!!!
 

It has a relatively low melting point of around 180°C to 220°C. That's to print with it. It doesn't take that much for it to lose structural integrity and start deforming though.

If he ever loses that file it would be easy to recreate it in minutes. "thumbsup"

Re: Be careful with your 3d printed parts!!!
 

Bummer! I still talk to Josh and could probably get the CAD file from him. Shoot me a pm.
I haven't seen this before with any of my printed parts. Glad you got it somewhat corrected.

It's all in how the part was designed and the materials used. I could link you to numerous builds but am kinda lazy right now. I have been using printed parts in high stress areas for almost 5 years now. Zero breaks, cracks or issues yet. Just my experience though.

Re: Be careful with your 3d printed parts!!!
 

Sure, 3D printed parts will last on a crawler when printed with the correct material. That's exactly what I said. But put a 3D printed part, made on a home FDM printer, in a high stress area on a basher and it's not going to last.

Re: Be careful with your 3d printed parts!!!
 

I have had good luck with all of Josh's wheels, printed from a homemade FDM printer. Rigs that are 20lbs plus and on my tow rig that can pull 80 plus pounds.
116lbs total, FDM wheels.
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/CF-cadxdNiQ" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

21lbs, same wheels.
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/50Sy3C1_e-M" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

I did a scx project with JC Auto Designs back in 2012 with FDM printed parts in high stress areas. Ended up selling that truck to a teenager that beat the crap out of it for years with no issues.
http://www.rccrawler.com/forum/axial...ml#post4614415

Anywho, just interjecting some of my experiences here, as not all FDM parts fail in homemade applications.

Re: Be careful with your 3d printed parts!!!
 

I'm not surprised the wheels hold up. I've printed my own from PLA and they hold up quite well under the compression loading of the weight.

That truck you linked to is bad ass! Nice work with those parts. Maybe you know something I don't, but I'd never 3D print parts for a basher and expect them to last long. "thumbsup"

I use PETG when I need strength and durability. What's your filament of choice in those areas?

Re: Be careful with your 3d printed parts!!!
 

I would imagine that most printed stuff is pretty tough if designed accordingly. Something like bumper on a revo would not fair to well imo. It was pretty easy to fix and you cant tell anything happened.

Re: Be careful with your 3d printed parts!!!
 

IMO PLA is garbage plastic. I've had a few pieces get melted in a hot car and deform. I personally use ABS where I can get away with it on low/medium strength parts and nylon for high strength parts. I haven't taken the plunge on FDM nylon but have a spool of Taulman Bridge to mess with when the testicular fortitude builds to the appropriate level. For right now my high strength parts are checked for fitment on my FDM machine and farmed out to Shapeways for actual production.

Re: Be careful with your 3d printed parts!!!
 

I had a Bowhouse skid on my TF2 from Shapeways and it was tough as hell, no issues whatsoever. I agree with Jato though, not sure they'd be the best in a basher-type application. However, neither is molded plastic.

Re: Be careful with your 3d printed parts!!!
 

The point of 3d-printed is low cost and/or highly customized plastic that you simply can't buy. Special use/care is to be expected.

That said, 3d printed parts can be as strong as normal ABS parts. Particularly because they can be made from ABS, as well as many other filaments. IMO using PLA is lazy for a part that needs to be strong, especially if it's a for-profit part. PLA's selling point is low cost, ease of use, biodegradable, and low glass transition & melting points. Glass transition temp is where it starts to get soft, and PLA is 55C (131F) or lower. The CDC says that on an 80F day, a car interior can rise to 130-170F fairly quickly (1-2 hrs). I had the box for a boat with a plastic vac-molded stand get hot enough to bow the stand quite a bit on a 70F day.

PETG is a much better option, as it's glass temp is 55C/167F, while ABS is even higher. Both can also be stronger than PLA. I've seen people use 3d printed spacers on Clodbusters, and I've also printed wheels for myself. I designed them to be excessively reinforced, and I could probably break my Wraith axle tubes before breaking a rim.

Here's the first few test parts in cheap PLA that came with the machine. Even these were extremely strong, and likely more durable than the Axial Method IFD's I have...that are cracked. Their spokes are like twigs compared to these beasts.

http://i.imgur.com/RZzkHto.jpg

Re: Be careful with your 3d printed parts!!!
 

Thats awesome. I need to get a 3d printer so bad.

Re: Be careful with your 3d printed parts!!!
 

3D printer...drool...definitely something for the future!

Re: Be careful with your 3d printed parts!!!
 

Several different factors can influence the durability of filament-based printed parts, including the choice of material, printer settings, print orientation, and design of the part. These factors play a key role in our design, testing and production decisions. For example, our original prototype TF2 skid was printed with ABS filament and held up to several months of hard abuse before we switched it out (and probably would survive years of normal use). PLA almost certainly would not have survived that testing.

Knowing that the ABS prototype held up that well gave us confidence that the SLS nylon version printed at Shapeways would be more than up to the task, and our experience has proven that out. After 2+ years on the market, we've yet to hear of any customer having a failure with that part. In fact, of all the parts we sell, we've only heard of one failure - a snapped axle housing after an 8+ lb truck fell off a ledge and did cartwheels before coming to a rest. Because our experience with the Shapeways printed parts has been so good, we've chosen thus far not to sell filament based prints (whether ABS or otherwise) of any of our parts. That said, we are beginning to work with new filament materials that should produce viable production parts with durability comparable to (or even better than) SLS nylon for certain designs. But we won't release anything until we're confident the finished product clears that bar.

From a consumer perspective, because it's almost impossible to determine the durability of a filament printed part based on pictures alone, the best advice I can offer is to exercise a little bit of discretion. If you're looking at high stress functional parts (think skids, axle housings, wheels, etc), best to stay away from filament prints unless you know enough to know that the part was printed using a durable enough material (like ABS) by someone that knows enough about printing to use the right settings for that material. If the part is just a cosmetic part, material choice and skill of the designer/printer is not as important. It's also a good idea to keep in mind who you are buying from. Lots of people are offering home printed parts these days, and most of them are here today, gone tomorrow. So consider who you're buying from. And regardless of who the designer/producer is or what material is used to print (in fact, regardless of whether your truck has any printed parts at all), best not to leave it in direct sunlight in the car on a hot summer day. "thumbsup"

Re: Be careful with your 3d printed parts!!!
 

Good post and I agree about Shapeways. Their stuff is fantastic and the strength has really surprised me!

Re: Be careful with your 3d printed parts!!!
 

Just to add a bit of an opinion, the entire reason for 3D printed parts was/is for rapid prototype development. An engineering dept could make an exact copy of a designed part in a fraction of the time it will normally take to send out drawings to a machine shop and incur the time/money to receive a single part. The printed parts are used for design evaluation, fitment and functionality.

Another great use for the 3d printing technology is to print a part to make a multiple piece mold off of it and then cast copies of the part. For our uses, ABS is usually strong enough to use to make a permanent part. PLA was always meant to be a dis-solvable support material, nothing else but it works as a material to make little trinkets from and is a cheap, easy material for beginners to use to learn how to use a hobbyist 3D printer.

Re: Be careful with your 3d printed parts!!!
 

I prefer PETG over ABS. ABS is a PITA, for me, to print. It doesn't want to stick to the bed and it suffers more shrinkage and warping than PETG. I have not done a direct strength test of ABS vs PETG though.

Re: Be careful with your 3d printed parts!!!
 

It's the material, not the fact that they are printed. Anything printed in PLA is going to warp at 110*F and above because it has a pretty low glass temperature. ABS is a better choice for strength and heat resistance as it's glass temp is double that of PLA. I just learned this the hard way at Axialfest with the 6x6 I built entirely out of PLA and sitting in the sun for a little over an hour caused some bad deformation in a lot of the parts on one side.