Peter Wallers Robot Ramblings

[peterwaller]

I have had a quick play with the Taulman Alloy 910 Nylon and so far it looks great.
The only draw backs so far are the reel center hole is too small for printer and it doesn't stick to the Dimafix spray very well.
But using it as recommended with glue stick on glass at 45 C and a nozzle temp of 250 C and it prints very well.
Here is one of the scoops for Dominant.

One of the surround armour for Anticyclone (now with extra bits so it doesn't balance on any side).

I have also tried a wheel and set of legs for my walker and they all print without any distortion that I can see and even separates nicely from the support structure.
Here are the wheel and legs plus the first attempt at the anticyclone armour that wasn't up to standard because the Dinafix didn't hold too well.
As you can see I have bent it about as much as I could by hand but still failed to break it.

Obviously it still needs to be spinner tested but this could be a great improvment over previous materials.
One thing I need to do is find a good way to bond it.

[peterwaller]

No luck with bonding yet but after a few tweaks I have now printed Anticyclone all in the new Nylon.

The side walls are 2mm with 3mm at the front and the bolt on armour around the front and sides adds another 2mm.
There appears to be no stresses built in with this material even when my first print didn't stick because I used the dimafix spray and it was almost falling off the build plate it still came out flat.
Dominant is now nylon armour front and rear.

Hopefully I can test the armour next month at Dave and Joey's event assuming they are having full spinner combat.

[EpicentrE]

This material sounds incredible! I look forward to seeing how it holds up in combat.

Can you dye it after printing, or does it need to be before?

[peterwaller]

I don't see why not in fact trev502000 who if you hadn't worked it out is the Trevor I get most of my advice from at 3D Print World Aylesbury points out that nylon absorbs moisture which turns to steam when printing so if you do dye it before you would probably be better off drying it in an oven before use.
I have three dyes arrive this morning so I will let you know how I get on.
Again another tip from Trevor is these plastics colour well using a Sharpie in fact he has shown me some prints he did where and he put an attachment on the head that held a couple of sharpies against the filament as it printed and he swapped colours as it progressed.

[peterwaller]

I just gave the dye a quick try and it seems to work fairly well.
This was a reject print that had quite a few areas where the surface was rough which might go someway to explain the variation in dye take up.
All I did was put some dye in a plastic bag add near boiling water and then dropped the chassis in and swilled it around for two or three minutes.
When things didn't seem to be progressing much I added a bit more dye, maybe too much as the colour is supposed to be Pearl Grey.

I probably need to work on the technique a bit.

[peterwaller]

I have now had another chance to play with colouring the new Nylon.
First on closer examination of the chassis I dyed I noticed that the outside which is much smoother was in fact quite consistently coloured all be it blue not grey see below.

I then mixed, using near boiling water, half a jam jar of the yellow, grey and black using only enough dye powder to cover about 2 cms on the end of a lolly stick and dyed for 3 mins the results can be seen on the left of the photo below.

The samples on the right are purple / red sharpie, yellow sharpie / uncoloured and one I put in the original strong mix which came out blue to see if still dyed when cold.
I left it in for half an hour and got a very slight blue tinge and then dyed it yellow to see if they mix.

[peterwaller]

Just finished the rebuild of the all nylon Anticyclone.
I ended up using the traditional robot wars colours of yellow and black and dyed them after printing.

[trev502000]

found a possible alternative to glue using a friction welding method details found here http://hackaday.com/2014/12/30/3d-print ... n-welding/ i have tried it with pla and abs and works perfect nice strong bond i will try the alloy 910 later

[peterwaller]

That sounds good I had a quick play and it certainly bonded two bits together but my technique needs improvement as it wasn't very neat.
One slight problem I have found with the nylon is thin sheets only 1 mm thick are very flexible and prone to curling.
If you remove it from the print bed while still hot by lifting one edge and then pulling it off you can put a permanent curl in it.
If you leave it to fully cool to about 20 C and then slide a scraper under it from all directions you can get it off more or less flat.
Mind you if you then dye it in near boiling water it can twist again so it is best to put it under a flat weight to cool.
Below is my first attempt that I did incorrectly and one done properly with a few added bracing bars for good measure.

[trev502000]

what about wrapping it in greaseproof paper and using a clothes iron quickly to flatten it??? another option for bonding is a 3d pen with alloy910 in it my 3d pen works at 250c perfect for nylon