Todays fun work: A replacement gear for a paper shredder.
Originally from injection molded plastic (POM I think?), now from 3D-printed pla.
Will it melt? Probably if you push the shredder hard enough for long enough. Does it work for the moment? Hell yes!
I guess if it fails again I gotta have the 4th axis for the CNC finished, so I can mill a new one from brass, or something sillily overkill like that :3
Also probably less expensive to buy a new one, if my work had been payed.
@la you can always go petg for like 10 degrees more heat tolerance
@noiob but more elastic, so the contact point will deform more and probably impart more heat in the part. I think for easy to print filaments PLA is the right choice here.
For actual better performance I think I'd have to go to something like ASA or maybe fibre reinforced Nylon? But I don't really know, since I've never had a printer around to try that stuff with.
@la I mean if you want more stiffness the easiest way is to just add more walls. ASA needs a closed printer and is harder to get dimensionally correct. Fiber-reinforced filaments are snake oil as far as I know, the fibers aren't long enough and not aligned, so they just weaken the part. At least carbon, glass might work. I'm not planning on trying either bc of the obvious safety issues
@noiob well, I want surface hardness, which is related to stiffness, but at small scale, so not really affected by walls.
I don't think strength is the real limitation with this gear, it's heat absorption vs dissipation. And I think a fibre reinforced part might, through it's higher surface hardness also have lower heat absorbtion.
That was my thinking, but I'm no 3D printing expert 🤷♀️
And since I know a few ppl with closer printers with ASA profiles that seemed like a reasonable option too.