Comment on [Looking for advice] Searching for a small slim twistable connector
lennyaa@pawb.social 5 weeks agoI do have a 3d printer but, that one is currently sadly unable to print anything else than PLA (it’s a craptastic old anet a8) and I don’t know anyone at least close by who can do TPU. There is one thing I forgot to add to the original post, one additional reason I want to get something else than RCY is because of the jagged edges. They to tend to get caught in the fabric every know and then. But thanks for the advice so far, I will consider it.
Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Have you tried tpu? Googling says it works on the A8.
actionjbone@sh.itjust.works 5 weeks ago
Yeah, older printers’ extruders had some trouble with TPU, but TPU use similar temperature ranges to PLA.
It’s worth a shot, at least.
Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
The other option is regular Pla. It’s flexible when thin. And I think he needs some stiffness to protect the cable from bending too much.
lennyaa@pawb.social 5 weeks ago
It barely prints PLA and from what I heard TPU has a bit more friction then PLA (please correct my if I’m wrong). As the frame of my anet a8 is very craptastic, because I basically got it gifted as it was broken and I needed to power glue some parts together as the crappy plastic frame was party broken. So the frame is weak and it’s also the bowden tube variant where the bowden tube heavily limits printing speed where even regular PLA printing speeds are very slow. If I up the speed from very slow even a tiny bit, then the motor feeding the bowden tube skips the filament. (Shortening the bowden tube any more isn’t possible as it’s already as short as possible) Mounting the filament motor directly to the extruder isn’t really possible as the frame is so weak that it will literally tear itself apart if any more force is put onto it.
I know that printer is basically at the point of self disassembly and I will replace it soon, but not yet.
(PS And yes I do monitor it when it prints very closely via a webcam in case it does start self disassembling) (PS PS. I did upgrade the firmware to merlin so it does have thermal runaway protection)
Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
TPU needs less friction. It can be squished by the extruder so users frequently have to reduce tension to make it print.