Taulman t-glase

mwu

New Member
#1
I'm getting the hotend for my printer for Christmas, so I will have it all up and running soon. In the meantime I have been designing some things I want to print. One in particular has some moving parts it would be nice to be able to see inside of other parts. I saw http://www.taulman3d.com/t-glase-optics.html and I really want to try that.

Has anyone printed with t-glase on their gMax? They recommend a heated bed at 60-70ºC, but people say the same thing for PLA which can print just fine on a cold bed with the right slicer settings and bed setup.
 

GORDON.LAPLANTE

Administrator
Staff member
#2
We printed several test vases with tglase to see how it would hold up. We found the contraction of the material as it cooled made it suite hard to stick to the bed.

If I remember we had to print the first layer at a pretty high temperature and with no fan to achieve a finished print. Also you may want to print with a raft to ensure enough adhesion. Tglase looks amazing but it was a bit tricky. Colorfabb XT seeemed to print better and with less frustration.
 

mwu

New Member
#3
I managed to print with t-glase yesterday. I printed using glue-stick on glass for adhesion, and it stuck so well that even though I was using a hobby knife, I thought I might break the glass removing the print (around 1"x3" rectangular area contacting the bed). I didn't end up needing to do anything special to prevent curling from being an issue.

Getting the slic3r settings right was tricky and I still need some tweaking. I printed at 233ºC with extrusion multiplier .9. The fan needs to be off -- super important. I put the fan range at 0-15 percent, but I think I'm just going to drop it to 0-0 so it's always off.

I found that t-glase cools very quickly. Even with the fan completely off I had to reduce my print speed down to 30mm/s. If I printed faster, parts of a layer wouldn't stick to the previous layer. That would lead to gaps where a thread didn't stick and it would leave burred material where it started sticking again because it had extruded material for the now-empty gap in the print. I think I need to tweak the bridging speed down below 30mm/s because I still got occasional burring where material didn't stay down as the print head changed directions at the edge of a bridge.

Other than those settings, the slic3r config was pretty much the same as for ABS and other than the occasional burr on the bridging, the print came out very nicely. The material is not nearly as brittle as PLA. I took a failed print and curled it around my finger without breaking it or getting any inter-layer adhesion breakage. It also seems pretty strong. I think its strength might have been measured as part of the specs on taulmann's site.