TPU Filament in Dremel 3D20?

Question

I recently got a Dremel 3D20, and I understand it only takes PLA filament according to the Dremel site. However, I was wondering if anyone has successfully used TPU filament or knows it will work fine. I’m more than happy to use other software to change the temperature, I just don’t want to gunk up or otherwise ruin my printer.

Answer 1

TPU wants in general two things of your printer:

• A Printing Temperature of (over many makers) 195-230 °C
• A Direct Drive (extruder on the printhead)

Bowden extruders are not ideal for printing flexible filaments such as NinjaFlex due to the excessive distance between the stepper motor and the extruder head. However, some users have generated successful prints using reduced speeds.^{ninjaflex handout}

Check the temperature you can reach, and you are lucky, as some of the smaller Dremels use Bowden but the 3d20 is apparently direct drive.

If you want to try to run a Bowden with flexible filaments, dial down speed down really low (20-30 mm/s at most) and pray.

Answer 2

I've never used a Dremel printer, thus I cannot guarantee that my solution will work fine, but you might want to give a try to the Ultimaker Cura slicer.

Ultimaker printers have Bowden tubes, like the Dremel, unless I am mistaken, and I've been able to successfully print TPU on my Ultimaker 3 Extended printer. I also know that many Ultimaker users have printed using Ninjaflex without much problems on their Ultimaker machines, both old and new.

Ultimaker Cura comes with pre-programmed settings for TPU95, which is the Ultimaker brand of TPU, then I guess you'll have to fiddle a bit with settings to find what works best with your Dremel. Take a look around Ultimaker's forums, many users have other printers beyond their Ultimaker printers, you might be lucky and find some useful information. The 'search' feature of the forum works quite nicely.

Quick summary of the settings for TPU95A in Ultimaker Cura for a 2.85 mm Bowden setup:

• Layer Height: 0.2mm
• Printing Temperature: 225°C
• Print Speed: 25 mm/s
• Cooling Fan Speed: 20%

Depending on how the Dremel performs and the quality of your TPU, you might want to disable retractions, it's been known to help.