@Ryan_Carlyle CFR-PC would be a very interesting material for sure, but I suspect the hotend nozzle would be consumed quite rapidly.
PC-ABS’s HDT may be #2 after PC, but it’s a very distant second place.
For the record, polycarbonate’s 455 kPa DHT is 140C.
@Ryan_Carlyle that’s an awesome R2x. Out of curiousity do you know where the makerbot users tend to collect these days?
@Gianmario_Scotti_Mar Tg has no particular engineering significance for semi-crystalline materials like polypropylene. The crystallinity prevents appreciable secondary bond dislocation and thus there’s only a thermodynamic glass point, not a true viscoelastic glass point. (In the engineering material properties sense we care about, polypropylene has no glass point whatsoever. It’s only an unimportant inflection in the specific heat curve.)
Tg is primarily useful for discussing FDM 3d printing physics with amorphous materials because it’s a key determinant of warping stress and optimal build chamber temps. (Crystalline materials use Tm instead of Tg, which is why they tend to warp horribly.) For actual engineering of useful parts and material selection, HDT is definitely superior to Tg like you say… But neither is really entirely adequate. Extended creep testing is required.
@Ryan_Carlyle yes, agreed. A lot of people get stuck on Tg. And I hear you about HDT, but I think that a modified HDT-like test could measure creep. I don’t know if ISO 47 has anything related, in addition to standard HDT.
@Mike_Kelly_Mike_Make thanks! It’s modded out the wazoo. I’d check out the Makerbot Users Google group. Activity is down since MBI killed the Makerbot Operators group, but there’s a community there.
@Sanjay_Mortimer1 you’re braver with solvents than I am. I might play with dichloromethane if I had a fume hood or an outdoor workshop. Not in my home though.
Regular ABS juice actually works pretty well for PC if you keep the bed surface temp below the glass point of ABS. But I wouldn’t do that without a very, very hot chamber to keep the warping down. In theory, all the usual acrylic/polyvinyl-based adhesives should work too, but most of them don’t hold up well to the high HBP temps in my experience. Nice thing about PVP-based gluesticks is that they survive higher temps than most typical adhesion surfaces.
The Xenoy stuff is interesting, thanks for posting that.
@Sanjay_Mortimer1 you guys are completely ignoring THE reason I am trying to print with PC - high thermal stability. I understand that you need to plug your product, but jeez, a bit of attention for the topic of the post maybe?