3D Print Stronger Parts! 3D Printing 101

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Ango, what's the boosted-board looking thingemi-bob behind you?

I noticed that ABS parts get stronger by enclosing an open printer.
A simple cardboard box over it suffice to get a better layer adhesion.

I didn't know one could increase layer height by up to 80% of nozzle diameter, thanks a lot !

Mechanical engineer here. Your comment about pipe walls is missing some information – a pipe is strong for its designed purpose because stress in torsion, bending and internal pressure in a thin walled cylinder is always most concentrated at the surface or wall. This is specific to its geometry and structural mechanics.
However this is not true for something like your bracket, which will have much more complex stress distributions which occur in multiple places. You are correct that making the part thicker will make it stronger, but that's not because a thicker surface is the answer, its just because the stress in any part goes down the thicker you make it, whether at the surface or centre.
If you really want to design strong parts, put the 3d model into a finite element analysis program like ANSYS and study the maximum stresses in it under different loading conditions. This allows you to thicken the part at exactly the most highly stressed locations.

Good summary.

An innovative way to improve strength is to print with a fairly low infill (or none) and resin infuse the parts (after the print is finished, or if you are adventurous in stages during the print), adding chopped fibres (glass or carbon) to the resin will help a lot too.

Is it possible to get a 3D model of the final printed model, and put them trough inventor's stress testing mechanic?

You do realize that pla is about 1/3 the strength of abs right? haha but the outside perimeters is a great idea!

put it in a vacuum chamber, infuse it with epoxy resin… hard as steel.

Raising temperature will decrease strength, take a look at the plastics properties and go for the lowest temperature that will give clean results, so if 180 and 190 gives the same finish then 180 will be the best. To high temperatures will destroy the plastics bonding properties even if its not bobbling or showing other signs of failures.

Honestly the part about layer height didn't convince me. More layers means boundaries between them are squeezed more tightly.

Orrrrrrr you can just change your design

Great video Angus!

Ooopsie! I didn't know hitting "enter" would terminate my comment! Well anyway, back to what I was trying to say: A way that you could design in vertical bracing to resist torsional stresses would be to add a number of vertical holes. Then, when the product is complete, insert metal rods of the appropriate size and then fill in the rest of the hole with something. Hot glue, maybe? or, drill and tap for a set screw and screw it in.

Those are at just about the min/max of the easily available methods you could use too retain the reinforcing rod.

And, to finish my thoughts concerning my Anet A8. I am not happy with the electrical/electronics that I have seen on most of these YouTube videos. One says, "Well, I haven't had any trouble yet…" But I am pretty sure that I've seen a couple of problems with his solution for wiring in a MOSFET. And he has months-old, open questions on his channel concerning that design that haven't been answered.

Another guy has a video that I think has him short-circuiting his 110 v AC input plug/on-off switch design.

But I'm not sure. I don't know what YouTube etiquette is.

the car in the background looks pretty neat do you have any videos where you cover that or do you have the files available somewhere? looks like a cool platform

Great video, thank you! Any way you can make a video about Extrusion Width and Extrusion Multiplier in regards to what they do and how they affect your print?

Changing to 666 saves everything! Got it hail Satan!!

There's something wrong with this world, an educational and useful video gets 67K views in almost 4 months while a ''vlogger's video'' talking about what they ate & where they're going tonight gets a 500K views a DAY!

I love your videos, been really great, but you just did the " " quotation fingers when saying skin -.- …. your dead to me now D: jk

i use a 3D printed part to hold my door in place.

Very informative video. I have started annealing PLA+ from eSun with good results. Nothing is perfect, but I get prints that hold up to ~ 150+ deg F without warping :- ) and the strength has increased a bit too.

I will go into S3D and make the changes you mentioned and see if that increases my parts integrity.

Thank you again for a well thought out and executed video !

one thing that I have found with soft PLA is that settings definitely can change the overall structure of the print. for example, set 40% honeycomb infill with a layer height of 0.2 and print something with soft PLA. then set 40% infill with a layer height of 0.1618 and then print it. for some reason, it slices differently with respect to the infill. 0.1618 layer height with the same infill will result in a print that is way more spongy due to the fact that the slicer oriented the honeycomb infill in 4 different directions vs 2 different directions for the 0.2mm layer height. it's weird but definitely something to consider since you can achieve different part qualities this way.

I imagine this has a similar affect on other filaments also – which seems to support the conflicting results regarding layer height – where some say more layers and others say fewer layers. id actually suggest the most important factor is how infill is stacked in the slicer, since in reality, structure is more important than density to the overall strength of a part.

Great Tips! Thanks for sharing!

another idea is to prototype it, and then get it 3d printed in stainless from a vendor. I did this and it is now a part of a door locking mechanism that gets shitloads of abuse. Its been going for over 2 years now; being used multiple times a day, every day.

Chang shell thickness and increase layer hight, will it cause model bigger?

hmm iv ever only printed at 210 pla
was the temp that i found dosnt get lift off build plat on the balco -aldi printer
well im happy with my settings

This is your best type of content. Do more of this

illumuoinathie confurmt

also baking your PLA after printing will help the layers bond better

Would acetone smoothed ABS be stronger than standard printed from the surface layers welding together? Or does it become brittle from the chemical reaction?

Am I the only one who thought he 3D printed the drill?

I like how the Drill is now just sitting on the bench behind him.

I found that by far the biggest improvement in PLA strength comes from post-production annealing.

Thomas Sanlanderer did a great video on this too.

It has the added benefit of greatly increasing the maximum temperature that PLA withstand too. My annealed PLA parts will not change dimension even when immersed in boiling water.

I know it's a common belief that you don't need to print at 100% infill for strong parts — but when I tried it, I was blown away by how rigid my part came out — it was noticeably more rigid than anything else I'd ever printed before (including the same part). Like night and day different. — Also, if you're printing with clear PLA, it looks great. (Like actually decently translucent without a lot of extra work.)

Nice video- on point and excellent, thanks.