Review on 🖨️ Enhanced Dimensional Accuracy with PRILINE Polycarbonate Filament: A Top-Grade 3D Printing Solution by Scoony Taker

After initial disappointment with this filament I contacted the manufacturer who provided some advice and a safety data sheet. The manufacturer was really very responsive and helpful and obviously interested in making sure I had a successful experience. I've updated my review with my observations after more experimentation with this thread. In this review I will compare this material to PETG, although it is a polycarbonate blend. This is because my primary printing experience was with PETG and my goal with this filament was to achieve higher accuracy, longer durability and better heat resistance than my experience with PETG. hot end. I am using an E3D V6 hot end with a copper heater block, titanium thermal break and X 0.4mm nozzle. Nozzle X is a hardened nozzle suitable for printing with abrasive filaments. It also has a non-stick coating, and I'm happy to report that this filament rubs off the X-nozzle easily at temperature. lying surface. I use Prusa PEI film, regular, not fancy, re-powder coated. My surface preparation is exactly the same as for my PETG prints, using Windex as a release agent. It worked well overall, although I impatiently ripped a 1mm square piece of PEI out of the sheet and removed the print before the sheet had fully cooled. Be sure to allow the sheet to cool before removing the print. thread diameter. I measured the diameter of the thread in the range of 1.69mm to 1.72mm. This tolerance is fine, but make sure you adjust your Slic3r settings accordingly. No fan. I'm attaching an image of SirLayersalot that I printed at 60% using the default Slic3r profile "Prusament PETG" (although this filament is PC and not PETG, I've found this profile setting produces cosmetically acceptable prints). This profile included the fan at an automatic fan setting of 30-50% and the bridge fan at 50%. The temperature was 240/85 for the first layer and 250/90 for subsequent layers. As you can see in the picture, this resulted in a cosmetically pleasing print. However, and this is the important part, layer adhesion tests using Thingiverse's Layer Adhesion Test Model showed that prints made with the cooling fan showed degraded layer adhesion. With the fan on, I was able to tear through the layer adhesion test manually with no problem. Prints without a fan showed a layer adhesion test that I couldn't break by hand. The manufacturer recommends printing without a fan. I support that recommendation - you've paid for that expensive filament, it's worth taking the time to get a fanless (or minimally fanned) profile to ensure the best layer adhesion. Deformation. I don't print with a body and I've found warping to be minimal in the print sizes I create. I had a very wide (side to side of the bed) pressure plate stretched out on me in the corner, but I had the same problem with PETG on very wide models. Adding edges would probably have prevented the problem. carbon fibers. After printing with this filament, I usually run a clear cleaning filament through my hotend. If you place this extruded cleaning filament under a microscope, the carbon fibers cleaned from the hot end are clearly visible. These are small strands that look like hair. Thermal deformation test. I ran a test with this filament along with PETG as a reference, heating the rectangular print in 5 degree increments and applying some load until I noticed warping. This filament started to deform at about 100°C. The PETG reference started to deform at about 90°C. Create a fanless profile. I started with a Prusament PETG profile that I used to print using SirLayersalot and made some modifications. First I increased the retract distance to 2mm, stroke to 1mm and retract speed to 50mm/s. The filament tends to bleed a bit, and pulling it in will help prevent bleed artifacts on your prints. Then I lowered the temperature to 235°C. I set the extrusion multiplier to 0.98 to prevent material from building up at the nozzle. I disabled the "Fans always on" setting and changed the fan speed from 1% to 5% instead of 30%-50%. These fan speeds I chose not to achieve cooling as 5% should be negligible, but to enable Slic3r's "Slow down if layer print time is less" setting to slow down the print speed for very small layers (read more about that in a moment ). I set the shunt fan speed to 30% as I think shunting is one of those cases where some kind of fan is acceptable and useful to get decent bridges. You can get a bridge thread without a fan, but the first layer of the bridge will sag a little. This is probably something to be judged on an individual basis depending on how many bridges you have. I have the "Perimeter Jumper Detection" setting enabled. I'm also attaching a picture of the "Prusa Mk3 Nozzle Fan" print I made using this thread. It took me about a dozen tries to dial up that part in my fanless profile above. The biggest issue was the small mounting tab with a countersunk bolt hole at the top of the imprint. This tab is a small feature with small fast layers, and without a fan it's possible for this tab to overheat and cause sagging and warping. The solution recommended to me on the Prusa forum was to print something else a few centimeters from the bed. With this method, the printhead retracts just long enough to prevent the print from overheating and warping. So I printed two of these at the same time. After a dozen tries I got a nozzle fan that was good enough to install on my printer. I am currently printing the Mk3S version. The third photo I attach shows large rectangular prints. These are the prints mentioned above that have migrated from one side of the printing platform to the other. They are part of a COB LED mount I am making where I wanted a little extra heat resistance over what I usually get with PETG. The prints came out just as good as my PETG versions, they are stiffer, more opaque, matte and should have better heat resistance. Final Verdict. It took some perseverance to get this thread to print well, but I think the experience was worth it. The resulting print is 1) stiffer than PETG, 2) has higher heat resistance than PETG, and 3) has a nice matte finish. Allow some time to tweak the settings and try to keep fan usage to a minimum for the best layer adhesion and part strength. Avoid the fan altogether if you can.