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dkightley
Posts: 2405
Joined: Tue Mar 10, 2015 4:09 pm

Flame retardant filament

Has anyone had any experience with printing with flame retardant filament???

Do settings need to be adjusted as compared with normal filament??
Doug Kightley
Volunteer at the National Tramway Museum http://www.tramway.co.uk
Railway modeller and webmaster at http://www.talkingtgauge.net
arhi
Posts: 483
Joined: Thu Oct 06, 2016 5:13 pm

Re: Flame retardant filament

used firewire FR-ABS flame retardant ABS (UL94 V-0) and except for ~5-10C higher extruder temp compared to esun white or colored non black abs (~5C higher temp then esun black) all other settings I used were same and the prints came out great. too bad it's hard to get it here (usa->eu shipment is expensive).

if you maybe know eu source of flame retardant abs or any source of flame retardant petg please share
gcodestat integrates with Simplify3D and allow you to
Calculate print time accurately (acceleration, max speed, junction deviation all taken into consideration)
Embed M117 codes into G-Code
Upload your G-Code directly to Octoprint
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jfkansas
Posts: 133
Joined: Wed Oct 01, 2014 2:12 am

Re: Flame retardant filament

It just depends on the filament. Some regular filaments are "self extinguishing" (not ABS). Then you have some high end stuff like PEI or ULTEM that has to be extruded at like 350c. It is flame retardant, but very few printers are able or safe to print at those temps.
arhi
Posts: 483
Joined: Thu Oct 06, 2016 5:13 pm

Re: Flame retardant filament

jfkansas wrote:PEI or ULTEM that has to be extruded at like 350c
not only "extruded", PEI requires heated chamber that's ambient 100C+! not something I'd call hobby friendly :(
(btw isn't ULTEM just brand name?! iirc they make PEI filament and some casting resins? i might be wrong)

anyhow, the way I remember the story, you can make almost any plastic FR if you add some additives to it (for e.g. the yellowish color old PC plastic got trough time is the FR additive "leaving" the plastic) .. so in theory PLA, PETG, HIPS, PC, NYLON could all be available in FR versions. I only seen/tried FR-ABS but it's possible others are, or will soon be, available. Locally I can get PP/HDPE in FR versions but they only make "boards" not wire, but for significant quantity they could make a wire (filament) too. It's some fairly simple additives they add to PP or HDPE to make them FR.

this might be interesting page, you can see the list of additives for common plastics
https://www.intochemicals.nl/en/flame-r ... /plastics/
gcodestat integrates with Simplify3D and allow you to
Calculate print time accurately (acceleration, max speed, junction deviation all taken into consideration)
Embed M117 codes into G-Code
Upload your G-Code directly to Octoprint
open source and unlicence
jfkansas
Posts: 133
Joined: Wed Oct 01, 2014 2:12 am

Re: Flame retardant filament

arhi wrote:used firewire FR-ABS flame retardant ABS (UL94 V-0) and except for ~5-10C higher extruder temp compared to esun white or colored non black abs (~5C higher temp then esun black) all other settings I used were same and the prints came out great. too bad it's hard to get it here (usa->eu shipment is expensive).

if you maybe know eu source of flame retardant abs or any source of flame retardant petg please share
Pet and PetG are flame retardant. It will melt but doesn't catch fire.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYRtXKep8WU

The petroleum based ABS makes it never flame retardant. It is actually as flammable as gasoline when heated. I think there is some auto extinguishing ABS out there.

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