Status on Lowrider 4

PLA-cf add rigidity but not heat resistance. Nothing comes for free though, adding stuff to the plastic means it becomes less strong. Since you have to have a hardened nozzle to print any CF filaments, you might as well move to a better one that is stronger, more heat-resistant and more rigid the ones I recommended. Material selection is not easy, it really isn’t. The ones I suggested are better, but they cost more and they are more difficult to print.

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Every single choice I makes gets questioned, like every single one. This is a good one but PLA is the best choice for this amongst all the other reasons. If you do not know how to handle advanced filaments, use PLA. The other two I recommended should not shrink enough to matter, if the bolts, screws and nuts still fit it works. If you choose to use some other filaments you need to make sure there is no warping, and if it shrinks compensate if the hardware breaks the parts. I don;t think there are many filaments out there that would shrink enough to matter.

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TL;DR: PLA is plenty good. PET-GF/CF is going to give you more heat resistance and better stiffness at the expense of printing difficulty and cost.

Choosing PLA or PET-GF are two good options. PLA-GF isn’t exactly in between and has some cons of both.

Edit: fixed acronym

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PET-CF/GF

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Yeah, we’re really pains in the a$$ for Ryan in many ways, but after spending a lot of time talking with him about the design choices that he’s made… he’s really thought through IN DEPTH what makes these machines better.

It would be best for anyone starting out to follow the recommendations as best can be, and after getting the first machine up and running then go wild with experimentation.

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Not to say I don’t get things wrong though.

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Awesome, i like the graphics and also the photos of the LR4. I’m impatient like everyone else

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We all get stuff wrong every day. That’s all part of being human!

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Speak for yourself. :yum::joy_cat:

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I thought we were going to back off on questions for Ryan, per his request. Ry, I’m sorry for starting a filament debate…

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What’s the first thing everyone has planned to make on their LR4?

The struts for the LR4, LOL.

Then I did that.

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Used PLA for my ~2.5 LR4 RC builds. Think Maslow 4 uses molded and printed PC-GF parts, they seem great to me. Some info and data that may help… ChatGPT - Filament Choices for Rigidity

Personally feels like ability to lay well adhered layers, with correct wall count/thickness, with correct flow/extrusion while maintaining very accurate part dimensions are super important. Like more important than material choice. Getting these right required much time and material. Will share details soon, but am glad I’ve been using relatively cheaper PLA for now. If/when I figure out the Core or other specific printed parts are my machine’s bottleneck, then, I plan to reprint just those parts using something more exotic, or just buy if Ryan’s selling exotics by then and I don’t have time/interest to hyper tune for material am not likely to print much.

Before printing LR4, wish I’d spent more time doing Calilantern calibration test prints, and clearance test prints. Those tasks would be done after doing the basics using Teaching Tech’s calibration website. Hope that helps save you time and material.

Stock LR4 Struts. Then, ‘Pro’ LR4 Struts/parts. Then, better workbench. Then, more machines…

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That’s awesome! Is that melamine or did you paint it?

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The box for the bike and the Star Wars coasters. :yum:

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Cinderella’s Castle for FHS production of Cinderella

Irish Pub for IHS production of Once

Farquad’s Castle for SGS production of Shrek Jr.

Then a Gibson ES335 for me :sunglasses:

and some MONEY…of course!

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I appreciate all the answers!

I realize my initial question came across as questioning Ryan’s guidance here, but I was hoping just more generally to get some input on how to think about using these filaments or where to get started given that I’ve never printed anything other than PLA and ABS. Anyway - now I have my answer, so again thanks to all :slight_smile:

Quick PSA - PLA “Matte” filaments are less rigid than their basic counterparts. I think they’re even less rigid than PLA+ in most cases (I have been nose deep in TDS documents - I wish there was just a database somewhere). I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me to check this, but hey, now I have a few rolls now to use for gridfinity organizers I guess.

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Yeah, try not to use either matte nor silk. :slightly_smiling_face:

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So my plans to print the parts out of chocolate are a no go :frowning_face: It was gonna be the worlds first MECNC (Mostly Edible CNC)

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You should definitely check out @kockie-nl’s props for Shrek.

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