5
PRINTING WITH FLEXIBLE FILAMENTS
5
Printing with Flexible Filaments
With a redesigned filament drive, the same extruder in Artifex 2 can extrude both flexible
and rigid filaments. No tool change is needed when changing between rigid and flexible
filaments. The NinjaFlex filaments are fully tested to work with Artifex 2. Artifex 2 Duo,
which will be introduced in Chapter 6, uses the same extruder design as Artifex 2 and the
settings for printing with NinjaFlex discussed in this chapter apply to Artifex 2 Duo as well.
5.1
Printing NinjaFlex with Slic3r
Download the slicing configuration file, Artifex2 NinjaFlex.ini, from our website. Then, fol-
low the steps in Sections 3.2.2 to update slicing settings for printing with NinjaFlex filaments.
The main difference from the settings for printing with ABS filaments are:
Extrusion speed
Since flexible filaments are difficult to be pushed through extruder with-
out bending, a lower printing speed is required when printing with flexible filaments.
The recommended extrusion speed of NinjaFlex is 30mm/sec. We will set both perime-
ter and infill printing speed to 30mm/sec in the followings.
Bed temperature
NinjaFlex filament can easily stick to the bed. The bed temperature
will be set at 50
◦
C to ensure a good adhesion of the first layer. The NinjaFlex can be
printed on a bared or tape-covered glass top, although a bared glass will be easier to
remove the model after printing.
Download the STL file (StackableCup.stl) for the demo model from our website, and load
the model into Repetier-Host. Then, download the Slic3r configuration file (Artifex2 NinjaFlex.ini),
and load the file to Slic3r as explained in Section 3.2.2. Figure 5.1 shows the Repetier-Host
interface with the demo model ready for slicing. Figure 5.2 shows the slicing result.
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