3D printed parts

The instructions seem to call for printing rotator parts from ABS. I’d prefer to avoid that due to toxic fumes. Has anyone printed it in PETG (or even PLA)? How well did it work? Any reason to use ABS?

I see this hasn’t been answered, and I am unable to give an authoritative answer. What I can say is that I am planning to use PETG. I still need to do some work to get my printer dialed in to print PETG well, but that’s the plan. I too would be interested in hearing any more experienced opinions.

I’m also considering Polycarbonate, but I’ve not tried printing it yet. It does have a nanoparticle issue, but at least no VOC issue. We’ll see.

PETG is more flexible that ABS, so I don’t know if it’ll have rigidity issues. Which is why I mentioned PLA - that’s more rigid than either.

My concern with PLA is that we get pretty hot here in the summer time and I fear that the parts would deform.

I don’t personally know of anyone doing this yet - but that is not to say it can’t be done! Try it out and let us know how it goes :slight_smile:

There are some high heat / high strength PLA variants that may want to be considered here: https://www.proto-pasta.com/collections/premium-htpla-v3

You will definitely want grease between the gears regardless of materials.

So I was talking to a 3D printing expert about this, and he suggests Nylon rather than Polycarbonate. Seems interesting, especially for gears, as it’s self lubricating… May have to experiment with it.

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