Aftermarket filament for CubePro

[RicciEU]

Hello All,

Can anyone recommend what aftermarket filaments work best with the Standard CubePro machines? As standard the CubePro machines use ABS, PLA, Nylon and INF so I will be sticking with those. But I am unsure of the best brands to use.

Available on Amazon.es are Sunlu, Eryone, HatchBox, Geeetech, Amazon Basics, Gianfram, Prima, and others.

Any help much appreciated?

Cheers

[dougk12]

Hatchbox and Amazon Basics PLA are my gotos. I also use the Sunlu Silk PLAs but they print at a higher temp. I use Simplify3d but you should be able to get good quality prints using the free cube editor product.

OEM ABS prints at a higher temp than most off the shelf brands. You're looking for something recommended for near 260c.

Whenever I need Nylon or PVA (INF) I simply purchase the cheapest available (if ratings are decent) and I've never been disappointed. Same with Wood PLA, if you have the advanced nozzle.

The OEM flex (TPU) material is repackaged Ninjaflex so that's an easy one. Not much experience with TPU but the durometer of each brand varies considerably. I would aim for something close to Ninjaflex (85 durometer).

[TommyDee]

Do not try to do a one-for-one replacement in CubePro when choosing ABS. 3DS ABS is a formula that requires about 10 degrees C more than all the other ABS that I have tried. Over-temp is better than under-temp as it will at least flow. But if you see signs of heat stress in the prints, that is why.

I learned this with Cube3. It was a hard study to learn this.

PLA has proven fairly generic. I don't have experience with the other filaments.

[RicciEU]

Thanks Dongk12 and TommyDee, much appreciated.

Has anyone printed with an off the shelf Nylon in a CubePro? As there are no more spare parts for the CubePro series I don't what to use a material that might damage the hot ends.

Cheers

[dougk12]

Never had any issues with off the shelf Nylon in the CubePro (or any other off the shelf filament). Just remember that Nylon needs to be kept dry. I would recommend loading, printing then removing and storing in a dry box or bag until next use. You can also dry it in the oven if needed.

I designed this for my CubeX so that my material could live in an external dry box. The chip holder and drill jig needs to be modified for the Pro but I am working on that now. I'll post them here when done. Re-routing the feed tubes is an easy 15 minute job.

?? Can't get pics to upload but they are here...

Google Drive share
Pic 2

[RicciEU]

That's a cool solution for the chip.

Because I live in the south of Spain with the humidity at 120 at times I purchased a food dryer for dehydrating fruit/food. In theory ABS and PLA are not hydroscopic but I find that if I don't put the 3DS PLA and ABS in the dehydrator for a couple of hours before printing then the prints a very poor. Also if I leave the 3DS PLA in the machine after printing it shatters and is a real pain to remove from the feed tube.

For a long term solution I think I will do as you have done and build a dryer box and re-route the feeder tube into the box so my filament is always dry.

Thanks again.

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Has anyone ever printed with PETG or Polycarbonate /carbon? My CubePro is standard as it came out of the box. Neither of these materials were recommended by 3DS SO i don't want to damage it.

[TommyDee]

If you back up to V1.87, you can modify the files for CubePro. There you can set the temperatures. PETG seems to want about 10-15 degrees less than Cubify ABS. I set the temp to 250C in Cube3. Our own BuddyBu has made an awesome editor to make some quick tweaks to CubePro print files.

Do note that V1.87 is a huge step backwards.

[dougk12]

"Has anyone ever printed with PETG or Polycarbonate /carbon?"

PETG, yes. Polycarbonate and Carbon - no. Filament with fiber glass or carbon fiber will ruin the print jet. You need a hardened steel print tip for that, which is possible but I'm not aware of anyone selling modified tips or other print jets modified to work on the Pro. Polycarbonate might be possible but I believe the recommended top printing temp for the pro is 280c. Even if the printer will allow higher heat, that's pretty high for the PTFE tube in the print jet.

I've had decent success with the Cube3 OEM slicer and PETG (as ABS). I'd bet that you can crank out functional parts doing the same on the Pro.

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As promised, I posted models and basic instructions to do that conversion in a separate thread. Good luck!

[RicciEU]

Hey TommyDee, or anyone, can I not change / set the temp through the settings / control jets / target temp? Sorry but for some reason I can't load any images.

Cheers, Richard

[TommyDee]

RicciEU, Cubify, the code that drives all the prosumer 3DS printers, is a canned program. This means all recipes are created and fixed based on the material chip presented. There are external reference files that can be made readable, however, we do not have the encoder to restore the program as no encoders are publicly available.

The selections available in the CubePro app are simply hooks into the code as input to the slicer. Temperature is not one of those hooks. We can modify these temps because there are publicly available encoders. This is what Simplify3D, S3D, uses to talk to the machine in BFB format. It writes a compliant uncompiled file and the encoder makes it readable by the printer. S3D is completely isolated from Cubify other than the base code needed to run the printer. S3D now manages all the aspects of the print knowing the characteristics of the hardware. BuddyBu's Cube3Editor gives us some options like temp settings but in general it is still the Cubify slicer.