ColorFabb LW-PLA "The new balsa?"

[Keno]

With ColorPrint's LW ASA they said it does warp in printing thin wall wing parts and they were correct. To keep your bed at 90c when printing is a problem, I need a enclosure probably to solve this problem. It was reported to be softer and rubbery and that has proven to be correct. It appears to print smoother than LW PLA and that is good. I think I will wait until I get an enclosure for my printer before I do anymore printing with LW ASA.

 

[jpot1]

@kilroy07 is your ender 3 a Bowden setup?

 

[kilroy07]

@kilroy07 is your ender 3 a Bowden setup?

Yes. I also have an Ender 5+ which is direct drive

 

[Keno]

This in my Zlin "Savage Bobber" will it fly or melt in our current heat wave we are having here 90-110 f.? This was printed with LW-PLA and for the parts needing good strigth I used LabPrint polyAir 1. The PolyAir should not be derated I just bought more as it is better than generic PLA

 

[sprzout]

Hmmm...I wonder how it would work for balsa frame and then covering it? Could that be done?

(Thinking out loud on this one, mind you - I've got plans for a U-2 in balsa that I'd love to build, but the wood alone to scratch it would be well above the cost of a roll of LW-PLA)

 

[Keno]

Hmmm...I wonder how it would work for balsa frame and then covering it? Could that be done?

(Thinking out loud on this one, mind you - I've got plans for a U-2 in balsa that I'd love to build, but the wood alone to scratch it would be well above the cost of a roll of LW-PLA)

I am thinking carbon fiber for the fuse and balsa for the rest...

 

[PsyBorg]

Yes. I also have an Ender 5+ which is direct drive

Oi you ARE still around. Havent seen a post from you in ages. Not even on your YT channel. Hows life treatin you? you guys staying safe n healthy I hope.

 

[Fjallstal]

Printing a wingtip for the VL Pyorremyrsky. Looks quite good in my opinion.
Printed on a Ender 3 Pro, with dual drive extruder, bowden, and stock hotend. 250°C end, 40°C bed. The printer is a little nuts, so the rest of the settings is way out of normal. It looks like about 20 mm/s .
Filament is dried 4h/50°C in food dryer before printing.
The line on the outside is from increasing feed slightly.

 

[Robert S]

Tried LW-PLA this weekend. The blue bomb is regular PLA, the yellow one is ColorFabb LW-PLA. Prints at half the weight as advertised.

The bad news is it takes alot of tweaking the print settings to get it to behave. The good news is that it forces you to learn what all of those obscure settings in the slicer software do. 😀

Ender 3 v2 and MatterControl Slicer. I'm not posting my setting just yet because I'm still not sure they are correct. I'm having some success but I'm still very much a noob at this. As mentioned above, the setting are way out of whack compared to normal PLA.

 

[Robert S]

The bomb printed pretty good but, when I tried printing a flat square, the first layer(s) would wave, or, wrinkle. (See pic below)

After I played with the settings, things got worse and the printer head would not be at the level it needed to be when printing starts even though I auto homed it and everything looked correct. I leveled the printed five times. Nothing worked so I went through all of the setting and found a couple multipliers that, after I researched the descriptions of, I zeroed out.

Now everything seems to be working. (See pic below)

BTW, I found this site last night. lots of interesting, if not helpful, information: https://richrap.blogspot.com/2019/04/colorfabb-lw-pla-expanding-foaming.html

 

[Robert S]

Here are some unscientific LW-PLA vs PLA weight comparisons (with pictures!)

So I'm getting ready to try and build the 3DAeroventures Box-Wing (https://www.3daeroventures.com/). Before I do that, I wanted to go back and retry some of the things that I had mild successes, and some total failures, in while using regular PLA. Except this time I'd try it with LW-PLA. This will give me a chance to refine my LW-PLA settings with out expending too much effort (and tears) if it doesn't work.

So I've decided to recreate my first Mini-Arrow (see here: https://forum.flitetest.com/index.p...er-control-and-fpv-systems.66457/#post-640472)

As you can see the mini-arrow foam vertical Stabilizer was 2g. The PLA one was 16g and, the LW-PLA one is 11g. The LW-PLA was 30% infill. I don't remember exactly what I printed the PLA at but, I think it was something like 15% because I was trying to keep it light. I might have had a drink or two at the time so who the heck knows. It all depends on what I had the infill set at but I can say that so far, all things equal, the LW-PLA has been about 50% the weight of the same part printed with regular PLA as advertised.

As for the fuselage... The unassembled foam board components and the motor mount are 8g. The foam components "quickly" assembled and glued are 10g and the LW-PLA fuselage is 28g (with camera mount). Unfortunately I do not have my PLA body anymore but, I do still have the top cover for it. As you can see the PLA cover is 7g and the LW-PLA cover is 4g. Based on the difference in the covers, my fuzzy math says that the PLA fuselage was ~44g (Criminal Justice major).

 

[Robert S]

So I'm getting ready to try and build the 3DAeroventures Box-Wing (https://www.3daeroventures.com/). Before I do that, I wanted to go back and retry some of the things that I had mild successes, and some total failures, in while using regular PLA. Except this time I'd try it with LW-PLA. This will give me a chance to refine my LW-PLA settings with out expending too much effort (and tears) if it doesn't work..

Started printing the 3DAeroventures mini X-100 this weekend.



1/2 of one wing done. Lots of cleaning up to do on each part but, so far so good.

 

[Keno]

I have print with LW PLA, from two different manufactures with similar results. I prefer ColorFabb but other is OK. The problems I have, is at the field when temps go above 90F then ugly things happen. This is not only with LW PLA but also PLA. I printed control horns for friend & his trims kept changing caused by control horn warping. I have moved away from the PLA's for this reason. If you live where temps a mild PLA would a good choice. When you purchase filament check distortion temp to see if it will hold up in your environment. As much I would like to print with LW PLA it is a waste for the purpose it may serve. There are PLA Plus or PLA Pro filaments that do have acceptable distortion temps.