NinjaFlex – Flexible 3D Printer Filament in a MakerBot Replicator 2X

simple 3d printed vase in ninja flex
NinjaFlex printed “Simple Vase”

Take Away:
Definitely a challenge to print with but the rewards might be worth it depending on your end goals.

The Journey:
It might have taken a day or two worth of fiddling around to get the extruder together on our MakerBot Replicator 2X using MakerBot’s extruder upgrade kit ($8: consists of a spring, bearing and a screw). The instructions for the upgrade on the Makerbot site is for a Replicator 2 (NOT the 2X) and the thickness of the extruder block and how they line up are all different so that was a dead end at first.

I ended up using the Thingiverse extruder files created by 3FPD (our make pic: http://www.thingiverse.com/make:87985) and I finally got the stuff to load without bending and buckling (too much).

Lastly it took a day or two of fiddling with the MakerBot profiles to find the right mix of heat/retraction/speed and so on to get a successful print. (for us it didn’t work with the recommended settings and temps)  Above you’ll see some of the prints leading up to the pretty well done Simple Vase print.

The MakerWare (now MakerBot) profile that I used to create the finished “simple vase” and the iPhone 5 bumper posted by Adafruit

2 Responses

  1. Tanya April 8, 2015 / 6:02 pm

    Great page, we are doing many similar projects in our lab.
    Any links to the profile/ settings you used with the NinjaFlex? we are currently having some under extrusion problems. Also curious if you have played with any dual-extrusion projects using two different materials. That is our next project.

    • Urban April 14, 2015 / 10:00 am

      I’m glad to know I’m not the only one playing around with this stuff!

      I do have a NinjaFlex profile on GitHub you can download. github.com/urbanatwork/MakerBot_Profiles Note that my settings were much hotter than the ones rec’d by the manufactures website. Their settings were causing stringy and unbound layers.

      I have done some models with dual materials, ABS and PLA, ABS and HIPS (dissolvable), but nothing with the NinjaFlex… yet.

      Thanks for the comment,
      Urban

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