After our test of BambuLab’s new PETG HF filament, it’s time to put TPU 95A HF through its paces. TPU is a very flexible filament and therefore harder to print on our BambuLab A1 Mini.
This time, we can’t use the AMS, the automatic system that loads our 4 spools of filament, so we have to load it by hand directly into the printer head.
As a reminder, BambuLab sent us :
- PETG HF – New filament. High Flow for faster printing.
- PETG Translucent – A more resistant plastic than PLA, but less easy to print.
- PLA Glow – The easiest plastic to print but transparent.
- TPU 95A HF – A flexible, high-flow filament.
TPU 95A HF recreation process
As with the PETG HF, I wanted to create a useful object. And as with the PETG HF, we’ve got some work to do on the restoration of the Porsche 928. This time we’re interested in a gasket that comes around the reverse light. Made of rubber, after 30 years, sometimes 40, it has to be changed. But no reproduction is currently available. Perfect for us, we’ll reverse engineer and print it in TPU 95A HF.
So out come the calipers and Autodesk Fusion. The rubber has worked hard over the years, so we have to make a few educated guesses.
Once the model is ready, we make a first impression in PLA, this time I’ve chosen a green PLA to make it easier to see. This allows us to make sure that the dimensions are right. This time we didn’t have to make any adjustments, as the geometry of the part was pretty straightforward. But to make the challenge more complicated, the best position to print it is vertically. This is simple for PLA, but much more complex for a flexible material.
We now move on to printing with BambuLab TPU 95A HF filament. Once again, the printer automatically recognises the spool thanks to its RFID chip. And the software already has its default settings for this material. Printing vertically is no problem… amazing. Not all the surfaces are perfect, but we already have a functional part to test in real conditions.
Now we’ll have to rework the supports by hand or change the orientation of the print to make this part even more presentable..