Do 3D Prints melt in your car in summer?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 1 ธ.ค. 2016
- I always wondered what would happen to 3D Prints if you left them in your car in the hot summer sun - so I decided to try it.
We tested PLA, ABS and PET, all loaded into a car parked in the sun on a 35degC day. The results were.. interesting!
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Once I left newly purchased PLA spool on the front seat, stuck in the traffic for an hour or so and when got back home realised that now I have solid 1kg block!
Kris M I hope thet's a cheap spool not an expensive one.
feels bad man
PLA buyers take note: Don't cheap out in transport air conditioning.
That doesn't make sense. Unprinted PLA is semi-crystalline, meaning that it should only begin to melt at 180 C. I have left my PLA spools in my car and been fine.
Um, that must have been some garbage filament if it melted with you inside the car.
you live in Australia and you had no shoes on.... I also like to live dangerously.
Kal larken no shoes in summer is an oz tradition, I know it makes no sense, we're silly people!
I rarely wear shoes but I keep thongs under my driver's seat for special occasions
Why do you have women's underwear under your car seat? It must get REALLY hot in Austrailia :|
Wait what lol. Some clothes might have fallen out of boxes when we've been moving - the car is a total dump.
that was towards the guy keeping thongs under his seat Haha sorry for the scare Angus I didnt see anything I shouldnt of.
Man, those crazy Aussies, cold as balls here in europe :D
The scary part is that it isn't even that hot yet. Mid Forties will be coming soon!
Love that you did this.
And that's why we kickstarted HTPLA 3 years ago :-) It makes the PLA glass transition point less relevant by crystallizing the material through heat treating. This firms up your HTPLA parts, helping them maintain more stiffness to higher temperatures!
Hmm, what if you annealed the PLA print first before exposing it to the sauna that is your car?
Exactly, HTPLA anyone?
3D Printing Nerd I want to see that also A previous test I’ve seen with pla saw it stand up to 130° to 160° I believe it was
The fact you can anneal PLA was a mind blowing realization to me.
HI ANGUS , VERY GOOD DEMONSTRATION, THANKS
Needed this info today 👍. Thank you ‼️😊
Sorta need to have 3 parts of the same size and color to actually test that I would think.
Thanks dude.
It's a great vid! Informative. Am considering PETG for my projects.
Thank you. I had been wondering about the car heat and PLA... :)
Good food for thought given what I want to get into.
Love the video. Any thoughts of doing an update to see how PLA+ holds its own in a hot car? I realize that each manufacturer's recipe would likely reveal differing results, but I'm curious to see if any PLA+ would hold its shape better than standard PLA. Thanks. Keep up the great work.
this helped me out a lot.
Thank you for this cool video, I wanted to see if i can print a part for my car, and u showed me the way
Pretty much what I expected Angus, but it's great to see you test it to be certain. Cheers mate.
Haha, was just a bit of fun but was really surprising just how little ABS and even the PET was affected when compared. If you're printing on demand and you have to transport a PLA model across the city in summer, it could spell disaster!
It's definitely something to be aware of for most people, thought not so much here in the UK.
Yes, of course I'm jealous :-)
Spike Kent it gets hot in the car in the summer as well(Denmark here) , yes we would love some of your summer Angus
It does here too mate, but not in December, like it does where Angus is ... If only it did that here :-)
It would be great to see similar tests with the modified and annealed PLA. I've had good luck with annealed Raptor PLA from MakerGeeks, but there are quite a few others out there. ABS has so many drawbacks if you can only print in an enclosed space that the annealed PLA is a great option.
Agreed, we kickstarted HTPLA 3 whole years ago for just this very reason!
Found this out the hard way after printing a PLA gopro mount as a dash camera. I hate printing ABS though. It's harder to work with and you have to ventilate the room.
Anybodysguess PET-G :)
Hey Angus, great video however I'm curious as a lot of people use 3D printers for props or all kinds of things and will often paint their printed pieces. Do you think painting the PLA with some kind of spray paint would change your results?
Excellent to get the reference of Australian summer as I've recently purchased an Ender 3 V2 and need some references for temps!
yes they melt when the temps are to high.
I made a gauge pod holder in pla, it wrap pretty bad when summer hit. Reprinted in ABS and its last these 110F summers.
Living in Darwin, I'm a bit concerned that I'll come home one day to a house full of PLA puddles. I often have to go out for weeks at a time with work so I might have to store all my prints in the fridge
I made centre caps for my car out of black PLA back in 2014, I sold the car early 2016 and they werent adversely affected by the weather, track days at eastern creek, wsid and the scorching Sydney summer we had last year, some very light discolouration, but id say that was actual brake dust being present, and not degradation. (as it was that dark browny colour)
but interesting none the less!
Now this is the REAL way to get flexible prints :)
Good use of the word 'Munted'.
Hi Angus, I've been 'soak testing' ABS test prints in my car for just under 2 months (to see if ABS was suitable for printing a replacement centre console lid). I printed 5 test pieces, at infills ranging from 15% to 90% and left them in the car in the Queensland sun.
Happy to report that zero detectable warping after 2 months.
Isn't abs used in most cars anyways.
@@robertt9342 Injection moulded parts yes, 3D printed parts no.
I love watching fellow australian youtubers :)
I had a co-worker 3D print me a tweeter bracket for my car so this video was very helpful! I need to ask what material he used before I attempt to install it. I was worried it may warp or stretch during a hot summer day in the US. Damn Crutchfield didn't supply me with the correct tweeter bracket! I guess I will have to leave the tweeter on zip ties till I buy some heat resistant paint lol.
Thanx this video saved 10 kilos of PLA filamet. Thanx again bro
yep, found that out in Texas summer. Had a custom drone camera mount in Truck. After work went to fly to test new 360 Deg camera. Well the mount did not look like what I had designed. All twisted :)
Worked fine in ABS and PETG.
Been thinking of using ASA too for UV.
That's another test for you during this summer leave some prints out for a month or so and see UV deterioration.
Pity you did not have any PLA HT annealed to go with the other samples.
Good show
Garth
Annealing PLA sounds like a lot of effort, but I do have some HT stuff somewhere, just need to find time to test that stuff out. Personally I just print in ABS if I need the temp resistance.
Maker's Muse During the summer T reach 50C° in my country, I tested ABS by putting it in the car for a month at least 5hr a day (exposed to direct sun light)
considering the T inside the car more than outside.
nothing changed at all.
ESUN's PLA+ / PLA PRO will anneal 30 minutes in an oven at 225 F. Doesn't say that it will, but it does
In Phoenix it can get as high as 50°C. I stuck some thermocouples in a car on one such day, and it got up to 80°C near the dash! PLA would never survive. And yet we still have people leaving children and pets in cars...
Not made of PLA, I presume.
well they leave pets in cars because PET has a higher glass transition temp. :>
same temperatures but higher humidity here in Queensland in ipswich if my kids or animals are in the car it is air-conditioning time even leave to car running with dog in it if its hot so he can have the air-conditioning
My black PLA phone-holder melted like ice in our last summer.
BUT... I have a small white holder for the camera behind the glass, that's printed in PLA and that's still going strong for two years now.
Lol I was so confused because it's winter in the US, then I remembered you live in Australia
I lived in a place that got up to 127F, or 52C outside in the shade. Inside a closed car, it got a lot hotter. Most things made of plastic left on the dashboard would be warped after a couple of hours.
I'm thinking of buying a Craftbot Plus. Would you recommend it or should I get another printer?
Really interesting! I don't think PLA would be a choice for cup holder devices (cell phone, GPS, ) And something I had wanted to do looks like I will need to use abs for! Thanks.
Annealed PLA seems to have pretty good temp resistance compared to other plastics
I made several PLA prints which are placed on the top my car dashboard right behind the windscreen and never melted through years and hot summers we got in my area. But i coated the PLA with a double layer of heat resistant paint and a triple layer of anti-UV clearcoat. Even with temperatures as high as 65 celsius inside, everything is nice and steady... But straight unprotected PLA would have been game over for sure :=)
I'd love to see a comparison of how brittle they get in your freezer... I want to print some holders and things for my mountain bike that won't crack when it's 10 below and I hit a bump.
Actually seeing what happens to PLA @ 50C is very handy if you want to reshape PLA models for various reasons - say stop motion dummies for instance - print 10 or so models then heat and bend to make the full range of poses.
And yeah - in Oz 30 degrees means sunburn and heat stroke, in the US 30 degrees means frostbite.
Tom Sandladerer did a video about annealing pla prints. thought it was interesting soI myself. he had found that they tend to shrink in the x and y axis but grow a bit in the z axis. after this initial warping though their temperature resistance was quite good
Hi Angus. thanks for your video on this subject. and all you do for the 3d community :-) .
Wow that was really quick for the Pla to disform ! this must really limit what you can and cant do with Pla. Personally I only use ABS and petg etc and from watching your video I think ime best sticking to these materials. could be disshartening to see a precious print turn onto bubble gum :-(
I am in the UK and not such a problem for us but still a very limiting factor to consider.
Short answer: Yes they will if you leave them on your black dashboard and it's made of PLA (can't speak for abs). I would say it was in the 80s F when it happened and sunny.
Is there pens that can write with petg? I only see pla for pens.
Would wood filament also melt like the PLA?
I live in phoenix where it gets up to 120 in the summer so inside our cars are easily 150+ degrees! Its pretty miserable and impossible to do anything outside from May to September
…one of the few kings of 3d printing…
idk. honestly I only get recommendations for this and a few other guys :)
high UV in AUS at the moment, might try that pla in car trick tomorrow just for a laugh. thanks Angus :)
my rear vision mirror fell of the windscreen today in the heat if that's any indication of the state of things in Queensland!
I had my my first two printers, a Huxley and a Mendel, warp out of skew after a few days. Both's frames are now unusable, the Huxley being far worst off, so I wouldn't say ABS is entire immune. This kind of problem can happen at room temperature and holding certain kinds of tension on a part, like parts have to support overly tensioned belts. The extra heat took a bigger toll.
So I shouldn't use my oven as a storage for 3D prints?
This is a lot of why I don't buy PLA anymore. I might buy some high temp PLA some time to try.
I also did a plane in Black PETG in the sun in a car and it warped severely. So black in the sun doesn't help. Black ABS was fine in the sun.
Please try HTPLA. It makes a difference!
wow. Though it's unlikely I'll get into 3D printing I was hoping to just use PLA due to it being made from natural resources but I had no idea how melty it is.
Depends on many factors.
But have a bright day, a good insulated dark car and a dark print - ABS too will melt.
50°C is nothing - the inside of a car an easily reach 80°C and higher and black plastic can reach the 105°C transition temperature.
Hi Angus
could you make the "interresting shape" you created for the wanhao creator 6 review available to download, because I tried to create a simular shape, but it allways looked really bad...
I love your videos and keep doing this awsome content (youtube nowadays really needs it)
What about resistance to seawater..? Would u do an experiment on printing material vs seawater??
I live in Kentucky and here we can get over 100 F in the summers and in Sub Zero (f) in the winters. I appreciate your test however you did use a delicate print that would melt easily and much thinner than the other two prints.. You also put them directly in the sum on the dash where it's going to be the most extreme. What if you had a part that was under the dash and not in the direct sun?
Given that PET is (or at least, seems so to me) more elastic than ABS, I wouldn't be surprised if the give you felt in the PET print was just because of the material.
And as a side-note, I was totally expecting all the hairs on the PLA print to curl up and disappear! XD
Shouldn't the thickness of the plastic being tested be the same?
Thats so funny that in december you have summer. We (europe) except snow. :-)
Could you please link your lattice cube
What about PLA that has been coated or painted?
Mid 30s is cold. Here in outback Vic we had 50c a couple of days ago!
Just the kind of information I was needing. I'm getting ready to print t functional parts for my motorcycle, and am concerned about the life of the parts. I'm feeling a bit better that I bought PETG, my first experience with it, and the parts will not be enclosed like in a car, but may see temps up to 85F. (29C). Wond will help keep those temps down as well.
It's the first day of spring and there's a foot of snow outside it's in the mid twenties to low thirties (f) (about -7 up to 1 in Celsius) Fml
So..... a lot of car interior components are made from ABS. The more you know..... :P
probably not, they most likely are made out of other speciality automotive plastics. Maybe ASA? But I know nothing about cars so I might very well be wrong here XD
Not to be one of "those people" on the internet, but no seriously, a lot of them are. There are a lot of other plastics and such used in car interiors as well, don't get me wrong, but ABS is also commonly used.
Well, like you said. The more you know XD
Just thought the auto industry would've moved on from ABS.
Nah, ABS is cheap and inexpensive to injection mould. There are also a wide variety of processes commonly used on it that allow you to quickly and cheaply disguise it.
Yep. There is an absolute ton of ABS used in the automotive world. That and obviously nylon.
Most of the interior parts in your car are made of ABS, so I wouldn't have expected anything to happen to that one. The PETG is a little surprising that it didn't have any issues though.
Hi what infill you use?
PLA warps badly here in NZ at 24C ambient, sun gain does it.
Its mid 30's here in the US but our prints are in danger or freezing. lol The systems used in the US are weird
Stephen Germiller I get what you did there, 30 F (-1 c)
Mid 30's mate? no worries I'll get my swimming shorts and sunscreen.
Can you test more dense objects?
cheers for the test. no problem here in the uk lucky if we see 23 lol
oops! I've printed some PLA brackets for a roof console in our troopy (Google it non-aussies) looks like that might not be a good idea since we're off to the Kimberley....
what about annealed PLA??
This summer I made a black PLA Cassette type wallet I found on thingiverse, left it out under some glass. Well let's just say that same day I printed out a new wallet in ABS this time XD
My gearshift knob is printed out of standard quality black Neema3D pla, It regularly sits in the sun for hours in the summer in Greece (outside temps of 35C+)
I will sometimes be unable to touch it for more than a couple of seconds because of how hot it gets
Weirdly, I have NEVER had it go soft. I don't know how that is possible but there you go.
For car interior parts, what is the best or recommended material with 3D printing, or what type of printer is best?
Diamond
Lol
You should've put that dashcam to good use and filmed a quick-and-dirty timelapse!
hey Angus you should do that in ipswich qld say goodbye to the pet aswell abs or asa would be the lowest you would want to go up here the humidity and heat are way worse. regularly get 45degree days in summer inside the car up to 80 easy
yeah i made a radar mount out of PLA for my car. Didn't even last a day in Texas weather.
green house effect, black PLA melts faster too the color varies. pla low melting point, abs high melting point
Quote Angus "pretty much munted".
Hey Angus, I'm also in Australia and it is a solid 42 outside today, I was wondering if anyone knew how printers actually handle printing at that temperature? (I only got my prusa mk2s a week ago so I'm a bit of a newbie).
I accidently left a PLA/PHA print in my truck for a couple hours last summer, it warped like crazy.
Jep once printed a pla Smartphone mount for the car... Worked fine till summer came around xD if the pet would react u would not leave a soda bottle in the car ;)
I ordered a Nerf lynx from a creator and I have gone with PETG I honestly don't know how people still get them made in PLA.
Was at a Nerf event and we were all under the trees in western Australia summer (hot) and as soon as the sun shone through a tiny spot it would heat up and soften what were kind of expensive blasters.
No shoes, when you have the Sydney Funnel Web Spider?! - one the most dangerous spiders in the world. Crazy!!
Yeah, I made a venus box and I left it in my car. It looked fine, but all the mechanisms were completely stuck.
I left my very first successful pla print on my dashboard and went into my LGS for a couple hours came back to the scene from T2 basically a pool of goo with a deformed arm sticking out... that day I learned that PLA was vampiric and was allergic to the sun lol...
This test turbocharged: Print a larger surface area black item (imitating car dashboard) and measure temperature with a probe :D I read somewhere it goes up to 100 C, I wonder if ABS would withstand that
summer has well and truly arrived today it is in the mid 30s. that is something said in alaska where they use imperial measurements.
PLA turn the aircon on ;)
I can do the same test you did in Australie here in Germany by puting my oven on max ;)
Please, do you know if this would happend with the esun PLA+ filament too?
(since it is stated to be as strong as abs, But im not sure about the Temperature)
Gon Garcia they might list glass transition temperature on their website
Glass transition will still be the same. Glass transition just matters less in a plastic with more crystalline structure. In other words, glass transition has less influence.
Proto-pasta thnx. second question, if I apply primer then it should be so affected by heat, right?
Gon Garcia a light color primer will help reflect heat, but I wouldn't count on it to add any structure
fair enough... thanks ;)
In Italy we are freezing :)
And then here's my dumb ass making a gauge pod out of PLA... I guess I'll be re-making it when summer comes :D
So I shouldn't make a electronic compass I want to make for my car out of PLA.
Not only prints, that heat might not be too good for PLA filament rolls either.
That would always depend so yes… they can…. But also it depends
Haha! That poor cube!! Should have left them in for a day :p
The harsh conditions Aussie cars go though day after day without thought.
No idea what the temps get to in Aus. But where I am from I can see 115F on a summer day (low of 90F at night even).
I hope my ordered PLA spools don't melt in the mail!