Recently a company called Z-Polymers introduced its new Tullomer FDM filament that comes with a lofty bullet list of purported properties that should give materials like steel, aluminium, and various polymers a run for their money. Even better is that it is compatible with far lower specification FDM printers than e.g. PEEK. Intrigued, the folks over at All3DP figured that they should get some hands-on information on this filament and what’s it like to print with in one of the officially sanctioned Bambu Lab printers: these being the X1C & X1CE with manufacturer-provided profiles.
The world of engineering-grade FDM filaments has existed for decades, with for example PEEK (polyether ether ketone) having been around since the early 1980s, but these require much higher temperatures for the extruder (360+℃) and chamber (~90℃) than Tullomer, which is much closer (300℃, 50℃) to a typical high-performance filament like ABS, while also omitting the typical post-process annealing of PEEK. This assumes that Tullomer can match those claimed specifications, of course.
One of the current users of Tullomer is Erdos Miller, an engineering firm with a focus on the gas and oil industry. They’re using it for printing parts (calibration tooling) that used to be printed in filaments like carbon fiber-reinforced nylon (CF-PA) or PEEK, but they’re now looking at using Tullomer for replacing CF-PA and machined PEEK parts elsewhere too.
It’s still early days for this new polymer, of course, and we don’t have a lot of information beyond the rather sparse datasheet, but if you already have a capable printer, a single 1 kg spool of Tullomer is a mere $500, which is often much less or about the same as PEEK spools, without the requirement for a rather beefy industrial-strength FDM printer.
Note that the All3DP piece looks to be sponsored content or other Marketting arranged materiel. Probably not independent, but still seems useful and informative. Just a notch below technology-overview articles in the old HP Journal.
Edit: Not sponsored. Just saw “This article is free for you and free from outside influence,” and they say their money comes from affiliate links, ads, and subs.
No, not sponsored. Any article at All3DP that is sponsored is tagged with a big “sponsored” label and even has “ad” after the headline. That being said, this use case was brought to our attention by Dynamism, the exclusive retailer of Tullomer, but we interviewed the engineer using the material ourselves.
It’s pretty important to point out it needs to be printed at 300°c which is uhh more than my Ender 3 can do
It is pointed out.
“than Tullomer, which is much closer (300℃, 50℃) to a typical high-performance filament like ABS”
Fixable with a $20 all metal hotend.
Yes, but then you have to get the bed heater replaced with something that won’t take out your PSU in the printer. That’s not QUITE as simple.
A single spool is also more expensive than your Ender 3. :-D
Depends on whether you have a Revo CR, Creality Sprite, or MicroSwiss all-metal hot-end. Fair warning, though, you will probably need to resort to more than just that if you want to step up to the plate there. An Ender3 V3 will ALMOST do it. Once I get my V2 back online and mod it with the linear rail kit, it will print it from start to finish.
You see…it’s as much the bed temps that’ll kill ya trying this stuff as the hotend. And trying? You won’t get there with any of the high-flow options available to you without discombobulating the stock bed heater and wiring in a 110v 500W, controlled by a solid-state relay off of the bed heater signal one. Anything approximating a major upgrade to your Ender3 and you’re outside the PSU’s power envelope.
I actually managed to carbonize (yes…render to charcoal…) the power feed to my V2’s mainboard trying these games. ((Did I mention my V2 is down waiting for parts? I’m using a V3…it’s NICE…but it, too, can’t print it. Not enough bed temp…)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngPksruJKr4
The technical data sheet says it’s about one third as stiff as aluminum, and has an ultimate tensile strength at 250 MPa which is comparable to soft aluminum alloys, but since it’s a plastic, the yield strength is going to be something like 25 MPa and it’s going to creep under stress.
Sure, pure unalloyed aluminum has a yield strength of 11 MPa, but that’s the reason why nobody uses pure unalloyed aluminium. It’s basically cheese.
Comparing this to steel is complete nonsense.
The main issue with these “stronger than metals” plastics is their low elastic modulus. It means you have to stretch them a lot more before they develop the same internal stress or force as your metal comparison.
The material behaves more like unbreakable rubber than metal. If you made e.g. a bicycle frame out of it, it would wobble and bend all over the place. The lower elastic modulus forces you to design the structure with a much wider cross-section to reduce the stresses proportionally, which mostly negates the advantage in price or weight or whatever, and your products turn out looking silly with disproportionately large features.
It sounds like the corollary of this being an “engineering filament” is that you also need an engineer behind the keyboard to get your money’s worth.
Because saying that a bulk material is “stronger than steel” is very different to saying how strong a printed part will be. Even PLA is far stronger than you think, if you get all Thomas Sanladerer with it. But if you’re just dropping arbitrary shapes into a slicer and clicking “print”, then high-performance filament is not going to give you strong parts.
The cool thing about 3D printing for makers is that the results are (almost) all in the design – you can fill your brain, for free, with experience that’s worth more than a $10k printer or $500 plastic.
Named in honor of Jethro Tull?
Could be useful for making re-breathers and associated parts.😆
Or for printing something thick as a brick.
Shhh.. or someone will be horizontally printing a flute while the motors cog out “Aqualung”.
Maybe you can use it to print wear parts for your Locomotive Breath.
Outside the nonsense of being comparable to steel and aluminum I am understanding PEEK like performance without the need for a PEEK specific printer. I prototype Defense articles and I’ll probably try a roll, but I’m not going to hold my breath.
Another exotic filament that if you have to ask how much it costs, you can’t afford it.
$275/500g
$500/kg
Pretty close to what we’re paying for PEEK.
It’s a good thing you don’t have to ask how much it costs, then. It’s stated right in the article.
Sure it’s stupid expensive for any casual hobbyist application, but might very well be an attractive option in certain use cases.
Now I’m curious why this and PEEK are so expensive.
PLA granules cost ~$3-6/kg
It is made with simple processes from cheap precursors. Its also a HIGH demand polymer being produced in significantly larger quantities (~300Ktons/year)
PEEK granules cost $30-100/kg
It is made with more expensive precursor material, with a more complex and energy intensive set of reactions. And is produced in much smaller quantities (13ktons/year)
We currently extrude 2 micron PEEK filament here at my work – it’s fun stuff
I heard of this a little while ago, comparing it to steel is a joke, it is nowhere near steel in terms of mechanical properties. This has an ultimate tensile stress of 250 MPa, the lowest grade structural steel I could find was ~360 MPa and went much much higher for other grades. It is also nowhere close in terms of stiffness.
Now it does have a higher UTS than some aluminium alloys but it only has a stiffness of 25 GPa compared to aluminium which can be around 60 GPa.
The thermal properties of metals are much different too, much higher maximum temperature and thermal conductivity.
This could replace some aluminium parts in some situations but it is far from being a proper replacement and it could only replace steel in applications that don’t actually need steel and steel is just used because it is the cheap option which this material isn’t.
Yes the material is very interesting and seems like it would be useful but as with most products now the marketing around it is just deceptive and misleading and a lot of their strength claims can be debunked just by looking at the TDS.
The ultimate tensile strength basically doesn’t mean a thing for plastics. You will have permanent deformation, hysteresis, fatigue, crazing and creeping behavior long before you even start approaching the UTS.
Even for fairly short term loading, you cannot exceed 50% of the ultimate tensile limit with most plastics, and for sustained loads you shouldn’t exceed 10%.
It absolutely is still relevant for plastics. Yes there is a large gap between yield stress and UTS but that is just because plastics are more elastic rather than being brittle.
Fatigue and creep happen with all materials and they are due to loading over time or repetitive loading within the operating stress of the material, they are separate from the UTS and aren’t really that related. You are supposed to have permanent deformation before reaching the UTS. Do you know what the UTS and yield stress are? The yield stress is the point where it will change from elastic to plastic deformation and the UTS is the highest stress the material can handle. You will always have permanent deformation before reaching the UTS with any material.
What do you mean that you can’t exceed 50 % of the UTS in short term loading? That makes no sense. If you mean that in practice you shouldn’t exceed that then that is different and doesn’t only apply to plastics, in all real applications you want to make sure you are well within the materials ratings and you apply an appropriate factor of safety, you should never be pushing the material to its limits.
Where are you pulling these percentages from anyway?
From stress testing data of similar plastics.
PEEK-like “high strength” plastics achieve their high UTS at high strain rates. That means, the load is applied and removed fairly quickly over a couple minutes. If the load is applied gradually over an hour or so, the UTS drops to roughly half, and if the load is sustained for longer, say days or weeks, the plastic will start to creep at 10-20% of the peak UTS you can measure for the material at high strain rates.
Your design limit is usually the proportional limit, which is the point where the material stops behaving linearly and undergoes permanent deformation with each load cycle. For metals, the proportional limit is up high closer to the tensile limit, and for plastics it’s down low far away from the tensile limit, and usually doesn’t improve very much even if you manage to increase the UTS by some trickery. Plastic is plastic.
I’ve heard that it has particularly poor layer adhesion. Notice that most of the example parts pictured are basically 2d shapes.
The most interesting property of this material is that it is apparently EM transparent. This will give it uses in defense and in electric motors. I look forward to seeing some practical applications and hopefully a reduction in price.
all the flat pieces are visibly warped lol
doesn’t bode well
PEEK is neat. PEKK is neat. This is neat.
But I can buy high quality virgin nylon for cheaper than PLA and I have the experience, tooling, and techniques to print it.
Plus I know there are far fewer health risks associated with nylon as opposed to ABS or PET. This new plastic may have hidden risks.
If I need something more rigid than raw nylon I can by any number of fiber reinforced products for a fraction of the price of this.
I might get excited if it’s used as a fiber reinforcement for a compatible polymer .
This is probably another PEEK variant which has been tailored for improved 3D printing properties?
There is PEKK, but there is also a third one in use by Aerospace, PAEK maybe? It gets used by some European aerospace companies as an alternative to the PEEK tapes used on Boeing aircraft, as it has a lower melting point (something like 310degC) which allows for lower temperature autoclaving and lower temperature consumables (the tradeoff is a corresponding lower Tg).
If I were to guess, Id say they are using something along these lines:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0474-7
Which yeah, the material science lf it is very, very cool
As a community, when new materials are introduced, their potential ecological impacts must be presented. We can no longer ignore this dimension as conscientious makers (and scientists)
Wonderful ♥️