Video: Will It Erode? - Part 2
Which 3D printed plastics are the most erosion-resistant? In this "Will it..." video, Greg Paulsen, Xometry's Director of Application Engineering, 3D printed the popular "3D Bency" using several different materials (polycarbonate, PLA, polypropylene, ULTEM, Nylon 11 and 12, etc.) and printing processes (FDM, SLS, MJF, SLA, LSPc, Polyjet, DLS), then subjected the parts to a vibratory media tumbling for hours to see which would hold up.
Watch to find out which 3D printed plastic resists the stresses of our tumbling torture test the best!
More About This Test
We performed this test with the popular "3D Benchy", a 3D model specifically designed for testing and benchmarking 3D printers. This is a continuation of our first video in this series, in which we tested abrasion resistance with media blasting. Check out part one if you haven't seen it already. For the second test, the same materials ranging from thermoplastics to photopolymer resins were tumbled for hours using ceramic media, abrasive plastic media, and more. Here is a list of the processes and materials we tested:
Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM)
- PLA
- Polycarbonate
- ULTEM 9085
Selective Laser Sintering (SLS)
- Nylon 12 (dyed blue)
- Nylon 11 EX
- Polypropylene
- TPU 88A
- Accura ClearVue (quick-clear finish)
- Somos EvoLVe 128
Lubricant Sublayer Photo-curing (LSPc)
- xCE
- xPP405
- RPU 70
- Opaque Rigid Photopolymer
Test Results & Observations
After the vibratory media tumbling tests, we reviewed and assigned an erosion resistance ranking to each material based on how it performed. 1-star rated materials exhibited poor erosion resistance, exemplified by issues such as extreme smoothing, material loss, detail loss, etc. In contrast, 3-star rated materials had excellent erosion resistance and were harder to distinguish from the control (non-tumbled) samples.
You can see the results from the test in the chart below:
Results summary from media blast abrasion test
Before & After Photos
In the image gallery below, you can closely examine how each tested part changed by the end of the experiment. On the left side of each photo you will see what the Benchy looked like before testing, and on the right what it looked like after testing.
More Engineering Challenge Videos
Want to see more content like this? Check out some of our abrasion resistance challenge video below!
- Will It Erode? : Part 1 - Abrasion Resistance Test
