I need a certain, rather complex shaped, flexible rubber gasket for a Dyson vacuum cleaner. Cutting it by hand would be a pain in the rear. My idea is to 3D-print it on my Ender. And now for my questions. a) Is it a myth, that you cannot use flexible filament I a bowden extruder? b) If no, does anyone of you guys can propose a material, that might be suitable for the above job? Thanks a lot!
I would rather convert the printer to direct drive first. There are various variations which are not expensive. I went with a cheap BMG extruder clone.
I have been rather successful with Overture’s High Speed TPU. It prints really well with my Bowden tube setup and it has a semi-rigid outer shell that goes away during extrusion. It sounds like exactly what you are looking for.
You can print TPU using a Bowden setup, though you will have to slow your print down speed and tweak with your retraction settings too. 95A should work, softer TPU may work though I can’t really guarantee that
It’s easier to print flexibles with a direct drive setup. There are some printable direct drive mods for the ender 3 which others have had success with, may be something to look into!
It’s tricky but not impossible, I’ve done it with my Ender 3. You do need a different extruded though as the stock one has too large of a gap and the filament can easily kink and escape it. Clone BMG is a good choice, but you can also print a version of the stock one with tighter filament path. If you aren’t going to print flexibles more, you can keep it bowden - adding the mass of a DD brings its own problems. After that it’s just a matter of very slow primt speed (like 15mm/s slow) and little to no retraction using 95 TPU.
