Hello Steve, hello together,
What do you think about PETG for the gears?
I built a few clocks SP4 and SP5 that way and to me that feels very good, less friction.
A clear disadvantage is the tendency of PETG to produce more stringing.
So you have to inspect the results carefully.
What do you think?
Cheers, Frank
My initial experiments with PETG show no improvement compared to PLA. I even tried silk vs non-silk PLA and found slightly better results with silk PLA. This is an extremely small sample size, so I am not going to draw any conclusion from it.
My PETG experiment only replaced gear 4 to the pallet.
Here is what I have learned:
1) PLA, silk PLA, and PETG are all acceptable for the gears. I do almost all of my prototyping using silk PLA. There does not appear to be a significant enough performance difference in the other materials to exclude them.
2) PETG is a tiny bit "squishier" than PLA. There might be some additional deformation near the winding drum. This part is designed with thick features and should be OK with PETG, but I have not actually tested it yet.
3) Silk PLA often prints with fewer surface defects compared to non-silk PLA. Maybe the surface tension that pulls silk PLA into itself helps reduce random blobs.
4) The PTFE infused PETG should be a huge improvement. It is too bad it is so expensive. I design assuming hundreds of makers will be printing them, so it is hard to recommend it as a requirement.