Printing with Light Weight PLA

Does this mean that at higher temperature the LW-PLA material itself becomes more brittle or is it just a function of the greater "foaming" meaning each individual bubble has a thinner wall thickness.
I note the cat asleep in the back ground!

This ere printing is cheating :whistle: when i was a lad we did proper like with balsa :evil:

A 'springy print'. Trying to get my head around that idea. Yes a bit of bend I expect but past that bit comes the "CRACK" sound.

The LW-PLA remains flexible as long as you don't print at too high a temperature.

The above is scrap as it was printed at 250^oC
Broke on the layering underneath.

This test of a scrap aileron, 165mm between supports, 670gm load. When the load was removed the component immediately returned to its original shape.

Tricky to use, yes. But I am now at a stage where I level the bed first thing and I can print the whole day in LW-PLA, as long as I follow my self made rules.

I will always be an Oily hand myself Tony, however, in this new, politically correct world, PLA is a biodegradable product. I'm hoping that what I write here will be of help in the future.
You and I are Dinosaurs, from a time when people did things with their hands and we proudly emerged from our Boy cave with a freshly completed model in our hands. I personally feel sorry for the youngsters of today who only know instant gratification.

Seconded, Tony klippy!
There's a facebook group identifying themselves as SAD - Society of Aircraft Demolishers - that shows the remains of crashed models - most of them foamies - so I posted a comment asking why so many models that were easily repaired - were being binned.
Nobody actually answered the question, but the inference was that it was easier to buy a new one.
To my eyes, I could have repaired most of them with a squirt of UHU POR and a few bits of .5 mm ply reinforcing, and got them flying again.
Foamies, of course, are NOT biodegradable!
-
You say that PLA is bio - but over what time-span? It would be rather embarrassing if you were to be flying a printed model, and have bits start falling off!
It reminds me of when hot-melt was first on the market, and people were makingwood models with this stuff, only to findthat if they left the model out in the hot sun (when we got one!) the model went all droopy,because the adhesive softened! - - and some degradable carrier bags I had, they looked perfectly fine until you moved them, and they literally fell to dust. :woohoo:

In reading about power cuts three images popped into my head.... and given that electrical power is minimally in my skill set take these with as large a pinch of salt... and perhaps generate a chuckle for Aero Folk who know all about finding work-arounds for kit that is not in stock or to get back into the air despite that 'thing-that-didn't-get-into-the-tool-box'.

1st image... A 3D printer has a power draw perhaps not greatly different from a PC that is on one of your many uninterruptible power supplies. Would tying the printer into a UPS allow you to get another ~hour of use?

2nd image .... was of the deep discharge batteries you have that are no longer fit for driving big stuff might be serviceable for a printer only circuit? Or for swapping into one of your UPS?

3rd image ... the PV cells on the roof which are feeding into the grid at minimal benefit to you ... and that huge water tank ... and finding a DC pump and tying it into a small scale pump storage scheme that could chug away during daylight hours and 'unwind' overnight or for the length of a print run. Or variant a DC winch that pulled up a whacking great lump of concrete or one of the many boulders that turn your ankles to the height of said water tank during daylight hours and which could 'unwind' overnight or for the length of a print run via a suitably kludged device that could recover said 100W.

All of these images related to gubbins probably hiding out in your workshop while avoiding the kind of stuff that is hard to get. And likely you have thought of many of these and discarded. Feel free to have a chuckle and add these images to the bin as well... Jon

Chuckling Jon,
Jon said "1st image... A 3D printer has a power draw perhaps not greatly different from a PC that is on one of your many uninterruptible power supplies. Would tying the printer into a UPS allow you to get another ~hour of use?"
Answer, yes, it's currently on a 2Kva UPS, the batteries in it give me about 5 mins.

I have just a few trashed batteries! Since the most recent round of load shedding, replacement batteries have become almost extinct!
Jon said, "2nd image .... was of the deep discharge batteries you have that are no longer fit for driving big stuff might be serviceable for a printer only circuit? Or for swapping into one of your UPS?"
Now there's an idea that I hadn't thought of.
As for your 3rd, I don't have a suitable generator, you have to spin a vehicle alternator at 2,000rpm to get any decent output from it.
Option 2 has lift off!

One out of 3 is not bad! Keep us posted on the eventual rig! -Jon

Wow, something that returns to its prior shape.

A good mental workout to push through all those tests and failures to find that rule set. Well done. I can't wait to see what the local eagles think of that seagull flying in their territory.

After a long chat with Jon last night I realise that what I have written may have off putting to some people thinking of using LW-PLA. This should not be the case, LW-PLA is great stuff, as Simon found it's easy to use in an un-modified printer. My problem have really all been self inflicted. I fitted a v6 hot end plus a Bowden cable feeder which, on the standard X carriage would have reduced my available Z height by about 30mm. I therefore printed a new one (Thingyverse to the rescue)

A great deal of trouble is taken to stop heat getting to the support (the v6 hangs from its cold end). This is done with a close fitting fan, with an end temperature of 240^oC the cold end is at 42.8^oC.

If I get a power cut (frequent) the UPS kicks in for a while, but, when it stops, everything stops and the heat in the hot end travels straight up the cooling tower to melt the PLA carriage. Any filament in the system also melts, and in the case of LW-PLA, foams and forms an immovable plug in the system, hence, full rebuild.
I have now made a new hot end using the original carriage but have yet to test it.

Marlin have changed the way their Configuration files work in Visual Studio and I have yet to generate a usable Firmware file.

The layout of my A8 carriage is a bit different to your A6 so I too will also have to explore Thingyverse to find out how the 'tall' V6 head can be accommodated particularly as the A8 max print height is only 240 mm rather than the now standard 250 mm.
I have set my nozzle to 210 C which does rather limit the degree of foaming possible but I suspect it also avoids many of the nozzle blocking problems.
So far for me printing in LW-PLA has created no functional issues at all other than finding the best print parameters like layer width, height and flow rate which are rather (very!) different to normal PLA.