How to 3D Print with TPU 95A | Overview

In this weblog, we will go over the pros, cons and everything we learned about 3D printing with TPU 95A.

TPU 95A is among the hard materials to print. It sags on overhangs, prints slowly and becomes stringy. That being said, it is extremely strong and flexible, making it for many 3d printing applications. Here are our best tips and tricks to getting the best results when printing TPU.

1. Overhangs

In all honesty, printing overhangs is an extremely difficult task. After testing many prototypes of the K1 Shield, we have found the absolute maximum angle for overhangs to be about 63 degrees before an overhang becomes completely unreliable. We recommend you stay under 55 degrees on larger overhangs.

On 90-degree overhangs, you have 2 options. Either you can use supports or keep them extremely short. Anything past 2mm, and you will see sag. This is why you will notice the K1 Shield has very short overhangs to reduce the sag on these sections.

2. Stringing

On even small parts, you may have noticed your TPU begin to “string” the longer you’ve had that spool of TPU. This is due to moisture in the air collecting in the filament over time. We recommend you pick up a filament dryer to keep your TPU dry (usually around $50 dollars on Amazon).

The settings we often use are 140°f and we dry it for ~8 hours before printing with it and continue to dry it while printing. Depending on your moisture content level (usually displayed on the outside of your filament dryer) you may not need to dry it for as long. When you’re about to print, ensure the dryer reads at 15% humidity or lower.

3. Print Speed

Unfortunately, if your part is very intricate, printing with TPU means it will be very slow. The K1 Shield’s TPU outer shell weighs less than 20g on its smallest model yet takes almost an hour to print. Generally, the slower your print, the better the quality. You probably don’t want to print at faster than 100% speed on something like a Bambu lab P1S unless your part is very simple or you have fine-tuned your settings to your filament.

Conclusion

TPU 95A can be one of the most rewarding materials to print with, but also comes with a large learning curve. We hope these tips help you to avoid some of the trial and error we went through.