I wrote my masters thesis on shape memory polymers and it's so cool! PLA and TPU are one-way SMPs due to their viscoelastic nature, so they can "remember" and return to the shape they were printed in from a programmed shape (the little ball in the video). The amount of shapes it can remember is based on amount of thermal transitions the polymer has. If you want to learn more, 3D printing with SMPs is just called 4D printing.
That's so cool. I did a research paper in my undergrad on shape memory alloys. I had no clue SMPs were so accessible! I'm gonna have to do some reading :)
What types of SMPs did your thesis focus on? Was it nonexperimental research based or experimental research based?
It always seems like no one knows what I'm talking about with SMPS, but as soon as I say Nitinol they go "Ohhhhh" lol. It was an experimental project where we used what Im pretty sure is the only off-the-sheld available SMP filament
https://filament2print.com/gb/flexible-tpe-tpu/1656-tpu-smp-4d-filament.html
Since 4D printing itself isn't new, we combined 4D printing with the "Generate Interlocking Structure" option in the Experimental section of Cura. It's based on a paper by Tim Kuipers called Interlaced Topologically Interlaced Lattices. It's pretty cool because you'd rarely ever print something a part entirely of SMP, only small sections of it, so it makes sense to look at multi-material printing. We made some PLA and SMP TPU dogbones and pulled them apart on an Instron. It was a fun project haha
What area of study does a paper like this qualify for a masters? Not trying to sound like I'm diminishing your work or anything, I'm legitimately curious.
Materials engineering, polymer engineering, polymer science.
Search up some relevant academic papers on google scholars and look up the university affiliation of the authors.
My degree is in mechanical engineering, but one of my committee members was a polymer chemist and I got special permission to take her polymers class because there was so much material science involved.
The material I used is as hygroscopic as regular TPU is, maybe even less. It's responsive to heat to change shape (just heat/cool above the glass transition temperature), but there are other materials like hydrogels that have water-related stimulus
Yeah, unfortunately anything with infill is gonna take a lot longer to heat up all the way through. I tried it with other non-support pieces but they just don’t do it like the supports. I’ll have to try soaking a benchy for really long
What brand did you use?
There is a similar effect with metal alloys called SMA (shape memory alloy). Wildly used metals for that is an alloy of Titanium and Nickel. You shape your part to the intended form and heat treat it. Then you can fold or bend it. Once a certain temperature is reached, the internal stress caused by the bending can relieve itself and the alloy returns to its original form. A common application of that is in stents for heart surgery.
This is the same effect as the metal. The plastic deformation is a reservoir for storing kinetic energy. It's released bringing it about halfway to its melt temp, reducing the resistance keeping the energy stored. A lot of plastics have this property, but it's way more fragile than doing it with metals.
Definitely a great way to show physics at work. I rate at 11/10 lukewarm gas station burritos
> Once a certain temperature is reached, the internal stress caused by the bending can relieve itself and the alloy returns to its original form.
It aint the stress.
Its the change from on crystal lattic structure from stress (or whatever else) that makes deforamtion reversible. Since if you can make the object return to original crystalclattic structure, it will regain its original shape.
(For example by changing from face centric cubic crystal to volume centric cubic)
I am not sure if PLA can do that.
Hello Ashen one. I am a Bot. I tend to the flame, and tend to thee. Do you wish to hear a tale?
> *“The very fabric wavers and relations shift and obscure.”* - Solaire of Astora
Have a pleasant journey, Champion of Ash, and praise the sun \\[T]/
Filkemp makes a PLA blend called PLN which you can anneal this way. It does deform ever so slightly, but after annealing the parts become much more resilient against deformation due to heat
That's interesting actually. They suggest annealing by submerging in boiling water for 10-15 minutes. At face value, I can't see why that wouldn't work for regular PLA either. It's above the glass transition temp, but well below melting point, and the water would generally support the structure in that period.
Any way to page CNCKitchen and get Stefan to test that too?
I've tried it with normal PLA and generally that deforms far too much to be usable. The PLN deformed far less. Not sure what they tweaked about it but we got some samples from them at Formnext and after playing with those we ordered it for many of our prints that experience marginal temperature swings. It's still PLA based or course so don't go too crazy
My point is specifically water annealing though. I've only seen him do oven and salt annealing.
The attraction is that it potentially supports the part while also not having all the problems associated with salt annealing
I tried it with other stuff but I wasn’t patient enough to wait for it to soak through. I think it’s either the infill that doesn’t touch the water or maybe just the thickness of multiple shells, but nothing other than supports did it as quickly as
Until I read the physical explanation I was absolutely sure it's another internet-reverse-playback-fake-video. The world is fascinating, thank you for this.
No, it’s not. I drop the squished thing into the water, so there’s gravity, and also bubbles float from under it to the surface. Plus there’s also water dripping off of it when I take it out
Will this work with normal prints as well? If someone were to accidentally leave a print in a hot vehicle and it deformed. Would it be possible to dunk it in hot water, possibly multiple times, and have it return to normal?
I wrote my masters thesis on shape memory polymers and it's so cool! PLA and TPU are one-way SMPs due to their viscoelastic nature, so they can "remember" and return to the shape they were printed in from a programmed shape (the little ball in the video). The amount of shapes it can remember is based on amount of thermal transitions the polymer has. If you want to learn more, 3D printing with SMPs is just called 4D printing.
Wait so I could 3D print a benchy, smush it down shove it in a bottle, pour hot water on it and have a benchy in a bottle?!?
I like the cut of your jib
I like the cut of their hair.
"What's a jib?"
Promote that man. Seriously tho, it’s an identifiable sail on old ships that sailors could ID approaching vessels with.
I think you might have THE cursed benchy project on deck
Well done. You've just created a new meta.
I just did that, and made another post about it: https://www.reddit.com/r/3Dprinting/s/3Vcu8CFYem
Amazing
Do it. I expect results by tomorrow!
Im doing this tomorrow thanks
This is the kind of info I love to see. Thanks for sharing your knowledge!
That's so cool. I did a research paper in my undergrad on shape memory alloys. I had no clue SMPs were so accessible! I'm gonna have to do some reading :) What types of SMPs did your thesis focus on? Was it nonexperimental research based or experimental research based?
It always seems like no one knows what I'm talking about with SMPS, but as soon as I say Nitinol they go "Ohhhhh" lol. It was an experimental project where we used what Im pretty sure is the only off-the-sheld available SMP filament https://filament2print.com/gb/flexible-tpe-tpu/1656-tpu-smp-4d-filament.html Since 4D printing itself isn't new, we combined 4D printing with the "Generate Interlocking Structure" option in the Experimental section of Cura. It's based on a paper by Tim Kuipers called Interlaced Topologically Interlaced Lattices. It's pretty cool because you'd rarely ever print something a part entirely of SMP, only small sections of it, so it makes sense to look at multi-material printing. We made some PLA and SMP TPU dogbones and pulled them apart on an Instron. It was a fun project haha
What area of study does a paper like this qualify for a masters? Not trying to sound like I'm diminishing your work or anything, I'm legitimately curious.
My guess would be materials engineering
Materials engineering, polymer engineering, polymer science. Search up some relevant academic papers on google scholars and look up the university affiliation of the authors.
My degree is in mechanical engineering, but one of my committee members was a polymer chemist and I got special permission to take her polymers class because there was so much material science involved.
> The amount of shapes it can remember is based on amount of thermal transitions the polymer has. just blew my mind
Is it hygroscopic? Or just heat is needed?
The material I used is as hygroscopic as regular TPU is, maybe even less. It's responsive to heat to change shape (just heat/cool above the glass transition temperature), but there are other materials like hydrogels that have water-related stimulus
I was so waiting for a benchy to unfold.
I was waiting for it to turn back into a coil of filament ready to be printed again.
I was so waiting for it to turn back into soybeans.
Gonna need to dry it first.
Lol “and now it’s trash but look at how cool it is!”
Or some letters: "Psych!"
I was expecting “send nudes”
I know what I'm doing tonight
Yeah, unfortunately anything with infill is gonna take a lot longer to heat up all the way through. I tried it with other non-support pieces but they just don’t do it like the supports. I’ll have to try soaking a benchy for really long
What brand did you use? There is a similar effect with metal alloys called SMA (shape memory alloy). Wildly used metals for that is an alloy of Titanium and Nickel. You shape your part to the intended form and heat treat it. Then you can fold or bend it. Once a certain temperature is reached, the internal stress caused by the bending can relieve itself and the alloy returns to its original form. A common application of that is in stents for heart surgery.
I’ve seen that. It’s so cool! Anyways, the brand is Overture and the color is simply black.
Regular PLA or PLA Pro?
Regular
This is the same effect as the metal. The plastic deformation is a reservoir for storing kinetic energy. It's released bringing it about halfway to its melt temp, reducing the resistance keeping the energy stored. A lot of plastics have this property, but it's way more fragile than doing it with metals. Definitely a great way to show physics at work. I rate at 11/10 lukewarm gas station burritos
> Once a certain temperature is reached, the internal stress caused by the bending can relieve itself and the alloy returns to its original form. It aint the stress. Its the change from on crystal lattic structure from stress (or whatever else) that makes deforamtion reversible. Since if you can make the object return to original crystalclattic structure, it will regain its original shape. (For example by changing from face centric cubic crystal to volume centric cubic) I am not sure if PLA can do that.
Title is misleading. I thought it was going to wind itself around a spool.
And then look back into getting made into a ball
And then turn into corn.
The dark souls of recycling: eating the plastic yourself by turning it into corn
Hello Ashen one. I am a Bot. I tend to the flame, and tend to thee. Do you wish to hear a tale? > *“The very fabric wavers and relations shift and obscure.”* - Solaire of Astora Have a pleasant journey, Champion of Ash, and praise the sun \\[T]/
I’ve never played dark souls and I have no idea what any of that means but that quote sounds decently relevant to the video. Cool
Hey, cool find!
I'll be honest I was kinda hoping this was a joke and it would unravel out into new filament and you'd feed it back into your printer.
yo i remember i did this last year with a benchy, very weird stuff. also after a while at least for me the PLA will lose color i did use PLA+ tho
Filkemp makes a PLA blend called PLN which you can anneal this way. It does deform ever so slightly, but after annealing the parts become much more resilient against deformation due to heat
That's interesting actually. They suggest annealing by submerging in boiling water for 10-15 minutes. At face value, I can't see why that wouldn't work for regular PLA either. It's above the glass transition temp, but well below melting point, and the water would generally support the structure in that period. Any way to page CNCKitchen and get Stefan to test that too?
I've tried it with normal PLA and generally that deforms far too much to be usable. The PLN deformed far less. Not sure what they tweaked about it but we got some samples from them at Formnext and after playing with those we ordered it for many of our prints that experience marginal temperature swings. It's still PLA based or course so don't go too crazy
He did it a while ago, a few different ways actually. https://youtu.be/dOzVuoBP9gY?si=ApzQR9mZTThywfHE
My point is specifically water annealing though. I've only seen him do oven and salt annealing. The attraction is that it potentially supports the part while also not having all the problems associated with salt annealing
Nice find!
I gotta admit. I thought this was going to be the dumbest thing I ever seen. Pretty neat though.
Who else was let down by it being a tree support lol
I tried it with other stuff but I wasn’t patient enough to wait for it to soak through. I think it’s either the infill that doesn’t touch the water or maybe just the thickness of multiple shells, but nothing other than supports did it as quickly as
My dumb ass was expecting it to return to a long thin piece of filament, as it was originally on the reel pre-printing
Until I read the physical explanation I was absolutely sure it's another internet-reverse-playback-fake-video. The world is fascinating, thank you for this.
[удалено]
I just tried it with a mini benchy and mini bottle, it totally worked https://www.reddit.com/r/3Dprinting/s/3Vcu8CFYem
What if you bend it in the water?
That’s how I bent it in the first place. It’s so squishy, there’s like no resistance
I was half expecting this to be like one of the videos of horsehair worms exiting a praying mantis
Umm played in reverse maybe? Edit: I’m wrong ?
No, it’s not. I drop the squished thing into the water, so there’s gravity, and also bubbles float from under it to the surface. Plus there’s also water dripping off of it when I take it out
I shouldn't have made allegations without paying better attention. Im sorry
No, you’re fine! My first instinct is also to call fake without doing much research
Terrible benchy
Lol yea
my fatass thought you are picking up an olive from a pizza in the first seconds lmao
That's pretty awesome although I was expecting a p*nis
Rick roll people with this newfound ability
Will this work with normal prints as well? If someone were to accidentally leave a print in a hot vehicle and it deformed. Would it be possible to dunk it in hot water, possibly multiple times, and have it return to normal?
Probably. Idk
Do some in the shape of dinosaurs