Polycarbonate is is a strong, heat resistant material suitable for industrial prints. It works best with regular shapes (as opposed to organic shapes). Because it prints best at high temperatures, you’ll want to do what you can to help keep the ambient temperature warm enough to slow the cooling process and prevent de-lamination of the print. This filament prints best at 260 C, with a 110 C bed temperature. Putting a thin layer of glue on the bed is very useful for helping maintain overall adhesion.
To prevent the print from delaminating or warping, we suggest turning off your side fans when slicing your file (0% maximum fan speed). You may want to also want to enclose your machine with a door and/or hood to help keep the ambient temperature raised.
One thing to bear in mind is that due to polycarbonate’s high printing temperature and abrasive nature, it will take a toll on your TFM coupler much faster than PLA or ABS, so if you plan to use it regularly, keep spare TFM couplers around so that you can change them out when you start to see your print quality degrading.
If you’ve just received your first roll of polycarbonate, you might try printing andyosier’s Reversible Hinge using the gcode we’ve prepared below. When you start to print it, you'll notice the bottom layer is very slow, which we recommend for any articulated prints like this to help ensure that there isn't stringing between the pieces that should be able to move freely, as seen in this video:
Here is the hinge as seen from all sides. With a nice, slow bottom layer, on a well-leveled bed, and by not running the side fans with this material, you get a nice clean print.
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