Ninjaflex is a 3D printer filament that is flexible, and stretchy, unlike the hard and sometimes brittle ABS and PLA.
I recently got some of this stuff and decided to print it in my MakerBot Replicator 1. I've had this printer for a while and I've modified it with the spring loaded extruder upgrade that you can find here. This is a definite pre-requisite to printing this stuff.
My first attempt didn't go well. I put the filament in and used MakerWare's default settings for PLA and I got a really stringy print:
So I went back to the Ninjaflex website and looked for help. I was doing everything right except for the speed of the print.
In Makerware you have very little control over your print settings. This is because MakerBot wants you to have the easiest time printing. There is another program called Replicator G that you can use to configure prints. This program is powerful, but also a labyrinth of nearly impossible to figure out settings. I've used it before but I wanted a simpler solution.
This lead me to Simplify 3D. These folks make a piece of software that is what I consider to be the best of MakerWare and the best of Replicator G combined into one. If you want to just click and print, after a simple setup this program will let you do that. If you want to dig into the settings you can really tweak things a lot. The menus are reasonably well organized and there are settings galore.
I dove in and tweaked one setting: The speed setting:
After I did that, I got a really nice print. It's squishy and pliable just like I wanted. I'm going to keep playing with this stuff and see what I can come up with. This should be great for making gaskets, wearables, and who knows what else!
