Now through January 15th, all of our Elite nozzles will be 25% off, Apollo 15% off and Hercules 10% off.
Don't wait! Click here to shop nozzles, and feel free to reach out to us with any questions.
The team at Performance 3-d wishes you and your loved ones a wonderful holiday season and happy new year!
]]>Now through January 31st, get 25% off our Elite Series nozzles on any order of $25 or more. Use promo code ELITENEWYEAR at checkout.
We wish you and your loved ones a very happy new year!
]]>It's that time of year again! With Thanksgiving approaching, we at Performance 3-d are most thankful for you... our customers. So we're offering Black Friday deals on our cutting edge high performance 3D printer parts as a way of saying thank you!
Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday, stock up on durable nozzles, glass build plates, and more with these promo codes:
We appreciate your business, and are grateful for the opportunity to meet your 3D printing needs year after year. Have a happy Thanksgiving and holiday season!
]]>To address this problem, P3-d manufactures its Hercules series nozzles using heat treated A2 tool steel which has been hardened completely through for improved heat transfer. Both new nozzles are also specially coated with P3-d’s proprietary Duraplat3-d™ plating for high lubricity and maximum abrasion resistance. Based on testing, wear resistance is 25x to 100x more than a standard brass nozzle.
“As we grow, we are continually seeking ways to better serve our customers and take desktop 3D printing to the next level,” said Jay Evanovich, P3-d CEO and co-founder. “The expansion of our Hercules line means we now offer products for nearly 50 different printers.”
The Airwolf AXIOM nozzle is designed to fit the JR Hot End, JRx Hot End, Airwolf or AXIOM printer. The Makergear V4 nozzle is available in three sizes (0.4mm, 0.5mm or 0.6mm) and is compatible with the Makergear M2.
The nozzles are available for purchase now at www.p3-d.com.
About Performance 3-d
Born out of a desire to be cutting edge, Performance 3-d is one of the leading printing and engineering start-ups for rapid prototyping and high performance printer upgrade parts and nozzles. Founded by two engineers with a combined 40 years of experience and a passion for printing, P3-d has designed and printed for industries spanning from healthcare to stage design. With a commitment to advancing the 3D printing industry, P3-d also offers a line of high-performance products specifically engineered to upgrade existing 3D printers, such as low friction, super-wear-resistant nozzles and ultra-flat glass build plate surfaces.
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Media Contact
Leah Evanovich
Marketing & Communications Manager
Leah@p3-d.com
Our friends (and valuable customers!) at Voodoo Manufacturing have pioneered a breakthrough for the 3D printing industry: the world’s first robot-operated 3D printer cluster. The robot, deemed Project Skywalker, is launching Voodoo into the future by cutting costs and allowing operations to continue 24/7.
The robot arm functions as a “harvester”, removing plates from printers as necessary and replacing them with new, clean plates. These plates needed to be durable and high-performance – and that’s where we stepped in.
We’ve supplied them with more than 500 precision-cut glass build plates to help ensure their 160 busy printers are operating with cutting-edge efficiency.
]]>The robot arm functions as a “harvester”, removing plates from printers as necessary and replacing them with new, clean plates. These plates needed to be durable and high-performance – and that’s where we stepped in.
We’ve supplied them with more than 500 precision-cut glass build plates to help ensure their 160 busy printers are operating with cutting-edge efficiency. High-quality upgrade parts are critical, especially when printing in high volume like these guys! The glass plates we provided had to meet exacting dimensional standards in width to ensure it snaps into the printer reliably. They also had to be uniform in thickness so that Voodoo could eliminate the manual and time-consuming step of re-leveling the build plate in between swaps.
Check out the behind-the-scenes video and don’t miss our product cameos!
Want your own? Order our glass build plates here and be sure to check out our high-performance nozzles, filament and more!
Looking for a custom order or design? Contact us at sales@p3-d.com and we’ll work with you to tailor a solution to your unique needs.
]]>As we unveil this new line of products, we’re eager for customer feedback. Want to be among the first to put these nozzles through their paces? If you are willing to test these nozzles and provide us the results, we’ll send you these brand new nozzles absolutely free of charge.
Contact us at sales@p3-d.com to arrange a shipment and take advantage of this limited time offer!
]]>The filaments are brought to you from P3-d via 3DXTECH. The two companies share a passion for creating the most innovative solutions in the industry. With decades of experience in the plastics/chemical industry, 3DXTECH manufactures filaments that rise to solve specific technical challenges, with a focus on functionality.
Their high-quality filament is a natural fit for our Duraplat3-d™ Hercules nozzles, which are engineered to handle specialty and abrasive filaments.
Be sure to check out the PETG, ECOMAX®, PLA, ABS and Ultem® filaments now available for purchase on our website, each uniquely tailored to a specific printing need and compatible with a variety of printers.
If you have any inquiries about P3-d, our products or a collaborating as a partner or distributor, contact us at sales@p3-d.com.
]]>From all of us here at Performance 3-d, have a safe and happy Thanksgiving!
]]>With a build window of 225 cubic inches, the Form 2 uses an array of advanced materials to print functional prototypes and finished parts, including the latest engineering-grade materials, just introduced by Formlabs. Developed to simulate a range of injection-molded plastics, these resins (Tough, Durable, Flexible and High Temp) meet your needs for any prototype or production part.
The Form 2 utilizes stereolithography: the process of using a UV laser to cure the liquid resin into the specified shape. After printing, the piece is placed under UV lamps to finish hardening and strengthen the plastic.
We are also able to access and control the Form 2 wirelessly via the new printer dashboard. This ability to monitor ensures we never miss a beat with your prints.
Contact us today to engineer and print your idea, prototype or finished part on our new Form 2!
P.S. Be on the lookout for our Black Friday sales – details to come next week!
]]>Early on Tuesday morning my sister lost her house and belongings to a fire. Although the most important thing is that everyone is safe, her family of 4 lost almost everything. We're asking for your help to get this great family back on their feet during this difficult and life changing tragedy. P3-d will donate the net proceeds from all purchases made from now till July 4th to help with clothes, housing and essentials during this time of transition. If you need anything printer-related, now would be a GREAT time to buy!
If you wish to help but don't need to purchase anything, please donate here https://www.gofundme.com/2akfebuk or send us an email using our contact page.
Thank you for helping support the P3-d family during this time of need, and please use coupon code TENfor4th to get 10% off all orders over $25.
Lastly, although this incident was not 3D-printer related, it is a sobering reminder just how quickly everything can be lost. This is especially important within the printing community, so PLEASE take the time and proper precautions to protect your family and house. Ensure wiring is good, don't leave printers unattended, have a fire escape plan, etc...
]]>Available in 0.3mm, 0.4mm, 0.6mm, 0.8mm, 1.0mm, and even 1.2mm for those super quick and large volume prints. We are stocking them for both 1.75mm and 3mm (2.85) filaments, in all 3 of our different materials: Elite (brass), Apollo (aluminum), and Hercules (hardened steel). Want to try out a few sizes - pick up a Maker Pack today.
No one can compete with our nozzle selection (over 10,000 nozzles in 120 different configurations available). Make sure to create a store account and earn rewards points for every dollar you spend.
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Effective immediately, you can sign up for our rewards program and earn a point for every dollar spent. Also earn points just for signing up, for referring a fellow maker, or sharing us on social media. These points are redeemable toward future purchases.
We truly appreciate your patronage and as always, look forward to your feedback about this new feature and our products in general.
Thanks from P3-d!
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Update 3-9-16: Pre-orders are closed and beta testing is in process. Look for this product to be added to our shop page in the coming weeks.
Just a quick update on where we stand with the heated aluminum build plate for the capable Makerbot Replicator 2 printer. This printer is a great printer but one giant hole in its repertoire is the lack of a heated build plate, making it impossible to print ABS, Nylon, PETG, and other advanced materials. Even when printing normal PLA, the heated bed eliminates curl and improves bed adhesion, often making it unnecessary to use raft.
The P3-d Rep2 heating system is in the final testing phases and is fully operational. This will be a complete plug and play system, with no soldering to the motherboard required, no need to upgrade power supplies. Simply install the aluminum plate, plug in the controller and you're ready to print. The temperature controller can be set at any temp you like, and one nice feature our system will come with is a timer to shut off the heated plate after the print is done.
In the coming weeks we have a few small tweaks to make to the enclosure, and then we have to get milling some aluminum and complete all the wiring. So look for this system to be available on our site in the near future. We are currently taking pre-orders so contact us here if you are interested in beta testing and being one of the first to get their hands on this must-have upgrade. Until then, another picture...
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When we decided to make a line of super hard wear-resistant nozzles in the summer of 2015 to address this problem, we knew they would perform much better than regular brass nozzles, but we also had to pit them against the Durplat3-d™ coated nozzles to see how they would stack up. That's when we enlisted the help of Ryan Carag from Gearswitch.us who volunteered to buy and try our Hercules nozzles.
Ryan prints a variety of products, and in particular has printed hundreds of his sleek center console cup holder for the BMW E30.
Ryan uses high quality carbon fiber ABS filament from 3DXTech to digitally manufacture the product, and because Ryan has hundreds of prints under his belt he can quickly spot nozzle wear issues when the fit, finish, and consistency of the prints begin to change.
With CF ABS wearing down brass nozzles in as little as 100-200g, Ryan obviously had to find a better solution to keep consistent part quality. He originally tried our Elite series of plated brass nozzles and had this to say:
I've printed with several hard-plated brass-base nozzles, and also several steel nozzles. Currently, my best experience when balancing extrusion-speed, life and nozzle cost has been with the P3D low-friction nozzles. I am finding lifetime of the nozzles before quality degradation to be around 850 or so grams of CF-ABS with fairly aggressive first layer tramming and parts with a lot of flat horizontal surface area. The quality stays very consistent for about 90% of that before it starts to fall off. So I've been sticking to swapping the nozzles at each 750g filament roll change, Stratasys style. The extrusion during this lifetime is more consistent than other nozzles I've tried. They also can extrude significantly faster (~20%) than the steel nozzles I've tried so far (both MK10 and E3D style). For some of my parts, this is the difference between 8hr and 10hr cycles, which is quite significant when added up over a parts run.
As you know, the CF-R ABS will eat through a normal brass nozzle, as most printers are equipped with, in something like 250g or less. I've seen it as bad as 125g before I could put a 0.5mm bit through a 0.4mm nozzle.
Here is picture from Ryan showing the point of no return (basically total nozzle failure).
As you can see, just over half way up the surface finish gets progressively worse and even though the print finishes, it is clearly not a usable part.
Ryan then began testing out our Hercules nozzles, which are precision machined from A2 tool steel. After machining, the nozzles go thru a special vacuum heat treating process which increases their hardness to 58 Rockwell all the way through. Finally, they are put through our Duraplat3-d™ coating process, which gives the surface a very low friction coefficient and also further increases the surface hardness well into the 60Rc range.
Done with the 5th roll and into the 6th. ~3550g so far printed through the Hercules MK8 tool steel nozzle and the parts are still coming out beautiful, consistent, and with spot-on dimensions, so I will keep printing with this same nozzle.
For me, the durability has been second to none, the print quality and consistency has been as great. Also, at your asking price for the tool steel nozzles, the cost for nozzle wear per carbon fiber ABS part is drastically reduced. As a side note, the reduced need to level the build plate has opened up the ability for me to achieve something I've been wanting to do with my setup; full automation.
I've got one at ~10kg and it's still running great. Just did a fairly sizable run of parts after having a Black Friday promo and the nozzles worked excellently. Knowing the nozzles would keep on going really removed a lot of anxiety that's endemic to manufacturing with a small print farm.
There's one particular part that I print where there is a precise hexagonal feature for a M3 nut to press fit into. With the brass nozzles, I could basically gauge about the halfway point of their usable life when the fitment on that nut was starting to loosen on parts coming off the printer. The nozzle that has had 10kg through it has not gotten to that point yet.
I also have parts that slide-fit into one another, and the tolerances are very important to the "feel" of that slide-fit. This has been dramatically more consistent versus the brass nozzles.
You read that right: over 10,000 grams and still running great.
As most users know, Ryan confirmed that printing abrasive materials is best done thru an all metal hot-end. Ryan paired our coated thermal barrier tubes and MK8 nozzles, along with E3D nozzles for the testing. He also tested the MK10 style and as expected, found the PTFE (Teflon) tubing to be the limiting factor with that setup.
Ryan did also experience the occasional clog when printing with the 0.4mm nozzles:
Only nitpick has been occasional clogging when printing at 240C, which I found is alleviated (maybe eliminated) by simply running a length of plain, unfilled ABS through the hotend (using filament load) at each spool change.
On the nozzles that did clog, simply soaking them overnight in a small container of acetone got them back to fully serviceable with no other work.
This is one reason many users, especially ones newer to printing with exotic materials, may want to consider stepping up to the 0.5mm, 0.6mm, or even 0.8mm nozzles to reduce or eliminate any clogs. Note that this will require changing your slicer settings.
Standard Nozzle | Uncoated Brass | 150g | 1x (baseline) |
P3-d Elite Series | Duraplat3-d™ Brass | 750g | 5x |
P3-d Hercules Series | Duraplat3-d™ and thru-hardened steel | 10,000g+ | 67x |
Thanks for reading, and you can find our nozzles here.
For reference, here are some of the settings that Ryan used while printing: