TCPoly ICE 9 Flex – Thermally Conductive Flexible 3D Printing Filaments

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Today we’re talking about materials with 50x higher thermal conductivity than normal filaments, from TCPoly — they currently make the world’s HIGHEST thermally conductive filament. They’re also proudly made in the USA.

We have these available NOW at at visionminer.com/materials, if you just can’t wait and need to go find a spool right now!

These are really special new filaments for applications involving heat — making heatsinks, Hot Mold tooling, heat or cold exchangers, and other thermal management applications. They developed these unique filaments from high thermal conductivity polymer formulations specifically for use with standard commercial FDM printers.

Ice9 Flex is a TPE-based filament, meaning it’s flexible, and it’s got the highest thermal conductivity at 8 Watts per meter-Kelvin. This filament is ideal for heat sinks, liquid cooling, and the most demanding thermal applications. With a shore hardness of 90A, it’s not super floppy, but still very soft. It has an electrical resistivity less than 10^5 ohm-cm making it suitable for EMI (Electromagnetic Interference) RFI (Radio Frequency Interference) shielding applications, but it’s not enough to carry an electrical current.

This version is actually a new and improved version with 33% higher thermal conductivity than before. You’ll want to use this material when you really need high thermal conductivity, but electrical insulation is not important.

Printing Tips:

PRINT BIG:
Although you can print down to 0.4 mm, try to use a 0.8 or 1.0 mm nozzle if possible. Also use a large layer height (50% of the nozzle diameter).

PRINT SLOW:
Reduce the linear print speed to get good layer adhesion and prevent nozzle buildup. Note: lower linear speed does not have to be a lower print rate: printing at 1.0/0.7 mm (nozzle/layer) at 20 mm/s is the same volumetric rate as 0.4/0.25 mm at 150 mm/s!
PRINT DRY:
These filaments will absorb some moisture over time, so for the best quality prints store the material in a dry sealed container and dry at 70°C for several hours to dry out your spool. For filament drying they use the PrintDry, or you can check out our complete filament drying kit, at visionminer.com/drykit

PRINT WITH RETRACTION:
Use a lot of retraction. Because Ice9 melts quickly, you need to retract it a longer distance to prevent oozing. Think around 5 mm, and of course this will be different on every machine — also consider using a coast distance of 0.3-0.5 mm. Along with minimizing travel distance where possible.

REDUCE ACCELERATION:
Fast starting and fast stopping will increase nozzle buildup. If you can reduce the acceleration limits on your printer, this will allow for higher linear print speeds at the same quality.

PRINT ON PAINTER’S TAPE:
The Ice9 Flex and E-ins filaments will adhere strongly to glass and tack print beds. When we print tpu, we actually print straight on glass, and it almost adheres TOO well. If you want a bit easier removal, consider printing on painters tape. Heating the bed up to 90-110°C will also help remove the part from a bed (with or without tape). Extra wide printers tape can cover a large portion of your print bed pretty easily.

There’s also a full troubleshooting guide and FAQ, covering what to do when you see inconsistent extrusion, poor layer adhesion, buildup on the nozzle, excessive oozing, using epoxy to fully seal parts, and more — check out our website for more info!

Check out our other videos for the full comparisons!