Sous Vide Test on Nylon12+CF Controller Success!

Sous Vide test on the F16-like Controller printed in Nylon12+CF (PA12 with Carbon Fiber) is a success!

It passed the fit tests with other parts that are not annealed.

Note that this test is not to test the strength of the annealed part! I currently do not have equipments to conduct such tests. I will take the words of literature for it. The purpose of this test is to test the viability of using an Anova Precision Oven in Sous Vide mode for annealing a Nylon12 artifact, holding it at 100˚C for 12 hours, without ruining my oven, nor the artifact. And whether that process would distort the parts, or any other problems.


Indeed, I found a problem. You can find in the picture below that there are some "shining" surfac patches. These are where the plastic bag touched the artifact. The temperature is not high enough to melt the bag, evidently because when I took out the bag, it was still "dry" looking, and kind of brittle, where it did not touch the artifact. My guess is that both the artifact material and bag material reached the glass transition temperature, and the parts that touched each other bonded. After all, the whole point of annealing is that you bring the molecules to glass transition state so they can move a little, interact with each other, and form crystals. In this case, I guess the molecules of the Nylon12 (or even Carbon Fiber) interacted with the molecules of the bag material.


I guess either I get rid of the bag (sacrifices my Anova oven), or I figure out a way the bag sagging wouldn't touch the artifact, or find a higher temperature bag (tough to find a bag material having glass transition temp higher than 100˚C though).

Edit: I think the food vacuum bag I used has a multilayer film, most likely with the two outer layers being Polyamide, which Nylon is a sub-category. That’s probably a good news. 1. Nylon contacting Nylon sticking together means the annealing is working. 2. All I need to do is probably find a plastic bag with different material that won’t stick to Nylon, like LDPE bags I already have. Got to give it a try.


Anyway, even with the blemish, nothing a little sanding couldn't solve. The test is a success. And I even found a problem that needs to be solved. More improvements some other time. 



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