<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body style="overflow-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;">On 26 May 2026, at 14:22, Ingo Debus via Synth-diy <synth-diy@synth-diy.org> wrote:<br><div><blockquote type="cite"><br><div><div style="overflow-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;"><div><blockquote type="cite"><div>Am 26.05.2026 um 13:38 schrieb Ben Stuyts <ben@stuyts.nl>:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><div><meta charset="UTF-8"><div style="overflow-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;"><div><blockquote type="cite" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration: none;"><div><div style="overflow-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;"><div>Could this possibly be 3D-printed, maybe with TPU? That material can be quite flexible.</div></div></div></blockquote><div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration: none;"><br></div><span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration: none; float: none; display: inline !important;">Not with an FDM printer (filament). If you can get it to print, it won’t be pretty and consistent.</span></div></div></div></blockquote></div><br><div>Huh? Do you mean, TPU cannot be printed with a FDM printer in general?</div><div>Or is there something special about these button mats that makes them difficult to print?</div></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div>Apologies if I didn’t make myself clear. TPU can definitely be printed with an FDM printer. I do so quite often, so I have a bit of an idea of its limitations. TPU, TPE (or in general any flex) material is available in various shore hardness grades. Shore 95A is quite hard, and shore 60A … 82A are more elastic. The latter would be more suited for such a button. But it is also way harder to print than 95A. I have never been able to successfully (or repeatedly) print anything lower than 82A using various Prusa printers. The problems are things like:</div><div><br></div><div>- visible layer lines, and printing with lower layer height is not straight forward with flex on FDM</div><div>- buckling of the filament where it enters the hot end, or it wraps around the gears of the extruder (there are special hot ends / extruders to mitigate this)</div><div>- lots of under- / over-extrusion, you often have to tune your settings (temperature, speeds, retractions) per model</div><div>- stringing (lots of small strings of filament where the hotend crosses the printout). Can be removed afterwards but often leaves zits on the model.</div><div>- and in the end if you succeed, it’s prone to tearing and has a low life expectancy.</div><div><br></div><div>The more elastic the material, the more difficult it becomes to solve these problems.</div><div><br></div><div>Perhaps an SLA or SLS printer can pull it off, but I have no personal experience with that. It will look better, but I’m not sure how resistant it is to tearing or what the life span is.</div><div><br></div><div>Ben</div><div><br></div></body></html>