Polymaker filament review - NEW PolyFlex TPU95

So Polymaker did send me some new samples. I still have the regular Polyflex, this is their old batch of flex filament. We're going to be running this in the direct drive and we are going to be running their new flex filament. This is Polyflex TPU95, slightly less flexible it feels like than the Polyflex, probably because this is 85 I think, not positive. We can do a little looking into that, but we are going to compare how the two come out. This is their new stuff, I'm going to do a nice review on this, but I thought we'd also do this one since we have the direct drive hooked up and I just kind of wanted to run through them both. So first off will be the white, their old stuff, and then we will jump into the TPU95. Alright and after jam after jam, my filament seems to want to pop out, not only out of the front, or get wrapped around that axle and this bearing, it is just not flowing. So I've reduced my speed all the way down to 54% making something that is a one hour print in PLA and was a two hour print with the last one I tried, a four hour print now. I don't have time for this because it's jammed repeatedly, so I'm going to skip to this, I'll save this for another video, we'll see if we can find the perfect settings for actually using it, but this leads me to believe that there is a reason that the new stuff, the new Polyflex they put out is a little bit more rigid. So we're going to throw this on the machine and hopefully we get a much better result than we did with their old Polyflex because I for the life of me just cannot dial in the settings, I'm going to have to tinker with that. Alright, you can see that TPU is a nasty bit of business, I couldn't quite get it all off the bed there. I suppose I should have let it cool and scraped it up. But we are getting some printing now, the black is working. So, here's to hoping that it doesn't bind up in there like the other one. Alright, aside from the nasty little mess of what was left of that white stuff in the barrel there, this is actually looking pretty clean. I am running at 90% speed and this is about 2 hour print, same size as the other one that I printed in the 3D Solutec, although I will say this one looks much, much better from the outside. Maybe it's just because it doesn't have that translucent quality where I can see the air bubbles inside, but we are doing splendidly so far. No jams, cross your fingers, knock on wood, and this stuff is flowing way better than the old Polyflex, which I found to be too spongy and almost like a giant rubber band. It was really, really elastic. This stuff's got a lot of give to it too, but not quite as bad. Like I said, this is a TPU95, so a little bit more rigid than the old stuff, and I'm definitely digging the upgrade they have made to it so far. Alright, this is the only successful model I got out of the Polyflex on the direct drive. It was giving me issues. I just couldn't get things to come out consistently. I tried printing a couple other models. As you saw, I had a lot of trouble with the white, which is their older Polyflex on the direct drive, but I did, after switching back to the Bowden tube, get some pretty nice stuff. So I got this frog here. This has done the same settings as the direct drive except through a Capricorn tube, which I'm really impressed with so far. That Capricorn tube is working amazingly well for not sticking to the filament or getting it bound up in there, and in fact, it was working so well with the Capricorn tube that I decided to give the another go, and I actually didn't even stop the machine. I pulled the filament and fed the white back in as it was making a layer change, and as you can see, I caught it just at the very top layer of this foot. That's why that looks a little blobby, but that was just because there wouldn't have been black in those places anyway. It's an elevation thing. So this guy came out a little bit stringy as well. I cleaned it up as best I could, but I'm very, very happy with this as well, and being the old Polyflex, it is a lot squishier than this TPU95. They both came out pretty good, actually. I'm printing an all-white one now just to kind of get a little bit better comparison, but I'm not going to do a video on that. I just wanted to show you guys that I did, in fact, get the old Polyflex working. The secret, apparently, is not using the direct drive, but instead using a Capricorn Bowden tube. I'm not certain whether or not I would have had such luck with a regular PTFE. I'm putting that Capricorn on to do some testing on that anyway, so we used that, and for the TPU especially, I think it was a really good test for the first round. Honestly, that's a closer setup to your plug-and-play direct load on, say, just a stock Ender 3 than modding it to the direct drive, so because this worked so well on a regular machine without any modifications, I am going to give this a 5 out of 5. This is one of the better flex filaments that I've worked with. I did get a decent model out of the direct drive out of that 3D Solutec, and as you can see with enough fiddling, I did also get a decent model with the new Polyflex on the direct drive, but my experience with the direct drive versus the Bowden tube on this flex filament is you really can't beat that Capricorn tubing, so again, I highly recommend if you're going to print flex that you get some Capricorn tubing, but as far as this filament goes, 5 out of 5. It was really good, and remember now we're talking about the new TPU95. I just threw this in because I had the sample, and I thought I'd give it a little comparison. Really, the only difference, other than the obvious color difference, is that this one is a little bit more elastic than the new version, so all in all, pretty pleasant printing experience. Details came out pretty well. These are printed at 0.2mm layers, not 0.1, just so everybody's aware, and all in all, if you're going to do some flex filament, definitely give Polymaker a shot. The Polyflex, the new stuff, was really, really good. I have several other samples from Polymaker that we need to try, including some PETG, some PETG Max. They sent me some more PolySmooth, stuff like that, so we'll be getting into those reviews in the next few days, but for now, I'm just going to enjoy playing with my squishy froggies. And as always, guys, I am Technivorous. Thanks for watching this video. Don't forget to hit the like button. You can subscribe right here by clicking on the icon, and I put a couple videos up in the corner. 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