I'd be doing the reverse of what you tried. Print in PLA, but print an inverse of the stamp and use it to make a silicon mold for the stamping. You'll get your required flexibility and making more than one will be quick as the mold won't wear out quickly.
In the past, I made tons of 'maker's marks' for ceramics friends. Since they needed to be 'non flexible' to imprint into leather hard clay, PLA was simple. You would think with the almost infinite number of filament companies, someone would have thought of a flexible stamp material. Not just TPU. Too bad you cannot extrude rubber or open cell foam.
I had to make a very small stamp for a friend a few years ago (a stylized royal lily logo). I designed a circular handle that turned out basically the same as yours, just smaller, but the stamp part itself was a bit different. I printed the flat "base" in PLA, and then changed filament to TPU in the very end, printing directly on the PLA. I used a 0.2mm nozzle and I guess I got lucky as it didn't clog, lol. Maybe the fact that it was just a few layers of it helped The whole thing was a bit sketchy as the "change filament mid-print" options didn't exist yet (or at least I hadn't heard of them), so I did two separate files, with the TPU logo sliced at the height of the base, haha. In the end I sanded it a bit on 1000 grit sandpaper (I only had 1000, as I had used up all the others 😆) and hoped for the best. I was worried that it wouldn't turn up so great but she loved it! I guess that the fact that she used it on fabric helped it, as it's a bit more "squishy", but I felt really good that it worked, haha
For moving SVG's after you place them: 1. Select the entire SVG sketch 2. Press the "lock" parametric constraint. This will allow you to freely move it (and each line) 3. Once you've moved it, lock it again so that you don't accidentally mess up the lines.
I have been making stamps for (textile) banners for a while now. I have found that it's easiest to just print in PLA and stamp on a squishy surface, like vinyl floor covering with the textile on top of it, so the surface you print on compensates for the irregularities in the materials It works fine for textiles, but I reckon it also works for paper, although I haven't tried it. What also helps is using inks with the correct opacity and viscosity. Art supplies shops have specialized inks for printing, and I use a small (oil) paint roller to ink my stamps
hi!! had this video in my little 3d printing project ideas list for a while now, but it only just occurred to me is that one thing you could try (and what i still need to try myself tbh), especially with tpu that has higher shore hardness like most brands on the market, is using low gyroid infill and enabling ironing. the gyroid infill makes it so that the stamp can squish equally well and more in virtually all directions and compress way better when its pressed down onto a piece of paper (though chances are this would require making the tpu stamp head thick/tall enough to have enough of a gyroid infill to make any noticeable difference), and ironing makes the hard work of smoothing/sanding the top if youre printing it face up bc itll add a thin extra layer of material thats pretty smooth. i still need to try this out myself and will let you know how it works, but if you ever want to return to this topic and improve stamp quality, this might be a good start!
I would revers the image and print it with the flat side down. Sanding will rough up the surface of the TPU allowing it to hold ink in the tiny crevices that are created. PLA might work if roughed up also. Printers for a long time used wood and metal to print in a similar method called letterpress printing. They used a much higher pressure than you get using a rubber stamp. It actually dented or embossed the paper.
Yeah exactly what I found, sanding made the image less sharp, but more consistent with ink, so it's a trade off. I'm going to test pla more in the next one including possibly trying to coat it to make ink stick better. The flexibility problem with pla does demand greater pressure exactly as you mention, I guess it's basically embossing, like they do with business cards. Could be a desirable effect, actually.
@@LostInTech3D Dirty little secret. At one time I was the 3rd generation in my family to work in printing and I actuallyused metal and wooden type. I also did work with computers and laser printers before I got out of it. The industry has drastically changed to where what was once a skilled craft is now done buy sending things to an ink or laser printer.
i've a suggest, you could try use ironing to flatten last layer. And after import svg in fusion 360 you select it and with the lock icon you can unlock and move it, the lines change from green to blue.
Yeah I forgot to include that in the video - I did try it (ironing), it doesn't seem to help with TPU. It just kind of smushes it around a bit. I didn't spend a lot of time on that though so maybe there's more to it. It does help with PLA and there might, it seems, be a part 3 as someone else gave me some ideas on how to use PLA and a fine nozzle, so yeah one for the future! Thanks for the fusion tip...I am a fusion dunce, I come from a non CAD background...will try it later today 👍
@@LostInTech3D If you're new fusion has tutorial built-in, check help.autodesk.com/view/fusion360/ENU/courses/ I forgot to tell you that when you unlock the geometry there are no more constraints so if you move only one or a few line you could mess the original shape, to avoid this you have to select all the lines and then move with the mouse or the "move" command.
This video is great and very informative. I suggest that may be for the stamp to be clearer with less missing detail , you could either sanding the surface or apply clear sticky cloating on raised texture to capture more ink in , may be you already know this, anyway, hope of more vid on this subject.:>>>>
Awesome video on the theory and technical side to making a stamp as it is something I like to do too. However, after several times of watching, I still don't quite understand the part on the need for the circular supports (before clipping them off later). They did make a big improvement as shown in the results though which was really impressive.
It's just to provide some support, it's possible that it might be overkill, but it's the safe option. TPU doesn't bridge gaps well in my experience especially at lower temperatures.
@@jentours yes absolutely, if you can get a good resin that will absorb ink. I've seen some examples people have made and they are *really* good, the resolution is amazing, but it needs to be able to transfer the ink too - so something flexible (if such resin exists?).
Given that you can get more details in a 3D print faced to the side, like the way lithophanes are printed, I wonder if you've tried that? It might solve the issue of either needing support or needing to sand. Then again, the layer lines might show.
I do some leatherwork and have made a few stamps out of PLA+. They are not bad but deteriorate after a few dozen uses. For special images that you use sparingly it works great. Just make sure the stamp depth is several millimeters in depth.
In the laser stamping community this is fairly well known and there's a use of ramping. Basically when rastering an stamp you add in slightly gray pulses as a distance from the ink-ridges. Basically you need to have a ramp rather than a cliff. This stuff is easier with a laser, since you can just cut some rubber into the stamp. Though the skill of doing this could probably be nicely matched with a flat based stamp with what it's supposed to stamp embossed on the stamp base.
I've tried to do stamps before and had the same results as you with TPU however I found that PLA is a better material to use, you just need to sand it down untill it is shiny, which doesn't take a lot of work and it will take ink without problems and you can have more details because it is easy to print PLA with a .2 mm nozzle. Maybe a hybrid of TPU for the material behind the stamp and PLA for the details would result in the same quality as commercial ones but I haven't tried
Yeah good point about the 0.2 - also got to wonder if you can coat it at the end with something. Even just a thin paint coat might work. Isn't petg a bit more flexible too, than pla? Could work. I guess a third episode is going to happen after all 🤣
@@LostInTech3D I use pla too, pla with a thin base so it's more flexible, then use tpu as handle, exact opposite from ur way, u could also smooth the stamp face with heated bed or just glossy metal heated with hot air gun, then sand it a little bit to help absorb ink.
Did you ever consider micro coating the highest relief area of your stamp with some type of highly thinned flexible medium like rubber cement? If you used a brayer to put some down on glass or paper -- you might just stamp onto the material to get a very light coating. The plati-dip material for tool handles might also work. Again, you'd probably need to thin it down with whatever the solvent base is. That means protective gear, unfortunately. There must also be some non toxic options. Natural rubber maybe. I think there's a milky water based product out there. Or maybe even just try some various sheens of gesso. Once again, just painting the thinnest coat onto paper and repeatedly stamping until you gave a very thin dry coating.
hmm ... Could you do a 'rolling' stamp in pla? Instead of having a flat stamp, make it rollable. so it has less contact with the paper and the print might stick better to the paper.
Seeing this something appeared in my mind: Is it possible to print different materials on top of another? Like a PLA base and the letters or sth like this with TPU on top? I don't think it is useful in this topic due to missing flexibility in the base, but I've seen it with different colours at CHEPs channel but not different materials. Would be interesting to know, not just with PLA and TPU, also with other materials. Really nice video btw, your channel is really underrated
Yeah I've thought a lot about this too! I think the answer is a solid yes. If you have an auto leveling system it could be interesting too. As you say not that useful here but for something like drone parts or thumb sticks..? I could see it being really powerful. I'll put it on the list of things to try 👍
I have printed PLA and then paused and swapped to TPU. The TPU stuck very well. You could peel it off if you tried but it would easily work well for a rubber stamp.
Yeah I asked a friend to test this for me on his dial extruder. It's on my long list of topics to cover, it definitely works though as you confirmed 👍 The problem I have to fix first is getting 32 bit based printers...to pause. They don't. They ignore the pause commands on stock firmware 🤣
Your videos are quite informative, and it's clear you put a lot of work into them. Thanks for your efforts. But please get rid of the annoying background "music".
worth mentioning that you can put the subtitles on and turn the sound down if the music offends, the subtitles are the script I read so they are accurate.
Would not doing the design in negative solve many of the problems? i.e. letters are absent of ink, background ink. this way you could also maybe use no perimeter walls and get much better squish??
So glad that I have found your channel! Subbed and liked pretty quick. I headed over to your website to try out the profile for this video and the downloads say failed - no file. Just wonder if you have taken them down at all? Cheers
So the reusable base idea didn't work out in the end? I still haven't made any, I should design "This is the BACK" one :) Also, just _how many_ chapters this video has O_o
Can anyone help me... i want to make a stamp of WW2 aircraft wing emblems from the origin of their country... like the Brittish , American and German decals you would see on any WW2 plane model... so i can mass produce them with a stamp on my mini models without hand painting them... all i have to work with are a j peg photo of each of them.. can i convert a single photo into a G CODE 3 d file for my 3 d printer...
I'd be doing the reverse of what you tried. Print in PLA, but print an inverse of the stamp and use it to make a silicon mold for the stamping. You'll get your required flexibility and making more than one will be quick as the mold won't wear out quickly.
Hey did you end up doing this? Am curious which way would
Work better
You can purchase a cushion foam-like adhesive and attach to your stamp. As a crafter I use stamps all the time.
In the past, I made tons of 'maker's marks' for ceramics friends. Since they needed to be 'non flexible' to imprint into leather hard clay, PLA was simple. You would think with the almost infinite number of filament companies, someone would have thought of a flexible stamp material. Not just TPU. Too bad you cannot extrude rubber or open cell foam.
I had to make a very small stamp for a friend a few years ago (a stylized royal lily logo).
I designed a circular handle that turned out basically the same as yours, just smaller, but the stamp part itself was a bit different.
I printed the flat "base" in PLA, and then changed filament to TPU in the very end, printing directly on the PLA. I used a 0.2mm nozzle and I guess I got lucky as it didn't clog, lol. Maybe the fact that it was just a few layers of it helped
The whole thing was a bit sketchy as the "change filament mid-print" options didn't exist yet (or at least I hadn't heard of them), so I did two separate files, with the TPU logo sliced at the height of the base, haha.
In the end I sanded it a bit on 1000 grit sandpaper (I only had 1000, as I had used up all the others 😆) and hoped for the best. I was worried that it wouldn't turn up so great but she loved it! I guess that the fact that she used it on fabric helped it, as it's a bit more "squishy", but I felt really good that it worked, haha
For moving SVG's after you place them:
1. Select the entire SVG sketch
2. Press the "lock" parametric constraint. This will allow you to freely move it (and each line)
3. Once you've moved it, lock it again so that you don't accidentally mess up the lines.
This answered so many questions I didn't even know I had. I've never watched a video on 3D printing before and I watched the whole thing. Thank you!
I have been making stamps for (textile) banners for a while now.
I have found that it's easiest to just print in PLA and stamp on a squishy surface, like vinyl floor covering with the textile on top of it, so the surface you print on compensates for the irregularities in the materials
It works fine for textiles, but I reckon it also works for paper, although I haven't tried it.
What also helps is using inks with the correct opacity and viscosity. Art supplies shops have specialized inks for printing, and I use a small (oil) paint roller to ink my stamps
Yes, putting it on top of something squishy does seem to help
I guess also leather??
hi!! had this video in my little 3d printing project ideas list for a while now, but it only just occurred to me is that one thing you could try (and what i still need to try myself tbh), especially with tpu that has higher shore hardness like most brands on the market, is using low gyroid infill and enabling ironing. the gyroid infill makes it so that the stamp can squish equally well and more in virtually all directions and compress way better when its pressed down onto a piece of paper (though chances are this would require making the tpu stamp head thick/tall enough to have enough of a gyroid infill to make any noticeable difference), and ironing makes the hard work of smoothing/sanding the top if youre printing it face up bc itll add a thin extra layer of material thats pretty smooth. i still need to try this out myself and will let you know how it works, but if you ever want to return to this topic and improve stamp quality, this might be a good start!
I would revers the image and print it with the flat side down. Sanding will rough up the surface of the TPU allowing it to hold ink in the tiny crevices that are created. PLA might work if roughed up also. Printers for a long time used wood and metal to print in a similar method called letterpress printing. They used a much higher pressure than you get using a rubber stamp. It actually dented or embossed the paper.
Yeah exactly what I found, sanding made the image less sharp, but more consistent with ink, so it's a trade off.
I'm going to test pla more in the next one including possibly trying to coat it to make ink stick better. The flexibility problem with pla does demand greater pressure exactly as you mention, I guess it's basically embossing, like they do with business cards. Could be a desirable effect, actually.
@@LostInTech3D Dirty little secret. At one time I was the 3rd generation in my family to work in printing and I actuallyused metal and wooden type. I also did work with computers and laser printers before I got out of it. The industry has drastically changed to where what was once a skilled craft is now done buy sending things to an ink or laser printer.
i've a suggest, you could try use ironing to flatten last layer.
And after import svg in fusion 360 you select it and with the lock icon you can unlock and move it, the lines change from green to blue.
Yeah I forgot to include that in the video - I did try it (ironing), it doesn't seem to help with TPU. It just kind of smushes it around a bit. I didn't spend a lot of time on that though so maybe there's more to it.
It does help with PLA and there might, it seems, be a part 3 as someone else gave me some ideas on how to use PLA and a fine nozzle, so yeah one for the future!
Thanks for the fusion tip...I am a fusion dunce, I come from a non CAD background...will try it later today 👍
@@LostInTech3D If you're new fusion has tutorial built-in, check help.autodesk.com/view/fusion360/ENU/courses/
I forgot to tell you that when you unlock the geometry there are no more constraints so if you move only one or a few line you could mess the original shape, to avoid this you have to select all the lines and then move with the mouse or the "move" command.
quality content man! can't even imagine how much time it took you to make this video
Thank you! 👍 Takes about a week or so most of which is printing time 🤣
I print out a mold and pour silicone into it. works well.
This video is great and very informative. I suggest that may be for the stamp to be clearer with less missing detail , you could either sanding the surface or apply clear sticky cloating on raised texture to capture more ink in , may be you already know this, anyway, hope of more vid on this subject.:>>>>
Really helpful Video!!! thank you so much....saved so many hours reprinting again n again.
Awesome video on the theory and technical side to making a stamp as it is something I like to do too. However, after several times of watching, I still don't quite understand the part on the need for the circular supports (before clipping them off later). They did make a big improvement as shown in the results though which was really impressive.
It's just to provide some support, it's possible that it might be overkill, but it's the safe option. TPU doesn't bridge gaps well in my experience especially at lower temperatures.
@@LostInTech3D Thank you. Do you think a resin 3D printer can produce good stamps with less technical challenges (saving both time and effort)?
@@jentours yes absolutely, if you can get a good resin that will absorb ink. I've seen some examples people have made and they are *really* good, the resolution is amazing, but it needs to be able to transfer the ink too - so something flexible (if such resin exists?).
@@LostInTech3D Thanks for the great info. I guess I will try to find another way.
Given that you can get more details in a 3D print faced to the side, like the way lithophanes are printed, I wonder if you've tried that? It might solve the issue of either needing support or needing to sand. Then again, the layer lines might show.
I do some leatherwork and have made a few stamps out of PLA+. They are not bad but deteriorate after a few dozen uses. For special images that you use sparingly it works great. Just make sure the stamp depth is several millimeters in depth.
In the laser stamping community this is fairly well known and there's a use of ramping. Basically when rastering an stamp you add in slightly gray pulses as a distance from the ink-ridges. Basically you need to have a ramp rather than a cliff. This stuff is easier with a laser, since you can just cut some rubber into the stamp. Though the skill of doing this could probably be nicely matched with a flat based stamp with what it's supposed to stamp embossed on the stamp base.
I've tried to do stamps before and had the same results as you with TPU however I found that PLA is a better material to use, you just need to sand it down untill it is shiny, which doesn't take a lot of work and it will take ink without problems and you can have more details because it is easy to print PLA with a .2 mm nozzle.
Maybe a hybrid of TPU for the material behind the stamp and PLA for the details would result in the same quality as commercial ones but I haven't tried
Yeah good point about the 0.2 - also got to wonder if you can coat it at the end with something. Even just a thin paint coat might work.
Isn't petg a bit more flexible too, than pla? Could work.
I guess a third episode is going to happen after all 🤣
@@LostInTech3D I use pla too, pla with a thin base so it's more flexible, then use tpu as handle, exact opposite from ur way, u could also smooth the stamp face with heated bed or just glossy metal heated with hot air gun, then sand it a little bit to help absorb ink.
Great amount of detail. Thank you
this saved me alot of time, thanks man!
you can do a better job with PLA too.
print the stamp
heat the bed to 80-100c
apply pressure on the stamp and to the bed
this will flatten out areas and kind of anneal the surface of the stamp resulting not only in better surface finish but a more even stamp area
Super informative video, thanks for sharing!
Did you try printing the right way up, but with ironing turned on to flatten the top layer? If it worked, it would get round the need to add supports.
Great video
Excellent video !! Bravo
Thank you!
Did you ever consider micro coating the highest relief area of your stamp with some type of highly thinned flexible medium like rubber cement? If you used a brayer to put some down on glass or paper -- you might just stamp onto the material to get a very light coating. The plati-dip material for tool handles might also work. Again, you'd probably need to thin it down with whatever the solvent base is. That means protective gear, unfortunately. There must also be some non toxic options. Natural rubber maybe. I think there's a milky water based product out there. Or maybe even just try some various sheens of gesso. Once again, just painting the thinnest coat onto paper and repeatedly stamping until you gave a very thin dry coating.
good ideas, if I return to the topic I'll try them
Lmao oh God that intro...know it all too well
Solder, Plastic Laquer, Refine Mortar Cement, .
hmm ... Could you do a 'rolling' stamp in pla? Instead of having a flat stamp, make it rollable. so it has less contact with the paper and the print might stick better to the paper.
Yeah most certainly could, and it would probably work
Nice channel
Thanks and welcome 👍
Seeing this something appeared in my mind: Is it possible to print different materials on top of another? Like a PLA base and the letters or sth like this with TPU on top? I don't think it is useful in this topic due to missing flexibility in the base, but I've seen it with different colours at CHEPs channel but not different materials. Would be interesting to know, not just with PLA and TPU, also with other materials. Really nice video btw, your channel is really underrated
Yeah I've thought a lot about this too! I think the answer is a solid yes.
If you have an auto leveling system it could be interesting too.
As you say not that useful here but for something like drone parts or thumb sticks..? I could see it being really powerful.
I'll put it on the list of things to try 👍
Short answer, no... . or with a very low probability of success
Hold my beer 🍺 😂
I have printed PLA and then paused and swapped to TPU. The TPU stuck very well. You could peel it off if you tried but it would easily work well for a rubber stamp.
Yeah I asked a friend to test this for me on his dial extruder. It's on my long list of topics to cover, it definitely works though as you confirmed 👍
The problem I have to fix first is getting 32 bit based printers...to pause. They don't. They ignore the pause commands on stock firmware 🤣
Your videos are quite informative, and it's clear you put a lot of work into them. Thanks for your efforts. But please get rid of the annoying background "music".
worth mentioning that you can put the subtitles on and turn the sound down if the music offends, the subtitles are the script I read so they are accurate.
@@LostInTech3D But then I would miss your lovely voice! Keep up the good work in any case 🙂.
Haha fair enough. I have less music lately anyway as I get better at editing.
How about old school halfmoon stamps? These should dissipate the force evenly and much better than regular flat ones.
Yeah I think they would!
Don’t rock your stamp in an ink pad, that is why you get ink in the places you don’t want.
I've got some flexible resin for my printer, and a Trodat 4912 typo self inking stamp thing. thinking of printing a stamp that slots into the Trodat 🤔
I think that would work really well
Would not doing the design in negative solve many of the problems? i.e. letters are absent of ink, background ink. this way you could also maybe use no perimeter walls and get much better squish??
it's an idea - I might visit stamps again at some point!
What about printing it in PLA or ABS and then spraying/dipping the stamp in plastidip?
So glad that I have found your channel! Subbed and liked pretty quick. I headed over to your website to try out the profile for this video and the downloads say failed - no file. Just wonder if you have taken them down at all? Cheers
Ah, the website has been moved a couple of days ago and this stuff is still broken 🤣 I'm working on it.
@@LostInTech3D thanks for the reply! Good timing on my part 🤣 no stress
should work now for those files at least :)
@@LostInTech3D Sadly not yet but do not stress i'll probably check in a week or so. Keep up the awesome videos!
So the reusable base idea didn't work out in the end? I still haven't made any, I should design "This is the BACK" one :)
Also, just _how many_ chapters this video has O_o
Would it make a good soap stamp?
I've made soap stamps actually. And yes pretty much the same process but use PLA.
Having a bit of trouble downloading the profiles, what setting did you use for Horizontal shells?
Ah, I can actually fix the download....give me a few hours
Can anyone help me... i want to make a stamp of WW2 aircraft wing emblems from the origin of their country... like the Brittish , American and German decals you would see on any WW2 plane model... so i can mass produce them with a stamp on my mini models without hand painting them... all i have to work with are a j peg photo of each of them.. can i convert a single photo into a G CODE 3 d file for my 3 d printer...
This technique might work, depending on the image ua-cam.com/video/QkVt44CJRqo/v-deo.html
@@LostInTech3D Thank you, i will try this.
Use that rubber stuff
What, rubber? 🤣
Professional stamps are glued to the stamper, you made something more complicated