Essentium HTN high temperature nylon

Essentium is a company with presence in the USA, Asia and Europe. They manufacture industrial 3D printers and technical filament, revolutionizing the 3D printing world with their products and paving the way to Industry 4.0. Essentium’s work has helped many companies prototype and manufacture in-house, on a large scale and with quality but in a quick and cost-effective fashion. Essentium offers numerous innovative technical filaments, mostly polymers and blends designed for exceptional strength, flexibility and high mechanical performance in the most challenging industrial settings. The Essentium filaments have many applications across numerous disciplines, such as aerospace and defense, automotive, biomedical, contract manufacturing, consumer goods, and electronic manufacturing.

Technical filaments for professional uses

Essentium's HTN (High Temperature Nylon) filament is part of the manufacturer's ample material portfolio and belongs to the high temperature nylon (PA) family. This filament is composed of 90 % polyamide copolymer.

Polyamide copolymer, also known as nylon, is a synthetic polymer formed by binding alternating diamine and dicarboxylic acid monomers together. Nylon was first used commercially to make toothbrush bristles and women’s stockings right before the second world war. During the war, nylon was mostly utilized to make parachutes, ropes, body armor and helmet liners for the army. In the present day, nylon polymers have many commercial applications, for example in fabrics and fibers, molding in the automotive industry, as well as in the making of electronics and food packaging. Nylon is extensively used in 3D printing (as powder in SLS and MJF, or as pellets and filament in FDM) due to its qualities of durability, flexibility, resistance to abrasion, friction, corrosion and chemicals. Nylon is a very versatile thermoplastic that can be used as a base for specialistic filament blends with various technical properties.

A high temperature filament

Essentium’s HTN is a high performance, high-temperature semi-crystalline nylon whose thermal and mechanical properties have been significantly improved in comparison to standard nylon filaments. It has a higher heat deflection temperature than regular nylons, it is tougher and stronger, more resistant to wear, and its chemical and solvent resistance have been boosted as well. On top of that, this Essentium HTN is characterized by slow moisture absorption. All those improved qualities make it easy to print and reduce the risk of warping. The manufacturer describes it as a drop-in replacement (a replacement requiring no configurations and having no downsides) for Acetal, also a very strong and heat resistant engineering plastic.

Image 1: Parts printed with the Essentium HTN. Source: Essentium.

This Essentium HTN has multiple cross-industry applications. Thanks to its boosted mechanical and thermal properties it can be used to 3D print jigs and fixtures (non-ESD), electrically insulating components, electronic housings and low-speed gears and moving parts.