The sky is the place to be this summer… We’ve already shot some new drone footage and are heavily into RC planes (with some exciting news to come soon!). The sky, however, is a pretty big place and there is plenty to explore beyond the stratosphere. Enter SpaceX and its continuous news grabbing headlines with one succesfull launch after the next and, granted, some unsuccesfull ones. To honor them we decided to print the Falcon 9 rocket since our trusted Saturn V was feeling a bit lonely at the office.
Printed to scale
The Saturn V was printed by Korneel Bullens four years ago and it has survived multiple trade shows, one office relocation, a curious dog and the occassional cleaning accident. Now it’s time to extend the space port here at colorFabb with SpaceX’s famous Falcon 9.
Inspired by the latest Falcon 9 Crew Dragon launch we decided to print a model in the same scale as the Saturn 5 so we can get a great sense of scale between the two rockets.
The Falcon 9 is SpaceX’s highly succesfull two-stage rocket. Click here to have a good view on all sides of this rocket.
We combined files from two projects into one build:
The “Falcon 9 Model” by Anthony Williams (link here)
With some quick internet research we figured out the scale for the Falcon 9 and adjusted all the parts in the slicer software. Now, as printed, the Falcon 9 stands a proud 109cm but seems small compared with its 1960s classic brother the Saturn V which measures 180cm (rocket alone).
Unfortunately we had to scale down the Dragon M3 model too much for all the fine detail to be properly displayed. The model by An Duong is very detailed and would be best printed without scaling down. An Duong also offers an even more detailed version DRAGON – MS
At colorFabb we are proud of the partnerships we have. One of the success stories we are particularly fond of is our co-operation with Van Mierlo Technische Handelsonderming. Like colorFabb Van Mierlo is a technical service company creating added value in their products to meet their customers’ needs.
About Van Mierlo
Van Mierlo is a highly respected name when it comes to technical solutions. In the south of the Netherlands it owes its reputation to the quality, service and reliability it delivers. They supply their customers with an extensive range of products and solutions for, among other things, the metal industry, non-food sector and high-tech industry.
In 2013 van Mierlo BV celebrated its 50-year anniversary. This demonstrates the confidence that their customers have in them. As a preferred supplier of one of the largest organizations in the high-tech industry, Van Mierlo has a great deal of knowledge and experience with regard to the delivery of tools in the semicon industry. This makes Van Mierlo unique in this market.
The tool cart inlay
Everybody’s needs regarding their tool box is very specific: the tools, the layout, the size… Van Mierlo saw 3D printing as the perfect opportunity to create custom made tool cart inlays. These tool cart inlays offer their users maximum flexibility to have all the tools they’ll need at their disposal.
A toolbox inlay, specifically for a UV light (design by Van Mierlo)
Whether safely storing measurement tools in a Quality Control department, needing a specific tool combination for each specific assembly station on a production line or being a maintenance engineer in need of certain tools at any given time.
Finding the right printer and material to create the inlays, Van Mierlo found the perfect combination of Stacker 3D printers and colorFabb’s PLA Economy filaments.
Last year we printed our own tool cart inlays. Check out that blog here!
At Van Mierlo the project started years ago. Working closely with colorFabb’s engineers they looked for the perfect solution in terms of hardware and materials. Starting with one Stacker 3D printer, they now have 5 Stackers running 24/7 devouring colorFabb filament. The amount of filament they have used so far stretches from colorFabb’s HQ to Berlin. How about that?
When creating an end product reliability is key. Measured over the past year and a half, the uptime of four Stackers was over 90%.
The tool cart inlays that Van Mierlo offers are a great example of how colorFabb’s application development has helped them finding the right printer and material to make this possible.
ABOUT PLA ECONOMY
PLA Economy is available on 2.2kg, 4.5kg and 8kg spools only. It is very well suited for the maker who needs quality filament at an affordable price. It is a perfect material for large volume and small series production, made with the guaranteed colorFabb quality that we are known for.
PLA Economy is now available in six of the most popular colors. ColorFabb PLA Economy is not a standard PLA. It has been modified for better layer adhesion and flow properties to get better performance over other basic PLA filaments. Because it’s made with the same processing technology used for other premium colorFabb products, this PLA Economy will be just as reliable.
Not sure if our big spools fit on your printer? Check out the dimensions here or print XL your own spool holder!
ABOUT STACKER S4 XL
Stacker is becoming the standard in industrial grade 3D printing, based on the technology and experience of the S2, S4 and S4-XL printers. The Stacker range of printers is the ultimate production platform within FDM for large scale and small series 3D printing.
As many of you know, we are the distributor of Stacker 3D printers in Europe. We have been working with Stacker ever since their first prototype and now have several in our print lab. In the past 7 years we have seen 3D printing emerging from a hobby market to more professional uses. A lot of our users are using 3D printing to make a living or at least support their business in one way or another.
For Stacker the term “industrial grade” is not a hollow marketing term. It means their printers are designed for extra long service life, extremely low maintenance and that the printer will maintain its positional accuracy throughout its life cycle. This printer has been designed to be used in a professional environment, be it for large prototypes or small series production.
memento / məˈmɛn toʊ. an object or item that serves to remind one of a person, past event, etc.; keepsake; souvenir.
Recently we posted a blog about the great work many of our users did printing lithophanes. Head over here to see what they made. At colorFabb we were immediately inspired and a lot of our colleagues sent their favorite photos to the print team to have their own special mememto created.
All lithophanes were printed on the Ultimaker 2+ with PLA Economy White (with one notable exeption, scroll to the bottom for a special guest appearance).
Meet colorFabb’s extended family
Below are the results: sons, daughters, a pregnancy, dogs: loved ones now immortalized as a 3D print.
More examples will be added soon!
And with a dash of green…
All of the above lithophanes were made with PLA Economy White. White is the color most suited for this application. As seen in our previous blog various materials like PLA/PHA, nGen and colorFabb_XT can be used aside from PLA Economy. But that does not mean you cannot experiment with color:
All lithophanes were created by our former colleague Sven Hacken who has continued his career in law enforcement. Thank you, Sven, for all these prints and being an amazing colleague in the past few years!
Sven used Gadunky’s lithophane profile (click here) and 3DP Rocks’ lithophane generator (link here) for all of the family memento prints.
Hulk print by our colleague Paul. You can find the Thingiverse link here. Design by JohnC55.
We used the TRÅDFRI E27 LED light from IKEA as backlight to play with the colors a bit and achieve the best possible effect.
About PLA Economy
PLA Economy is available on 2.2kg, 4.5kg and 8kg spools only. It is very well suited for the maker who needs quality filament at an affordable price. It is a perfect material for large volume and small series production, made with the guaranteed colorFabb quality that we are known for.
PLA Economy is now available in six of the most popular colors. ColorFabb PLA Economy is not a standard PLA. It has been modified for better layer adhesion and flow properties to get better performance over other basic PLA filaments. Because it’s made with the same processing technology used for other premium colorFabb products, this PLA Economy will be just as reliable.
The art of making lithophanes is about 200 years old. It consists of etching an image in very thin translucent porcelain and use a light behind it to make the art visible. Historians claim that the idea originated from China, a thousand years ago or even longer. It used to be a manual process with, admittedly, stellar results. It made (and still makes) for great personal gifts.
With the growing popularity of 3D printing we have seen an increase of lithophanes posted on social media. The treshold is lower to start making one and the results can be amazing. Mind you, it still takes some skill to make them truly astonishing. Below are a few of the examples we have seen over the past few years. A special shout-out to Steve McGarr from Carlow, Ireland who has been posted quite a few and offers the designs in his Gadunky webshop. You should definitely check his work out and get his amazing designs.
One thing has not changed since the early days: creating lithophanes is still a craft and it takes some skills to make it look great! You can easily click on the images above to go straight to the orignal posts made on social media.
All the mentioned materials are available in our webshop and ship daily, worldwide and from stock. Find out more about the filaments and their properties here:
When it comes to prototyping, 3D printing has already earned its stripes over the past years. Designers and manufacturers have seen the benefits of how 3D printing technology allows for faster and cheaper prototyping and having a first (or second or third) proof of concept ready for their customers in mere days instead of weeks or months in those pre-historic days. As a demonstrator we printed a sport seat prototype:
The sport seat was designed by Pete S and you can find the original files at Grabcad. Scaled at 50% the print is 360x290x430mm.
We used our PLA Economy Light Gray filament for this print on the Stacker S2 printer. The print took about 60 hours to complete with a 0.2mm layer height and printing with a 0.4mm nozzle. We used approximately 570 grams to complete the print.
PLA Economy Light Gray is the latest addition to our PLA Economy range of filaments. We released it last year and has proven to be a very popular filament. It is not an exact match, but very close to RAL 7035. PLA Economy is very reliable and works extremely well for long projects!
With the addition of this very nice subtle gray shade we offer our users another much requested color. PLA Economy is available on 2.2kg, 4.5kg and 8kg spools only. It is very well suited for the maker who needs quality filament at an affordable price. It is a perfect material for large volume and small series production, made with the guaranteed colorFabb quality that we are known for.
The sport seat was printed on the Stacker S2. The Stacker S2 and its larger siblings (Stacker S4 and Stacker S4 XL) are industrial grade FFF 3D printers. Multiple print heads and a large build volume make them versatile printers. Small series production or large scale prototyping are no problem for the Stacker printers! This US based printer is very reliable and is a perfect match for any professional looking for serious 3D printing. You can find the full product specifications on our dedicated Stacker page.
For Stacker the term “industrial grade” is not a hollow marketing term. It means their printers are designed for extra long service life, extremely low maintenance and that the printer will maintain its positional accuracy throughout its life cycle. This printer has been designed to be used in a professional environment, be it for large prototypes or small series production.
Interested in the Stacker printers? Get a quote or contact us!
Size does matter it seems… Back in the day we started out with small spools containing 750 grams of filament (7 years ago now, man time flies…). Over the past few years we have made materials available as 2.2kg, 4.5kg and 8kg spools. More and more customers need a steady flow of filament, but most printers do not support large spool formats of themselves. That’s why we have adjusted our Duck Spool holder for XXL spools (containing 4.5kg of quality colorFabb filament):
(We currently do not have any plans to release one for our 8kg spools)
We printed the XXL spool holders, which we actively use in our own print lab, with PLA Economy Red on the Stacker S4 XL. This print was made with 0.2 layer height, 20% infill and a 0.6mm nozzle.
Please note: 2.2kg, 4.5kg and 8kg are mostly available in our Economy range of filaments (PLA and PETG). Please check stock levels per individual article for availability. We can produce most of our materials on larger spools, but lead times of up to several weeks do apply. Contact us for the options.
About PLA Economy
PLA Economy is available on 2.2kg, 4.5kg and 8kg spools only. It is very well suited for the maker who needs quality filament at an affordable price. It is a perfect material for large volume and small series production, made with the guaranteed colorFabb quality that we are known for.
PLA Economy is now available in six of the most popular colors. ColorFabb PLA Economy is not a standard PLA. It has been modified for better layer adhesion and flow properties to get better performance over other basic PLA filaments. Because it’s made with the same processing technology used for other premium colorFabb products, this PLA Economy will be just as reliable.
About Stacker S4 XL
The Stacker S4 XL is the latest offering in the Stacker portfolio. It is next generation industrial grade 3D printing, based on the technology and experience of the S2 and S4 printers. Featuring unique closed loop servo motor system and a massive 61cm build space (in all directions), the Stacker S4 XL is the ultimate production platform within FDM for large scale and small series 3D printing.
As many of you know, we are the distributor of Stacker 3D printers in Europe. We have been working with Stacker ever since their first prototype and now have several in our print lab. In the past 7 years we have seen 3D printing emerging from a hobby market to more professional uses. A lot of our users are using 3D printing to make a living or at least support their business in one way or another. We recently published two blogs about Dutch companies Optima and Mifa and their use of Stacker 3D printers.
For Stacker the term “industrial grade” is not a hollow marketing term. It means their printers are designed for extra long service life, extremely low maintenance and that the printer will maintain its positional accuracy throughout its life cycle. This printer has been designed to be used in a professional environment, be it for large prototypes or small series production.
The Mosaic Palettes are perfect tools to create multi-color and multi-material prints, even (and especially) when you have a single nozzle extruder. We have created two examples of how you can make great looking prints on most printers which handle 1.75mm filament.
Handle Bosch Rexroth by Sidnei Willians Nurchi (link)
Both prints were made with PLA Economy and PLA Semi-Matte Black using the Mosaic Palette. We used an Tripod Maker with various DIY adjustments as the the primary printer, which worked very well.
Both designs were originally single color, but we used the paint feature in the Mosaic CANVAS software to determine the various materials and colors for the prints. Users are able to digitally paint models in CANVAS. This makes it easier than ever to create multi-color designs. Palette 2 made a significant step toward making multi-color printing accessible to a new community. However, designing parts was still a challenge. There are millions of 3D models available on the internet, but only a small percentage are split into multiple pieces for printing in multiple colors. Designing these models would typically be significantly harder than their single color counterparts. While the library of color models is growing, it’s still in the early days. This has put a damper on one of the unique value-adds of 3D printing – the ability to create unique and custom objects.
You can read more about the paint feature in CANVAS on Mosaic’s blog.
The Palette 2 and Palette 2 Pro take up to four filaments and combines them into a single filament strand. This strand is then fed to your printer, enabling your single-extruder printer to create multi-filament prints!
Mosaic is a digital manufacturing company creating the next generation of product delivery systems. Founded in 2014, Mosaic began by enabling 3D printers to create substantially more useful and valuable products. Now, they’re working to scale this technology to help millions of people get value from the upcoming waves of customization and personalization.
We’re proud to be Mosaic’s partner in their quest to increase the flexibility of 3D printing for our users worldwide.
Almost three years after we have launched our PLA Economy range we are happy to announce a new color to one of our most popular products: Light Gray. PLA Economy Light Gray is very close to RAL 7035.
Pre-ordering starts today (click here), September 13th and shipping starts as from Tuesday next week!
Jon Snow bust design by David Östman (Design link)
This print was made on the Stacker S4 XL and took 3 days and 4 hours to make, printing with 0.2mm layer height. PLA Economy is very reliable and works extremely well for long projects!
With the addition of this very nice subtle gray shade we offer our users another much requested color. PLA Economy is available on 2.2kg, 4.5kg and 8kg spools only. It is very well suited for the maker who needs quality filament at an affordable price. It is a perfect material for large volume and small series production, made with the guaranteed colorFabb quality that we are known for.
PLA Economy is now available in six of the most popular colors. ColorFabb PLA Economy is not a standard PLA. It has been modified for better layer adhesion and flow properties to get better performance over other basic PLA filaments. Because it’s made with the same processing technology used for other premium colorFabb products, this PLA Economy will be just as reliable.
Settings
A good starting point for the settings is:
Adviced 3d printing temperature
195C-220C
Adviced 3d print speed
40 – 100 mm/s
Advised Heated bed (if you have one, not strictly necessary)
50-60C
Cooling fan
100% fan cooling for best aesthetics, this gives best performance on overhangs and small details. For best mechanical performance try printing with the least amount of cooling needed, for optimal layer adhesion.
We have written several times about using 3D printing for investment casting, but we also see an increased use of our filaments for sand casting. It is a metal casting process where sand is being used as the mold material. With around 60% of all metal castings being made with sand casting, it is a very interesting technology for 3D printing.
The sand casting process employs techniques that produces shaped parts of nearly any design, including very large parts and those with internal passageways. The process is referred to as sand casting because the mold that contains the cavity into which metal is poured is made of compressed or compacted sand. The mold cavities and gate system are created by compacting the sand around models called patterns, by carving directly into the sand, or by 3D printing.
We have printed one halve of a pattern for the sand casting process, here using PLA Economy Silver on the Stacker S4 XL. The pattern is used to form the cavity in sand in which metal can be poured afterwards.
The total printing time was 4 days and we used 3.1kg of material for this print, using a 0.8mm nozzle, 0.16mm layer height and 13% infill every 2 layers.
ABOUT THE FILAMENT
PLA Economy offers a great value for your money. One spool consists of 2.2kg of filament for a dirt cheap price of a little over € 35 (ex VAT and shipping). It is a different grade than our range of PLA/PHA, but we guarantee the same colorFabb quality. Our filaments are readily available from our webshop. You can use the standard PLA settings if your printer has these pre-defined and these should work fine.
You can also opt for the PLA Economy Value Pack: order four spools as a value pack which lowers the costs per spool immediately.
PLA Economy is very well suited for the maker who needs quality at an affordable price. It is a perfect filament for large volume and small series production, made with the guaranteed colorFabb quality that we are known for. It has been one of colorFabb’s most popular filaments ever since launching 3 years ago.
ABOUT STACKER 3D PRINTERS
The Stacker 3D printers are industrial grade FFF 3D printers. Recently the even larger Stacker S4 XL was added to the portfolio. Multiple print heads and a large build volume make them versatile printers. Small series production or large scale prototyping are no problem for the Stacker printers! This US based printer is very reliable and is a perfect match for any professional looking for serious 3D printing. You can find the full product specifications on our dedicated Stacker page.
For Stacker the term “industrial grade” is not a hollow marketing term. It means their printers are designed for extra long service life, extremely low maintenance and that the printer will maintain its positional accuracy throughout its life cycle. This printer has been designed to be used in a professional environment, be it for large prototypes or small series production.
The Stacker printers on display in our print lab
As many of you know, we are the distributor of Stacker 3D printers in Europe. We have been working with Stacker ever since their first prototype and now have several in our print lab. In the past 6 years we have seen 3D printing emerging from a hobby market to more professional uses. A lot of our users are using 3D printing to make a living or at least support their business in one way or another.
With our brand new lightweight PLA, LW-PLA, we offer a filament which is ideally suited for prints where weight matters. Drone enthusiasts have embraced 3D printing a long time ago. Replacement parts and customisation are easier than ever when reparing or enhancing ones drone. However, weight is always an issue with drones and with LW-PLA we offer a solution to reduce this with up to 65%!
We have printed the 82mm ducted brushless frame by TheShortCrayon for the 82mm Inductrix-style Brushless Quad with both PLA Economy and LW-PLA as a comparison. PLA Economy was printed with standard PLA settings. For the LW-PLA we use the following settings:
0.2mm layer height
245C nozzle temperature
50C bed temperature
Printed with 38% flow
As you can see one reduces the weight significantly from 31 to 12 grams for this printed part!
Micro FPV drones are all about power and performance. Reducing weight increases flight time and overall performance, which is why LW-PLA is an ideal candidate as a go-to filament.
LW-PLA is the first filament of its kind using an active foaming technology to achieve lightweight, low density PLA parts. At around 230C this material will start foaming, increasing its volume by nearly 3 times. Users can decrease material flow by 65% to achieve light weight parts, or use the expanding properties to effectively reduce print time by using big layer heights or single extra thick perimeters.
Decreasing flow means using less filament. Therefore users can expect to print 2-3 times more parts using LW-PLA compared to a regular PLA spool. LW-PLA prints in a fantastic matte looking surface finish and is very easy to post process. Any oozing or stringing artifacts rub right off and the surface is easily sanded for a smooth finish.
LW-PLA is available in Black and Natural and is available now. We ship daily, worldwide and from stock.
“We need challenging materials, we need to work with or find ways around the limitations and allow more people to experiment with exciting developments like this foaming PLA.” – Richard Horne, aka RichRap3D
