Educational Brake Caliper

One of the noble applications of 3D printing in general is education. Chris Halliday has, with this in mind, designed an educational brake caliper, which we used for a visual demonstration, printed with various nGen colors:

Design: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1362673

Printed on Ultimaker 2+ with nGen Yellow, Orange, Gray Metallic and Light Green.

This brake caliper is not only a nice visual demonstration to 3D print for yourself, it also comes with detailed documentation with regards to printing, assembly and even how it works. It’s a learning experience which is suitable for grades 8 up to 12. It even comes with it’s own brake caliper quiz & answer sheet! Check out the Thingiverse link for Chris’ detailed tutorial!

Check out Chris’ 3D Hub here.

nGen was released a little over a year ago and is an all-round filament which has many advantages over, say, a PLA. The temperature resistance is over 80 degrees C and it works on most printers with a heated build plate.  nGen is a low-odor, styrene-free material uniquely suited for 3D printing enthusiasts, particularly those who need the flexibility to print within a wide processing temperature range. With nGen you will have good flow properties through the printer nozzle—even at lower temperatures than some other polymers require. These properties make nGen more workable at a wider breadth of temperatures, producing reliable results and resulting in less waste. Visual prototyping has never been better than with nGen.

nGen is made with Eastman Amphora™ 3D polymer AM3300, part of a range of co-polyesters developed with Eastman Chemical Company for 3D printing. Amphora co-polyesters are low-odor, styrene-free choices that are uniquely suited for 3D printing applications. Aside from nGen, we have colorFabb_XT, colorFabb_HT and the semi-flexible nGen_FLEX in our portfolio.

Eastman has done an extensive study about off-gassing during 3D printing. You can find an extract of the results here.

With Amphora, items can be created that are more functional, more durable, more efficient and attractive. You can find more information about co-polyesters in the article we published last summer: What we talk about when we talk about co-polyesters.

Flexible pliers

Or: How to print pliers with two materials in one print. We’re having a lot of fun with our dual nozzle printers here in the brand new colorFabb HQ and today we showcase once again a great print with two different materials. Yesterday we used nGen as a support material for a drill case print in colorFabb_XT (click here for that post). Today we use nGen again in combination with nGen_FLEX. We present you the flexible pliers:

Design by: I-lab Toulon (modified by colorFabb for dual material printing)

The original concept is from a German institute that the I-Lab team re-worked. Originally intended for a single material (which works perfectly fine we found), we thought it would be more interesting to up the ante, print with two materials and use ngen_FLEX Dark Gray where it matters most while printing the rest with the more rigid nGen Silver Metallic.

This original design creates a completely functional part from a single print, straight from the 3D printer. It brings out the functionality of nGen_FLEX to its fullest by using different internal structures to create more rigid and more flexible sections in a single part.

UPDATE: the files to print your very own Flexible Pliers are now online! You can find the I-Lab design on Thingiverse and Youmagine. Our remixed version for dual material can be found here.

 

For both prints we used the BCN3D Sigma. They took only a couple of hours and we printed with a 0.15mm layer height.

We have printed before with nGen and nGen_FLEX (here) and the (layer) adhesion between these two materials is excellent! Dual extrusion printers like the BCN3D Sigma, the new Ultimaker 3 and the upcoming Stacker S2 (keep your eyes open for that one!) allow for great freedom to design and print truly functional parts.

nGen was released a little over a year ago and is an all-round filament which has many advantages over, say, a PLA. The temperature resistance is over 80 degrees C and it works on most printers with a heated build plate.  nGen is a low-odor, styrene-free material uniquely suited for 3D printing enthusiasts, particularly those who need the flexibility to print within a wide processing temperature range. With nGen you will have good flow properties through the printer nozzle—even at lower temperatures than some other polymers require. These properties make nGen more workable at a wider breadth of temperatures, producing reliable results and resulting in less waste.

nGen_FLEX was released in September 2016 at the TCT Show and is our first semi-flexible material. With a Shore A hardness of 95 it is a material that is ideally suited for functional parts. It is not soft and squishy like other flexible materials in the market, but allows for fast printing and printing on 3D printers using a Bowden tube. nGen_FLEX is a material for users looking for an engineering grade flexible filament with a high temperature resistance (over 120 degrees C) and good chemical resistance.

You can read the initial reception of nGen_FLEX here.

Both nGen and nGen_FLEX are made with Eastman Amphora™ 3D polymers, a range of co-polyesters developed with Eastman Chemical Company for 3D printing. Amphora co-polyesters are low-odor, styrene-free choices that are uniquely suited for 3D printing applications. With Amphora, items can be created that are more functional, more durable, more efficient and attractive. You can find more information about co-polyesters in the article we published last summer: What we talk about when we talk about co-polyesters.

Both nGen and nGen_FLEX are available now in our webshop (click here or here) and via our network of distributors and resellers. Click here for a reseller closest to you.

Drill Case

With dual nozzle printers come great possibilities. Two colors, two different materials even. And what if we had a great support material? And what if we already happen to have such a material in our current portfolio? In between moving our entire company our print lab team started testing with using nGen as a support material for colorFabb_XT. A first test resulted in easy break away support with minimal scarring on the model.

For this test we used the GrabCAD’s Drill Case, which was originally designed for injection molding.

Design: https://grabcad.com/library/drill-case-1

We used the dual nozzle Ultimaker 3 with 0.2mm layer height for this print. The surface finish of the colorFabb_XT is fantastic.

Printing a part designed for injection molding is challenging. But with the right settings and some material experimentation we got a great result. To all designers and engineers modeling for injection molding: checkout what you can do with an Ultimaker 3 and colorFabb materials. These results give much more freedom for designing for 3D printing and using functional materials for the best results.

We launched colorFabb_XT over 2 years ago at the London 3D Print Show together with Eastman Chemical Company. Eastman is our material partner for co-polyesters. colorFabb_XT is made with Amphora AM1800 and has a unique formulation for 3D Printing that features excellent properties : High strength and very high toughness, Odor Neutral processing, High Tg / improved temp. resistance, Styrene free formulation, FDA food contact compliance, BPA (Bisphenol A ) free formulation. It will allow the user to produce 3D printed functional products in a safe way.

nGen has proven itself to be a very versatile material that can be used for a lot of applications and now being a support material is one of them!

nGen is an all-round filament which has many advantages over PLA. The temperature resistance is over 80 degrees C and it works on most printers with a heated build plate.  nGen is a low-odor, styrene-free material uniquely suited for 3D printing enthusiasts, particularly those who need the flexibility to print within a wide processing temperature range. With nGen you will have good flow properties through the printer nozzle—even at lower temperatures than some other polymers require. These properties make nGen more workable at a wider breadth of temperatures, producing reliable results and resulting in less waste. You can find more information on our dedicated landing page.

Both colorFabb_XT and nGen are made with Eastman Amphora™ 3D polymer. With Amphora, items can be created that are more functional, more durable, more efficient, and attractive.

 

Both nGen and colorFabb_XT are available in our webshop. You can find more information about co-polyesters in general in last year’s blog. Below is a handy chart which explains the differences between the rigid co-polyesters in our current portfolio:

Our new home

We’ve moved… again!

Less than 3 years ago we moved colorFabb into a new building. Here we could evolve from a pilot project into a standalone company. Our team has grown and our production and logistics facilities have expanded until we could fit no more.

Now it’s time for our next big step.

Another building, state of the art infrastructure and more space to keep up with our company’s ambition, growth and vision for the future. Here we will establish a true innovation center for 3D printing: producing high quality 3D printing filament, developing the best materials and codeveloping applications and products with our partners and customers.

We’re grateful for your support and hope to continue building and shaping the future of 3D printing together.

Our new address:

colorFabb BV

Bremweg 7

5951 DK Belfeld (Venlo)

The Netherlands

51°19’17.0″N 6°07’26.6″E

All the other details (phone numbers, VAT, etc. remain the same).

In the new building we will continue to produce the best materials and deliver the best possible service.

Stay tuned for regular updates by social media and our newsletter.

– Team colorFabb

Spool holders

We have a lot of spools in our print lab. We print a lot on 30+ printers and need our filaments handy at a moments notice. That’s why we use the Filament Duck spool holder a lot! These ones were printed with nGen.

Design: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1862680 

Recently we printed these for our big PLA Economy spools and now we have made a remix of Bold’s original design. We made all these prints with nGen on the Lulzbot Mini in (and for!) our own print lab.

This version of the filament duck fits our regular spool size.

Now you can place your spools anywhere independently of the spool holder on your printer, easily swap them or even store them on this holder so it’s ready to go whenever you need it.

It’s also really usefull when printing with more than one material or color, allowing easy access to each individual spool.

nGen has proven itself to be a very versatile material that can be used for a lot of applications, handy gadgets for the print lab being one of them! It has become our default, all-round filament for printing all sorts of prototypes and prints just have to look damn good!

nGen is an all-round filament which has many advantages over PLA. The temperature resistance is over 80 degrees C and it works on most printers with a heated build plate.  nGen is a low-odor, styrene-free material uniquely suited for 3D printing enthusiasts, particularly those who need the flexibility to print within a wide processing temperature range. With nGen you will have good flow properties through the printer nozzle—even at lower temperatures than some other polymers require. These properties make nGen more workable at a wider breadth of temperatures, producing reliable results and resulting in less waste. You can find more information on our dedicated landing page.

Ever since launching in november 2015 (and later in a big way during the CES Show early 2016 together with Lulzbot), nGen has been a bestseller and a material that has been adopted by users worldwide very rapidly.

nGen is made with Eastman Amphora™ 3D polymer AM3300. With Amphora, items can be created that are more functional, more durable, more efficient, and attractive.

nGen is available through our webshop and our network of distributors and resellers worldwide, as well as Lulzbot themselves.

Keep an eye out towards our sales section, which has nGen filaments on sale on a weekly basis.

Low Poly R2D2

This is the droid you’re looking for!

We see a rapid rise of dual extrusion prints: two colors or even two materials in one single print. BCN 3D, makers of the Sigma (one of the highest rated printers on 3D Hubs) and our distributor in Spain and Portugal, was kind enough to send us a new set of 0.6mm full metal hot-ends and take them for a test drive. We chose Agustin Flowalistik‘s low poly design for R2D2 and printed with nGen White and Light Blue.

Design: https://www.youmagine.com/designs/low-poly-r2d2-and-c3po-dual-extrusion-version

After installing & calibrating these we saw great results with nGen on the Sigma. We printed at a 0.2mm layer height at 40mm/s. The bed temperature used was 85C and we kept the hot-end temp at a steady 230C.

Agustin shares a lot of high quality models and is also very good at designing dual extrusion parts. We’re fans of his work! Check out his page and Twitter feed for his latest designs and low poly work!

nGen has proven itself to be a very versatile material that can be used for a lot of applications, visual prototyping being one of them! It has become our default, all-round filament for printing all sorts of prototypes and prints just have to look damn good!

nGen is an all-round filament which has many advantages over PLA. The temperature resistance is over 80 degrees C and it works on most printers with a heated build plate.  nGen is a low-odor, styrene-free material uniquely suited for 3D printing enthusiasts, particularly those who need the flexibility to print within a wide processing temperature range. With nGen you will have good flow properties through the printer nozzle—even at lower temperatures than some other polymers require. These properties make nGen more workable at a wider breadth of temperatures, producing reliable results and resulting in less waste. You can find more information on our dedicated landing page.

Ever since launching in november 2015 (and later in a big way during the CES Show early 2016), nGen has been a bestseller and a material that has been adopted by users worldwide very rapidly.

nGen is made with Eastman Amphora™ 3D polymer AM3300. With Amphora, items can be created that are more functional, more durable, more efficient, and attractive.

nGen is available through our webshop and our network of distributors and resellers worldwide.

Tape dispenser

If you ship as much as we do you run through a lot of tape. Strangely enough, we seem to misplace our tape dispenser a lot as well. And why not print one or two as a spare? Here’s nGen coming to the rescue!

Design: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:648772

Printed with nGen Yellow on the MassPortal Pharaoh ED, we made this on a 0.12mm layer height.

nGen has proven itself to be a very versatile material that can be used for a lot of applications, a tape dispenser being one of them! It has become our default, all-round filament for printing all sorts of prototypes and prints just have to look damn good!

nGen is an all-round filament which has many advantages over PLA. The temperature resistance is over 80 degrees C and it works on most printers with a heated build plate.  nGen is a low-odor, styrene-free material uniquely suited for 3D printing enthusiasts, particularly those who need the flexibility to print within a wide processing temperature range. With nGen you will have good flow properties through the printer nozzle—even at lower temperatures than some other polymers require. These properties make nGen more workable at a wider breadth of temperatures, producing reliable results and resulting in less waste. You can find more information on our dedicated landing page.

Ever since launching in november 2015 (and later in a big way during the CES Show early 2016), nGen has been a bestseller and a material that has been adopted by users worldwide very rapidly.

nGen is made with Eastman Amphora™ 3D polymer AM3300. With Amphora, items can be created that are more functional, more durable, more efficient, and attractive.

nGen is available through our webshop

Shipping

At colorFabb we always aim for the highest standards and getting the best for our customers. This starts with our products, continues with our customer service and extends to our choice of partners as well. All aspects of getting the filaments into your hands, from the pellet to the packaging, from the testing to the shipping are important. About shipping, we want to announce some changes we are implementing as from today. We will be working with DHL as our dedicated partner for shipping as from now.

We receive a lot of questions about shipping. First and formost we strive for the best quality to make sure the filaments you ordered will be delivered to you as soon and as good as possible. In the past two years we have worked with two partners, both DHL and UPS, to ship all our filaments worldwide. In the past six months we have found that working with one partner would increase efficiency and drastically lower costs. These cost savings can immediately be passed on to you.

We have chosen DHL as our new worldwide partner due to our mutual experience over the past years. We have found in DHL a partner with a commitment to bring the best possible service to our customers. DHL operates worldwide and has a variety of services, which are specified below. We have been able to get the best possible pricing for you, our customers. Not all options are available for all countries.

The services available are:

DHL ECONOMY SELECT (EXPRESS)

The premium Express option for our European customers

DHL EXPRESS (EXPRESS)

The premium Express option for all customers outside the EU. Also available for certain European countries as an overnight option.

DHL ECONOMY PARCEL (EUROPLUS)

The parcel option for certain Eastern European countries.

DHL EUROPACK (EUROPLUS)

One specific option for our German customers.

With the express options (the first two in the short list above) you also have the option to change the delivery address, etc. once you have received the notification that your order has shipped. This gives you complete control of your shipment:

As said, lower pricing for us also means lower pricing for you. For example:

Country Was Is
Austria € 12,95 € 9,95
Denmark € 12,95 € 9,95
Switzerland € 22,95 € 12,95
United Kingdom € 9,95 € 3,95
USA € 29,95 € 26,95

Pricing based on one spool

Please note: An XL spool is seen in our system as 2 regular spools (due to the double weight).  We have managed to make more free shipping options available. Look in the table below if your country qualifies:

Country Free shipping from
Austria 5 spools
Belgium 1 spool (not applicable to samples)
Bulgaria 5 spools
Switzerland 5 spools
Czech Republic 4 spools
Germany 1 spool (not applicable to samples)
Denmark 4 spools
Estonia 4 spools
Spain 4 spools
Finland 4 spools
France 4 spools
United Kingdom 4 spools
Greece 6 spools
Croatia 6 spools
Hungary 4 spools
Ireland 4 spools
Italy 4 spools
Lithuania 6 spools
Luxembourg 1 spool (not applicable to samples)
Netherlands 1 spool (or a minimum of 21 samples)
Poland 5 spools
Portugal 4 spools
Romania 5 spools
Sweden 4 spools
Slovenia 5 spools

In the near future we will add more options:

  • Postal service worldwide
  • Pick-up at nearby access points
  • Same day delivery (for The Netherlands to begin with)

We are excited to work with DHL. Having a global partner enables us to explore more options which will benefit you. This essentially means that no shipments will be made with UPS anymore. If you have any questions, please contact us at sales@colorfabb.com

To start this co-operation with DHL, we have re-introduced our Sales page. Up to 8 filaments at 15% discount!

Wireframe Skull Pencil Holder

Last week we were at the CES in Las Vegas as Lulzbot’s material partner. It was a fantastic show where we met a lot of our users. It was great meeting all of you! And once again we saw several Lulzbot Mini’s and TAZ 6 printers flawlessly printing with nGen during the entire run of the show. Aside from printing during the show, the giant (21kg) Rocktopus was printed with nGen as well and quite a showstopper!

For today’s print of the day we go for small instead of huge on the Lulzbot Mini. For this model we chose the Wireframe Skull Pencil Holder, designed by Phil Nelson.

Design: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1388237

We printed these parts on the Lulzbot Mini in our printlab with nGen Purple and nGen Transparent. The height of these prints is only 4cm!! The layer height for these detailed prints was 0.08mm. The combination of the Lulzbot printers and our nGen filaments allow for extreme details.

nGen was launched with Lulzbot a year ago during the CES show. It has been a proven hit ever since and one of our best selling filaments.

nGen is an all-round filament which has many advantages over PLA. The temperature resistance is over 80 degrees C and it works on most printers with a heated build plate.  nGen is a low-odor, styrene-free material uniquely suited for 3D printing enthusiasts, particularly those who need the flexibility to print within a wide processing temperature range. With nGen you will have good flow properties through the printer nozzle—even at lower temperatures than some other polymers require. These properties make nGen more workable at a wider breadth of temperatures, producing reliable results and resulting in less waste. You can find more information on our dedicated landing page.

nGen is made with Eastman Amphora™ 3D polymer AM3300. With Amphora, items can be created that are more functional, more durable, more efficient, and attractive.

nGen is available through our webshop, Lulzbot’s webshop and our distributor network worldwide.

 

Material tiles

We designed and printed these 100mm x 100mm tiles to showcase some of our special materials. The wavy tiles have been printed on a Ultimaker 2 and the polygon inspired tiles have been printed on the Mass Portal.


We created two different designs for each group of materials. The metal infused filaments are used for the wavy tile, which should be easy to polish. It was printed in copperFill and bronzeFill.

We used the polygon inspired tile for the fiber filled materials such as: woodFill, bambooFill and corkFill. With all three materials right next to each other it’s easy to see the color and surface finish difference.


At colorFabb we offer various special type of filaments, for the complete portfolio have a look at out Specials overview page.