Another year has passed and we’re gearing up for a (let’s be honest) well-deserved holiday break. Before we head home, let’s look back at the past year with a short recap.
We started the year with our fifth anniversary, which seems so long ago already. Take a trip down Memory Lane and read our blogs about our birthday here.
New material releases
No new year without new materials. And we released quite a bit. From aesthetical to functional, we’ve added quite a bit to our portfolio.
Our first semi-matte filament (black) was released in March and an instant hit. Check out the original blog.… followed in December with Semi-Matte White (after popular demand). More here.
If one development defined the year here at colorFabb, it was Color on Demand. Custom color design has already allowed hundreds of customers to print with the color they actually need.
Following PA-CF Low Warp, we continued our developments with PA Neat, a highly functional nylon for engineering parts. Read our original release notes here.
Ultimaker Market Place
Several of our filaments were selected to be added to the Ultimaker Market Place. You can now easily select Color on Demand PLA, woodFill, XT-CF20 and nGen from the list of pre-set profiles. More here and here.
And more…
Of course there was much more news in the past year.
We started working with Ninjatek who is our new distributor in North America and we are theirs in Europe
With Christmas around the corner it’s only apt we follow suit with the rest of the world and print a Christmas tree. We chose the design by idig3D for our Christmas print. For the material we chose nGen Green Transparent.
Design: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1913982
Earlier this year we released no less than six transparent nGen colors:
nGen is of course our go-to filament and available in many colors. It is a true all-round material suitable for most day to day 3D printing activities. At the core of its reliability is the special chemical make-up of the Eastman Amphora™ AM3300 3D polymer, which results in a good melt stability. From pellet to filament to 3D print, nGen retains its material properties very well, meaning more stable results with less waste of time and material.
The Christmas tree was printed on the Ultimaker S5 with a 0.8 AA core nozzle and with a 0.4mm layer height. Nozzle temperature was 240C and the bed temp at 80C. We used the spiral vase mode.
nGen works extremely well on the Ultimaker printers. Find out more on the standard settings we recommend here. But one could make life even easier. Only yesterday we posted that nGen (under it’s raw material name AM3300) has been added to the Ultimaker Market Place, making printing with the right settings even easier!
Learn more about printing nGen on the Ultimaker 3 and S5 here.
Not long after we announced that XT-CF20 was added to the Ultimaker Market Place in Cura 3.6 in addition to Color on Demand PLA and woodFill we are happy to tell you that nGen now also is a part of the Market Place. Sort of…
The Ultimaker Market Place makes it easier for users of the Ultimaker 3 and S5 to use pre-set profiles for third party filaments which have been tested by both the filaments manufacturers and Ultimaker themselves to achieve the best possible user experience.
Important: To choose the optimal nGen settings in the Market Place head to the Eastman entries and choose AM3300, the base material for nGen.
Three years ago, by the end of 2015, we released a new all-round material called nGen, next Generation, based on Eastman Amphora AM3300. We believed then (and still do) that this filament was a next step for 3D printing materials. It was our goal to bring a filament to the market that has functional properties, looks astonishingly good and prints like a dream.
Printed with nGen Red on the Ultimaker S5 with 0.15mm layer height.
nGen has been a hit ever since. This is not without reason. It is
true all-round material suitable for most day to day 3D printing
activities. Its chemical make up ensures a very consistent quality. An
advantage over PLA is its elevated temperature resistance: 80 degrees
instead of 45 degrees, so even in hotter climates (or a hot summer day)
the material holds up extremely well. Below is a comparison chart of
several of the Amphora based filaments compared to commodity materials
like ABS and PLA.
nGen
is an amazing material which enables users to create parts with
gorgeous detail and the benefit of long term stability. Don’t just take
our word for it. Below are some of the reviews that our users posted in our webshop:
“Its just the perfect Filament for me!”
“Printing as easy as PLA, but with better material properties.”
“nGen is very predictable and strong.”
“nGen
is always my “go to” filament. It just prints beautifully. It’s strong,
handles heat well, reliable, and just looks great.”
“… prints like butter 🙂 and the finish is absolutely perfect.”
“The material has good print bed adhesion, low warping and low shrinkage. Easy to print.”
Beyond
our initial goals to create a filament that prints well and holds up to
every day 3D printing tasks we have since found out more properties of
the filament, giving it a great advantage. For instance, we recently
came across a business case where a printed object made with nGen has
been under water in the ocean for 16 months! And it did not loose its
functional properties!
Although
nGen is a true star in our portfolio, it doesn’t feel too good to
perform a supporting role from time to time. Literally. In combination
with colorFabb_XT nGen filament can also be used as a breakaway support.
Complex designs like the drill case below do need support material and
we found that nGen did a great job in that department.
It is not only materials nGen plays well with. It also performs extremely well on a wide range of printers. And with the addition of AM3300 to the Ultimaker Market Place in Cura 3.6, printing with nGen is easier than ever.
Buro Ruig is a Dutch design buro and used colorFabb’s Color on Demand service to create a custom print job for a customer: 2x 500 prints were made for a pharmaceutical company.
Late March of this year we launched PLA Semi-Matte Black. Where most of our filaments have a classy shine to it, we recognized the demand for a less glossy filament and we released PLA Semi-Matte Black. It has been a bestseller since. In recent months we have worked hard to make a new variety, which is available as from today: PLA Semi-Matte White
PLA Semi-Matte White is a great material for architects and modelers looking for a different aesthetic. Our semi-matte PLA filament eliminates the glossy appearance seen on most PLA 3D prints. The highlights on the surface will be less visible, resulting in an overall cleaner and much higher quality look.
It is a bit hard to capture on camera, but the difference is very well noticable with the bare eye.
As with its black sibling PLA Semi-Matte White contains no fibers and prints at regular PLA temperatures and settings. The material is as reliable and easy to work with as any other PLA type material. Below are some of the examples we printed in our print lab:
PLA Semi-Matte White is a great addition to our ever expanding portfolio of filaments and available now on spools containing 750 grams of filament. Samples and XL spools will follow in due time. Shipping starts today. Go directly to our webshop by clicking button below.
It’s less than three weeks before Christmas and this is the first of several Christmas themed prints we will post. Today we feature nGen_LUX, our high quality and luxurious looking filament. We printed presents, but let’s be honest: the filament is a present of itself.
These presents were printed with all nGen_LUX colors we have: Regal Violet, Nature Green, Diamond Black, Star Yellow and Champagne Gold. We used both the Prusa i3 MK2s and Ultimaker 2+. Layer height is 0.2mm and infill 10%. We used at 0.4mm nozzle on both printers and set the print speed at 40mm/s.
nGen_LUX is ideally suited to make presents and give to a loved one. Especially during the holidays when your prints need a little extra something to stand out under the Christmas tree (we printed that one as well, but that’s for a later blog).
nGen_LUX is a unique development based on our best selling co-polyester nGen, made with Eastman Amphora AM3300 3d Polymer. The excellent clarity of the base AM3300 makes this material uniquely suited for the extremely rare pigment used in nGen_LUX. It is our new standard in how a 3D printed object can look. It is the filament for the users who wants to bring something extraordinary their work. It is the filament that needs to give that added value.
At colorFabb we are always looking to meet our customer’s needs and offer filaments with added value. The aesthetics of nGen_LUX allow for a new step in production and prototyping, especially for cosmetics, packaging, interior parts, electronics housings and many more applications.
The “Lux” not only stands for luxurious – which is definitely the look of the prints – but also refers to the unit of illumination used worldwide. And light is what makes this filament truly special. The material uses diffuse reflection to scatter light in all directions. For the eye it’s nearly impossible to spot layering, even at 0.2mm layerheight. nGen_LUX allows users to print visually appealing models without the need of post processing. nGen_LUX features all the characteristics of our regular nGen: good chemical stability, elevated temperature resistance (85C) and thus allows users to print creations that are functional, durable, efficient and attractive.
nGen_LUX is the first special filament based on nGen and the second one in our range of co-polyesters after XT-CF20, our carbon fibre enforced filament based on colorFabb_XT.
Quick facts
Material: colorFabb nGen_LUX
Diameter Tolerance: ± 0.05 mm
Density: 1.2 g•cm-3
Glass Transition Temperature: 85C
Adviced 3d printing temperature: 220-240C
Adviced 3d print speed: 40-70 mm/s
Advised Heated bed: 75-85C
