Memento

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:

 

Printed on the Prusa i3 with PLA/PHA Intense Green

 

Credit where credit’s due

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.

varioShore contest

Update: The winners! (April 17th 2020)

 

First place

Second place

https://twitter.com/r0ybent/status/1239635063085678593

Third place

https://www.instagram.com/p/B9cH3IwnRuv/

The winners have been contacted already.

 

Original post

Last year we launched our new flagship filament: varioShore TPU. This week we release the black varioShore TPU in addition to the natural color already available. But we’re not done yet. Hot on the heels of our very succesfull #MadeWithcolorFabb contest we have yet another contest.

 

This time it is a more specific contest and, you may have guessed it, we are looking for prints made with varioShore TPU. The unique properties enable a large group of makers to create amazing functional prints. We have seen cosplay, insoles and drones being printed and are looking for the next big thing! Inspire us and your fellow makers with your creativity.

 

What is varioShore TPU?

varioShore TPU allows users to vary the density of the material by adjusting temperature and material throughput (speed & layerheight). At temperatures between 200 and 250C the materials will start to expand to roughly 1.4-1.6 times its original volume. This means the material can be printed at low flow rates (60-70%), to compensate the active foaming, which in return gives very soft printed parts. Between 190-200C the material can be printed without foaming, resulting in different haptics and harder prints compared to foamed samples.

The base TPU is a 92A material, which will work with most standard extruder set-ups for both Bowden and direct drive systems. Learn more about varioShore in our lengthy blog post.

To enable you to print with our innovative filament we also lowered the price of varioShore TPU with 10% during the contest. Click here to head to our webshop!

 

varioShore contest rules

  • Contest lasts until March 31st 2020 midnight CET
  • All entries to be posted on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram
  • Tag colorFabb and use the hashtag #varioShore
  • Credit the designer if the design is not yours
  • Extra points for originality and functionality
  • Entries to be judged by colorFabb employees
  • Entries can be used by colorFabb for marketing purposes
  • Photos, gifs and videos are allowed

 

What can you win?

It’s worth it. Let’s see what you can win:

1st prize: 16 spools of colorFabb filament 

2nd prize: 8 spools of colorFabb filament

3rd prize: 4 spools of colorFabb filament

(regular 600, 650, 700 and/or 750 grams spools from stock)

Winners will be announced in the first week of April.

 

 

Introducing: Color Favorites

Today we introduce Color Favorites (or Colour Favourites, for you using the English spelling), our brand new special filament category.

Magneto design by Pascal Ackermann (link)

 

What is ‘Color Favorites’

Color Favorites is the new category within Color on Demand. Every since we launched Color on Demand, back in June 2018, we have received a lot of requests for certain colors, but with a special effect, or with an additive. We are now adding some of them in a separate category, starting with two much sought after colors.

 

Smokey Black

A semi transparent black filament with interesting light transmittance quality. Great for printing luminaires and other artifacts which need to hide the light source but also emit light.

Lamp design by Flowalistik (link)

Click here to go directly to our webshop.

 

Milky White

Another semi transparent white filament with excellent surface quality finish after printing. Due to the semi transparent surface details look crisp and smooth.

Click here to go directly to our webshop.

 

Availability

Both Milky White and Smokey Black are made to order, being part of our Color on Demand program. We do not keep stock of these products. Please keep a lead time of at least a week in mind for these filaments.

More colors and effects will be added in the months to come. Stay tuned.

 

Your own color

At colorFabb we think that customization does not end with the unique design and print you make. Color should be choice as well. With Color on Demand we offer a wide range of custom made colors. We have already matched most of the RAL Classic colors, but can of course make a tailor-made color especially for you! Click here for our Color Request form and have your own color made by us!

 

varioShore TPU Black

Now available: varioShore TPU Black.

Design by Flying Ginger (link), remixed by colorFabb with inscription

With the launch of varioShore TPU in October last year we added a new flagship product to our ever expanding portfolio of high quality 3D printing filaments. Initially launched in a single neutral color, varioShore TPU can now also be ordered as a black filament. We recently ran a poll on both Twitter and Facebook and our users clearly chose black as our next varioShore TPU color:

 

What is varioShore TPU?

varioShore TPU allows users to vary the density of the material by adjusting temperature and material throughput (speed & layerheight). At temperatures between 200 and 250C the materials will start to expand to roughly 1.4-1.6 times its original volume. This means the material can be printed at low flow rates (60-70%), to compensate the active foaming, which in return gives very soft printed parts. Between 190-200C the material can be printed without foaming, resulting in different haptics and harder prints compared to foamed samples.

This part is an excellent demonstrator for varioShore TPU material. The ergonomic grip of the bike handle really is perfect to demonstrate the haptic experience of a foamed TPU material. It’s very different from a regular TPU material, much softer surface and better grip.

3 main advantages

varioShore TPU is flexible in more ways than one:

  1. This material is not limited to one shore hardness, but with the right print settings you can have multiple shore hardnesses – even in one print!
  2. We used our LW-PLA technology in this filament as well to reduce weight significantly. Although the weight reduction of varioShore TPU is not as significant as LW-PLA, the weight of the overall print is noticable and can make the difference for prints where weight matters.
  3. Prints that need a soft touch, like handle bars for bikes or shoe soles are no problem anymore with varioShore TPU.

 

“It really is a fantastic development… Incredible innovation.” – Steve Cox

“Another astonishing FDM material development from the colorFabb team.” – Richard Horne

“Another amazing product by colorFabb!” – Bart Tangermann

 

Click here to head directly to our webshop. Shipping starts in week 8 of February.

7 years later…

This month it is exactly 7 years ago that colorFabb saw the light of day. It looked a little bit like this…

Basically a garage with an office, first production of our spools and our first show: RapidPro

 

Well, 7 years later…

 

In February 2013 we launched our first products at the RapidPro trade show here in the Netherlands. We had about 20 colors PLA/PHA and only 2.85mm filament. It was still in the early days when there were only a few of us and we constantly had to explain: “No, we are not selling the printers, we make the filament.” (Disclaimer: these days we do sell printers!)

One of our first tweets when we had 10 followers or so.

A lot happened in the past seven years. We basically started in a garage booth with an idea and a lot of ambition. The idea is still the same: to bring the best possible filament to the market and make sure we meet the need of our customers. The ambition has only grown over the past years. The only thing we left behind was the small garage and the little office above. To give you an idea, the image below was our print lab / logistics:

Scale: almost 1:1

In the meantime we moved twice, went from 20 products to 3200+ SKUs (with more to come in 2020), expanded our staff from 3 to almost 30, we became an independent company, ship to 70+ countries worldwide, have the best customers in the world (yes, that’s you) and have been running, working, printing and producing almost 24/7 to make sure you get the best possible filament to print with.

colorFabb has become a company and brand we are very proud of. The biggest shift is the focus on custom colors with our Color on Demand service. We nearly have all the standard RAL classics available (180+ and counting) and have even matched several hundred more colors. But we don’t stop there: Brand new products like LW-PLA and varioShore TPU have been launched, as well as strategic co-operations with brands like Ninjatek, Lubrizol, igus and Iroprint to ensure our customers have the right filament to suit their needs.

You can find more specific recaps per year by clicking on the links below (2013, when we started is sadly lacking, but believe us when we say it was awesome):

 

What’s next?

“What’s past is prologue.” 

~ William Shakespeare

 

And that prologue has been amazing and we will work hard to make the next seven years (and beyond) even better. We thank all our users, customers, partners and staff for making colorFabb the brand and the company it is today!

Get ready for a year full of great new material developments!

Mimphonium

After last month’s #MadeWithcolorFabb contest we will dive a little bit deeper into the story behind the month’s winner: the Mimphonium. This is a very cool, UK based project by Domenico Marseglia. We were intrigued by the fact that quite a bit was printed with PLA/PHA Standard White Let’s go into the details.

What inspired him to start with this project? We asked him and Domenico was gracious enough to share his thoughts.

 

How it all began…

“The original inspiration was a project someone else came up with in the early days of the Raspberry Pi. It was made from a child’s toy with some solenoids that hit the notes from behind. I thought it was great, but I could do better. In particular, the solenoids made a horrible clattering noise. I thought about the moving coil meters we had at school, and I came up with my version that you can see in the photo below. The two big let-downs were my woodworking skills and the cost of a glockenspiel to get the metal bars from. The two big breakthroughs were another project I saw where the notes were cut from copper pipe, and my employer buying a 3d printer for prototyping work. Then, over a series of trial and error refinements, I came up with the design you see today.”

The first iteration

Visit the Mimphonium website here.

 

The printed parts

Domenico continues: “I have a website under construction. I think the best bit for you would be this page (click here).  This shows that it is not just the final product that is 3d-printed, but some of the tools I used to make it are also 3d-printed. I think the coil winder is another sub-project in its own right. I think this reflects a more serious side of the current usage of 3d-printing. The parts made form PLA have their limitations in terms of end-user products, but they are often more than good enough for assembly fixtures.”

Mounting the coil on the coil winder

The printer

He has an Ultimaker 2, upgraded to 2+. After the upgrade it works especially well with our signature (and long time favorite) PLA/PHA Standard White. “I just use the default values for everything except the hammer heads. In that case I use 100% infill to make them heavier.”

The project is still on-going and we will follow for sure.

Follow the Mimphonium project on Twitter!

 

We saw a lot of great entries during the #MadeWithcolorFabb contest. The Mimphonium eventually won, but it had worthy oponents. You can find all the winners here.

 

About PLA/PHA

PLA/PHA was the very first material released by colorFabb seven years ago. Starting with almost twenty colors, the portfolio eventually expanded to thirty colors (some of them about to be discontinued). The unique blend of PLA and PHA bioplastics made it a one-of-a-kind filament for users looking for a 3D printing filament that processed well on various printers and was of high quality. It was the basis of colorFabb’s success.

Our high quality PLA/PHA filaments ship daily and from stock.

PLA/PHA has always been a favorite amongst colorFabb users. With our focus on expanding our portfolio some colors will be discontinued. You can find these on our clearance sale page (click here).

Hinge

3D printing is a great tool at the work place and around the house for making replacement parts on the go. It even enables people with the right design skills to customize the needed part to his or her liking. To make it even better, if required. We recently printed a hinge, a replacement part for a double hinged connector.

Custom design by colorFabb

We printed this hinge with PETG Economy on the Ultimaker 3, using the default CPE Engineering Fine settings in Cura.

 

The convenience of replacing

This hinge is one of several repaclement parts we have made in recent years with various materials:

Printing on the Ultimaker printers is easier than ever. Various colorFabb materials can be selected in the Market Place in Cura for effortless printing. Filaments like our Color on Demand PLA, XT-CF20, nGen (under AM3300) and woodFill have their settings pre-programmed for the Ultimakers 3, S3 and S5 printers.

Click here to go to our blog about the Ultimaker Market Place.

 

For the hinge print we used the CPE Engineering Fine setting, which resulted in a great and functional print.

 

Original hinge design

 

The hinge in real life

 

About PETG Economy

PETG Economy is part of our Economy line of commodity filaments: PLA and PETG, available on large spools (starting at 2.2kg) in a limited amount of popular colors.

colorFabb Economy: Large volume, High quality, Low price

 

colorFabb’s Economy line is developed for users who need a lot of filament. By adding a specifically sourced PETG to our portfolio we are adding more functionality and diversity to our range of filaments.

As with PLA Economy we have extensively tested this filament in our print lab. Both in production and print lab we have adhered to the highest colorFabb quality – this is something we simply do not compromise on.

The idea behind these filaments is to keep it at a very competitive price. Retail price of PETG Economy is € 40 excluding VAT and shipping. This works out to be a little over € 18 per kg for high quality filament.

 

Tips, tricks and settings

At colorFabb we have a well-equipped 3D printing studio with many popular 3d printers. Our grade of Economy PETG has been tested using various 3D printers, which has resulted in the following recommended settings:

Advised 3d printing temperature: 235C-255C

Advised 3d print speed: 30 – 50 mm/s

Advised Heated bed: 70-80C

Cooling fan: 75/100% 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.

For Ultimaker 3, S3 and S5 settings we recommend the CPE Engineering Fine setting in Cura, like we used for this hinge.

 

Availability

PETG Economy is available from stock and ships daily & worldwide. We offer 5 colors (Black, White, Red, Dark Gray and Light Gray) as 2.2kg, 4.5kg and 8kg spools. Click here for the availability.