Every material has its right application. Our woodFill is mostly decorative and we came across a great world map that begged to be scaled at 300% and put up as a fitting decoration for a baby’s nursery.
Lasting for over 75 hours, it took quite a while to print dozens and dozens of parts. (Add to that the 3+ hours to organize and put up this puzzle). We printed on the Stacker S4 XL, its largest model, with a 0.8mm nozzle and at 0.35mm layer height (with 15% infill). The print temperature was 220C and we had the bed heated at 65C
Launched in 2013, woodFill was our first special 3D printing filament. It has been a bestseller for over 6 years and we fully understand why: the ease of printing, the authentic wood structure and the smell of wood while printing make it a fan favorite. Read more about woodFill and its origins in last year’s blog.
As with most large prints we printed this world map on the Stacker S4 XL. 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 you can see it also works very well for decorative printing, like this world map where needed a certain size!
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 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:
Heroes are big right now. Super heroes mostly. Marvel, DC, Star Wars… Our screens are filled with them and looking at the social media feeds we see them coming by regularly. So we printed our own heroes. Not for the first time and not for the last time. And we like to print BIG! So we printed all these busts on various Stacker 3D Printers with our signature PLA Economy filaments.
PLA Economy is a great all-round high quality 3D printing filament, available from stock. Only available on large spools it is perfectly suited for the maker making large, long or a lot of prints and in need of reliability and quality.
Meet the heroes
We’ll start with the Merc with the Mouth, Deadpool himself:
And yes, we have printed Mr Pool before… This 32cm print, designed by David Östman, is nothing to scoff at, but the smallest of the prints we made for this occasion.
Next up: Everybody’s favorite neighborhood Spider-Man was printed with PLA Economy Red as well on the Stacker S4 and it measures almost 46cm:
Spidey was also designed by David Östman, known under his online moniker Eastman (not to be confused with the chemical company). You should definitely check out his collection of amazing designs on MyMiniFactory and give it a try yourselves. The large Jon Snow bust we printed a few months ago was also designed by him.
Finally we have the most recent hero: beloved bounty hunter and Baby Yoda’s surrogate dad The Mandalorian:
It took 120 hours and a whopping 3.5kg of PLA Economy Black filament to print this 49cm high statue. This print was designed by Rober Rollin, who – like David Östman – has a terrific collection of super hero, game and Star Wars related designs on MyMiniFactory.
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!
Last year we launched our new flagship product: varioShore TPU. It is a 3D printing flament which is flexible in more ways than one. Even after release we keep testing filaments in our printlab to see what the best practice is. One thing we keep testing amongst others is varioShore TPU’s infill and have opted for the gyroid infill.
We used Cura’s gyroid infill setting on the Ultimaker S5. The gyroid structure, aside from having a nice wave-y pattern, ensures an even distribution of strength throughout the model. It belongs to a class of mathematically minimal surfaces, giving the same strength as a hexagon infill, but with less material.
“A gyroid is a naturally occurring structure which be found in butterfly wings and even within membranes inside cells. In 2017, MIT researchers discovered that when graphene was shaped into a gyroid structure, it had exceptional strength properties at low densities. They then discovered however, that the crucial aspect of this was actually the gyroid structure itself, and that other materials such as plastic could benefit from this.” ~ Source: Matt’s Hub
The print settings used on the Ultimaker S5 were:
0.2mm layer height
25 mm/s print speed
70% material flow
240C nozzle temperature
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.
For this development colorFabb partnered with Lubrizol Engineered Polymers, a leading global producer of Thermoplastic Polyurethane (TPU), used in everyday consumer and industrial applications, with a strong global manufacturing and supply network.
Lubrizol Engineered Polymers’ expertise in TPU chemistry was key to provide a customized TPU with a wide range of processing temperatures and adequate melt viscosity, meeting the requirements during extrusion and printing. A wider range of thermal stability and melt rheology allows an extended upper range of printing temperatures to maximize the range of densities achieved through colorFabb’s unique filament foaming technology.
The result is a filament with a base TPU of 92A, which will work with most standard extruder set-ups for both Bowden and direct drive systems.
We’re not done yet with varioShore TPU. You can expect more news soon.
We have posted about model planes and drones before and know the model plane and drone communities are avid 3D printers. We saw a great model of a B25j Mitchell plane on Facebook recently and asked the maker, Coen Loos, for more information. He was kind enough to share some more details.
Printed by Coen Loos / design by 3DLabprint / all images by Coen Loos
Coen works at a school and got in touch with 3D printing there. He has been an avid 3D printer ever since 2015 and specifically focusses on model planes. He mainly uses designs by 3DLabPrint, specialist in 3D printable plane models. Coen was the first one using 3D printing with his local model plane club and people were skeptic at first… until he flew his printed plane!
The classic North American Mitchell B25j was mostly printed on the Prusa i3 Mk3 and made with our PLA Economy filament. Coen says: “colorFabb is my prefered brand due to its good service, reliable filament and perfect printing results.” Always glad to read that! Some smaller items were printed with nGen and Ninjaflex filament on the Ultimaker 2+.
The print settings for the main parts on the Prusa were:
Layer height 0.25mm
Nozzle temp 230c
Bed 55C
No cooling fan
Single perimeter of 0.42mm
Coen has chosen PLA due to its reliability but sees the need for more specific filaments. For that reason we sent him spools of our LW-PLA and varioShore TPU for further testing and we look forward to the results of that!
You can find this and many other plane models available for purchase at the 3DLabPrint website.
The results are amazing and Coen is planning on the maiden flight soon and we’re sure we’ll update you on that! Thanks for sharing, Coen!
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.
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.
Contest is now closed. All winners are announced below.
In January 2020 we’re holding a #MadeWithcolorFabb contest. All our customers are invited to share their prints on social media. Every five days we select a winner who gets four spools of filament. At the end of the month we select a winning Read more about the contest here. We will select several winners during the month which will be posted below (most recent one on top).
January overall winner
The big winner is the impressive, and still on-going, Mimphonium project. Check out the website for more information. Printed parts are made with PLA/PHA Standard White. Domenico Marseglia is the winner of 10 spools of colorFabb filaments!
January 30th
https://www.instagram.com/p/B76jVxuItX0/
A holder for a monochrystalline quartz, part of a million dollar laser amplifier by YAGjunky made with PLA/PHA (original Instagram post)
When you need to use a garden hose but you don’t have a garden tap.. Ez! Just print an adaptor to a quick connector and problem solved! Printed on a @Creality3dprint CR10S with @ColorFabb PLA Economy Silver. Design by @incoog on @thingiverse # 2300683.
We’re always curious what you make with our filaments. With the holidays fresh behind us we want to know what you printed recently. With #MadeWithColorFabb we start the new year with a month-long contest. Win four, or maybe even ten (10!) spools of filament! Read the rules & start posting.
It’s easy: Share your print on social media (Twitter, Facebookor Instagram), tag us with our official accounts and use the hashtag #MadeWithColorFabb
That’s all you have to do. O, and give credit to the designer if it is not your own.
What?
Any print will do, as long as it is made with colorFabb filament. We will judge based on originality, functionality, quality and prefer new and recent prints over previously posted prints. You know you’re awesome, we know it. Now it’s time to show the rest of the world and all our followers.
Who?
You post, we judge. Judges will be fair and unbribeable and consist of colorFabb employees.
Why?
Because we like to reward great prints. Every five days we will give away four free spools of filament to what we judge is the best entry. Cut-off dates are January 5th, 10th, 15th, 20th, 25th and 30th. On the 31st we will give away 10 free spools to the best print of the entire month – which may or may not be one of those who have previously won.
When?
The entire month of January. Tag us and use #MadeWithColorFabb and you’re in. Only photos and videos uploaded until January 31st 23:59 CET apply.
Where?
We’ll re-post social media and announce winners there, in our blogs and newsletter. By participating you agree that we can use your work for promotional purposes.
Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it is 2019 that flew by! It is time again for our annual end-of-the-year recap. Let’s look back at the things that defined the past year for us. Before we continue to look back, here is a list of previous recaps:
Enough ancient history already. Let’s look back at more recent history and continue with the…
2019 material releases
We added quite a few new materials to our portfolio. We also keep adding more and more Color on Demand colors to our library of colors. Early 2020 we will have most regular RAL colors directly available in our webshop.
LW-PLA
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 lightweight parts, or use the expanding properties to effectively reduce print time by using big layer heights or single extra thick perimeters. (Read more)
With varioShore TPU we have created a filament that is flexible in more ways than one: variable Shore hardness, reduced weight and density and soft touch. All in one print! 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. (Read more)
Our latest filament innovation makes laser markings more stunning than ever! One great application can be to create mementos and souvenirs, or give your 3D print an extra touch with a very special message. Laser Marking PLA contains a laser-sensitive additive optimized to work within a 980-1064 nm wavelength. The material has been tested successfully with a Nd:YAG- and fiber lasers. Laser marking PLA will not work with CO2 lasers. A proper laser is required to use this filament. (Read more)
Our Tough PLA is a custom blend which retains the ease of use of PLA but adds serious toughness to the material. As a result the material is a lot less brittle than regular PLA filaments and has a higher impact strength. (Read more)
2019 saw several new brands being added to our webshop. In our effort to diversify and bring the best possible filaments to our customers we already added Ninjatek filaments in 2018. This year we partnered with igus and Huntsman to add their Iglidur and Iroprint filaments respectively to our webshop. Both these companies believe that functionality is key to a great material and we couldn’t agree more.
You can find igus Iglidur here and Huntsman Iroprint here in our webshop.
Custom filaments
We don’t only produce filaments that can be ordered online. We also actively develop filaments for our customers which have very specific needs. One of these filaments is a radar absorbing material for very specific applications. PLA-3DRAM allows OEMs not only to test form and fit, but also the actual radar absorbing performance of their physical design. Often radar units are mounted in brackets which need to be designed in such a way that the radar units have the least amount of ghosting. This is application is being used in, for instance, the automotive industry. (Read more)
This spring it was exactly five years ago that we launched bronzeFill, our very first metal filled 3D printing filament. The fantastic material was the first of its kind: our unique PLA/PHA compound with real bronze in it. Straight from the printer parts look almost laser sintered with a matte finish and with a bit of sanding and polishing the bronze particles will start to shine & shimmer unlike any 3d printing filament you have seen before. The weight of the material is something special as well, over 3 times heavier than our regular PLA/PHA. (Read more)
Andreas Mielonen’s ancient Greek helmet Original post
Below are some of our favorite videos we posted in 2019. Check out our YouTube channel for all our videos.
LW-PLA announcement
A 1-minute company tour
Highlighting the Stacker quality
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwHamyZTQ2I
varioShore release
Amazing prints
We print a lot in our printlab, but we love to see the prints other people make with our filaments. Below are some of the coolest we highlighted in our blogs (and one we followed via Twitter):
Car parts
John Pham from Brisbane Australia surprised us with the car parts he made with PA-CF Low Warp. Amazing prints!
The team of Eclipson in Spain has designed and printed their Model V plane with LW-PLA filament in mind. Check the blog for the spectacular footage of the maiden flight!
We have been following WillowCreative3 on Twitter a lot recently. These Lilith horns and her Mewtwo costume were made with LW-PLA, since weight matters when printing costumes.
2019 was the year we had to make some hard decisions filament wise. Over the years we have been adding and adding to our product portfolio and only sporadically eliminated filaments from our portfolio (yes, we’re looking at bambooFill and brassFill). In Q4 we took more drastic steps and decided that, to be more efficient, we would discontinue over 25 different colors in several materials. You can read more about that here. Some colors are succesfull, others are not. By focussing on the colors that the market actually demands we can work more efficiently and make sure that we ship faster than ever.
All filaments that are due to be discontinued are on sale right now and can be picked up at bargain prices, as long as stock lasts. Click on the image below to head directly to our webshop:
We took another step in making our logistics operation more efficient: Only earlier this week we announced that we would stop offering samples of our materials effective immediately. Again, efficiency was the main reason to stop the sample program for which there was less and less demand over the past few years.
Gone… unfortunately
In 2020 we will be back with a renewed sample program.
2020 and beyond
We never settle down. We don’t take anything for granted. Nothing is static and we keep moving ahead. We see the future for 3D printing materials in customization and developing functional materials according to our customers’ needs. Some of them may be niche (Laser Marking PLA) and others will find mass adoption over the new year (we’re looking at you varioShore TPU and LW-PLA!)
Early 2020 we will have all the regular RAL references added to our Color on Demand database making order your favorite color in PLA easier than ever.
We have ambitious goals for the next year and will keep you up to date via our newsletters and social media.
Happy holidays!
Team colorFabb wishes you a great holiday season with all the best wishes for 2020. We thank you for choosing colorFabb and following us through various social media channels. Keep an eye out for the latest news in our newsletter. Need some print-speration™ for the holidays, check out the Death Star ornaments or Christmas Tree:
Design by plainolddave. Printed with nGen and glowFill
Design by idig3d. Printed with nGen Clear Transparent
