Spring Break Sale 2018

We’re having our annual spring break sale this week for a limited time. Now it’s time for you to try our latest filament or get back to some of our classics like PLA/PHA, bronzeFill or woodFill!

 

 

Here is the current sale:

10% off on all value packs! – A great deal has just been made greater! We even have a value pack containing all our latest filament… Click here.

 

Some, not all, of our value packs on sale right now.

 

20% off on all spools! – One spool or a dozen: 20% off right away! Go straight to our webshop!

 

10% off on all desktop 3D printers – Both Robo3D and Lulzbot printers, all of them shipping from stock and with free spools of filament!

This sale does not work in combination with other discounts and does not apply to samples. Sale lasts for the entire long weekend until Sunday (May 13th 2018), midnight CET. We ship worldwide and from stock!

Use coupon code SPRINGBREAK in our webshop or simply click here.

Can’t choose? Make life easier by flipping through our updated catalogue. Our filaments, nicely sorted and with all the information, tips and tricks you need:

 

PA-CF Low Warp Design Challenge

3D printing made functional… by you

We like our challenges and for once we ask you to challenge us. With PA-CF Low Warp we think we have developed one of the most durable and functional filaments in the market. And we want to demonstrate that it. We ask you, the creative community, to send us your designs that we will then print with PA-CF Low Warp.

 

Why PA-CF Low Warp?

We launched PA_CF Low Warp late last year. It is a one of a kind polyamide formulation with the ability to print nearly warp free on non heated buildplatforms. Low infill prints come out perfectly flat on cold bed for higher infill prints 40/50C temperature is enough to obtain flat prints. The formulation has been modified to reduce the uptake of moisture by half compared to PA6 and it also takes about 4 times longer to reach the saturation point. This makes PA-CF Low Warp less sensitive to moisture than most other nylon filaments available in the market.

This tailormade formulation of polyamide features the mechanical properties of a PA6. Tensile strength was measured at 77,99 MPa and impact strength (notched) was measured at 5,44KJ/m2, test specimens both printed on Ultimaker 2+, 260C 0.1mm layerheight with 100% infill.

PA-CF Low Warp allows continues use at 120°C while retaining sufficient properties for the intended application. For those looking to print with nylon, moisture is a serious topic. PA-CF low warp has been modified to lower the uptake of moisture and slow down the time it takes to fully saturate by 4 times. In practice this means the filament is quite forgiving and user should be able to print with the material without noticing extreme influences of moisture uptake.

Users can now print high strength material without the need of heated chambers. The materials shows very good results for 3D printed parts compared to injection molded data, with only minimal loss in performance. This is a result of the excellent printability of the material, enabling users to acquire optimal performance on desktop FFF 3d printers.

 

What are we looking for?

There are filaments for vases and trinkets and there are filaments that need to be functional. This is the latter one. With this design contest we aim for original designs that, when printed, can be used in real life. We’re not going to make it easy for you. Below is a summary what we are looking for:

  • The design needs to be functional
  • The design needs to be for everyday use (in a domestic, business or industrial environment)
  • The design needs to be original (no copy-pasting existing parts without any adjustments – you can however make an existing part “better”)
  • The design needs to be IP-free
  • The design needs to be printable within a day 24-48 hours on a normal printer
  • The application needs to be suitable for the toughness of the filament (nothing that can also be done in, say, PLA)
  • Preferably the application of the print can be done by us, in-house so we can test your design
  • You can send in multiple entries (one by one, please)

 

Who’s judging?

Of all the entries we will receive, a jury will pick out the five best and those will be printed by us. These five winning designs will be picked by a jury of experts and your peers. The jury is:

  • Steve Cox, UK – 3D printing expert when it comes to our metal filled filaments & much more!
  • Brent Wright, US – founder of LifeNabled and changing lifes by using 3D printing. See some of his amazing work here.
  • Gijs Houdijk, NL – technical development manager at colorFabb, knows 3D printing and our filaments better than you know yourself.

Check out our recent blog about printing with PA-CF Low Warp to see some excellent examples of the filament is being used in real life.

What’s in it for you?

For the five entries we choose and will print:

  • You’ll receive the print
  • You’ll receive 2 spools of PA-CF Low Warp filament
  • We’ll share your mad design skills with the world
  • So even if you don’t have a printer, you can have your design(s) printed by our team!
  • All valid entries will receive a 15% discount on colorFabb filaments. For life.

 

How?

The hardest part is desiging… and that is entirely up to you. Remember, we are looking for awesome ideas. After that it’s simple. Click here to go to our form. Fill it out, upload the files and sit back.

You can submit your entry until May 31st 2018. After that we will choose five designs to print and test in real life. We will keep you updated through social media of the progress of the prints, etc.

SALE – Filament of the Day

This month, April 2018, we will highlight one filament per day until the end of the month and give you an extra discount on that filament for 24 hours. Discounts can be as high as 50%!

Every day at or around 9 CET we will post the new Filament of the Day on our social media channels (Twitter, Facebook and Instagram) and from then on it will be on sale for 24 hours. The next day, another filament will go on sale.

The sale is:

Buy 1 spool of that particular filament: 15% discount

Buy 4 spool of that particular filament: 25% discount

Buy 8 spool of that particular filament: 35% discount

Buy 16 spools of that particular filament: 50% discount

Does not work in combination with other discounts!

We will not announce ahead what filament we will have in store for you so you will have the check in every day. Today’s (April 11th) Filament of the Day is PLA/PHA Blue Grey!

PLA/PHA Blue Grey has been a favorite ever since we launched it 5 years ago. It comes very close to Pantone 7545C and gives every print a very solid and neutral look.  With just a dash of blue our grey is much more interesting looking then most standard grey colors. Click here to get yours now!

If Blue Grey is not your color, stay tuned and keep an eye out in the next few weeks – we will have a new one lined up every day!

Drone Deliveries!

The future is finally here! We are excited to announce that as from this week we will offer drone deliveries in most of Western Europe for orders placed in our webshop! Together with DHL and Universal Exports we have started a joint venture called Drones Unlimited Holland to bring your filaments right to your doorstep on a date and time you want it!

We have been secretly working on this project for over a year now (code name “Icarus”) and are happy to finally announce this next step in customer oriented delivery! Customers in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, UK, France and Denmark can opt for drone deliveries – with southern Europe, the US and Canada following within a few months!

Although a bit costlier, the drones will bring up to 8 spools to your chosen address within hours after ordering your filament.

Last week’s final test flight

For the countries that apply there is a new shipping option which you can choose:

Pricing is based on distance and requested delivery time. Since the drones will be charged every night in our solar powered plant, the carbon foot print will be reduced even further! You can find more information here.

Of course all drones will be mostly 3D printed with PA-CF Low Warp, XT-CF20 and nGen_FLEX. Our fleet will consist twenty drones of different sizes to start with.

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Part of a drone being printed

One of our drones, specifically designed to send samples:

Note the impact resistant nGen_FLEX canopy

Excited? So are we! Click here to find out more about this exciting new delivery option, pricing and availability.

Fully Autonomous Delivery Drone By DHL

One of the DHL branded drones which will fly our filaments to your door

 

 

Also, because it is Easter you get a 15% discount on all spools of filaments. Use coupon code EASTEREGG or click the image below:

Holiday Closures 2018

During Spring of this year there are some regional and national holidays we have to observe. We prefer working hard to make sure you get your filaments delivered to your door as fast as possible, but such is life. Below are the days we will be closed:

Monday, April 2nd – day after Easter

National holiday, little we can about it except for furniture shopping (Dutch tradition, don’t ask). All orders placed during the Easter weekend will ship on Tuesday April 3rd.

Friday, April 27th – King’s Day

All kinds of festivities in the Netherlands, but shipping your order is not one of them. All orders placed as from noon CET on April 26th will ship on Monday after that weekend.

Thursday, May 10th – Ascension Day

Another holiday, but we’ll be gone only for that day. Orders placed that day will ship on Friday.

Monday, May 21th – Pentecost

We like to stretch out our Catholic holidays. Like Christmas and Easter, there is another day added to Pentecost. All orders placed during the Pentecost weekend will ship on Tuesday May 22nd

PLA Semi Matte Black

Today we announce the launch of a new filament: PLA Semi-Matte Black

When developing our semi-matte PLA we’ve been looking for a solution which doesn’t involve fibers to achieve a less glossy surface finish. We did not want to loose the ease of use our PLA and keep print settings and parameters as close to regular PLA setttings. For a full matte finish our XT-CF20 and PA_CF Low Warp do the trick, but they need a hardened steel nozzle to print with. The brand new PLA Semi-Matte Black will bring a new aesthetic quality to our range of PLA filaments.

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.

The example below shows the difference between PLA Economy Black and PLA Semi-Matte Black. The part was printed on the Prusa I3 MK2s using the material switch option. The entire part was printed with 210C.

Left: PLA Economy Black / Right: PLA Semi Matte Black

If you’re looking to upgrade your 3D printed projects to the next level, our PLA Semi-Matte will do the trick.

Design by Eggnot: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2376777

PLA Semi-Matte 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.

Design by PRATRIK: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2268356

 

PLA Semi-Matte Black is available now. Click on the image below to go directly to our webshop:

XL spools and samples are available as well.

Stacker at Optima

Stacker 3D printers are industrial grade. It has been said many times before and one can see by the way they are built these machines were made with professional use in mind. colorFabb is the distributor of Stacker in the EMEA region for quite a while now and in today’s blog we highlight the use of the Stacker at one of our customers: Optima Staaltechniek, a Dutch company specialized in CAD drawing, steel renovation and project management. It has now branched out to 3D printing as well.

O3D Printing | Logo

Optima is a company that was founded in 1997 and has been known for its reliability and knowledge at all aspects of its business. Optima 3D, the printing arm of the company, stems from a small but specialized machineshop where constructions were and are fabricated for trucking, bagage handling and various smart constructions for the building industry. Optima currently has a Stacker S4 running in their shop to produce prototypes and small series of products for their customers. We talked to Rob Beemster, owner and founder, about the choices he made regarding 3D printing.

 

Why 3D printing?

Rob: “In the search for a higher level of technology and building a better environment the decision was made to start developing a way of building machine – and other parts through added manufacturing”

Why choose Stacker?

“The Stacker machine was selected, amongst others, because of size, multiple printer heads and utilization of materials that we deem necessary for our product range.”

What is it that you produce on the Stacker?

“Optima 3D manufactures a range of half products for the marine, agriculture and machine industry.”

What are the current experiences with the Stacker printer?

“Added to our various other machines Stacker is utilized for the somewhat bigger-, multiple – and parts where supports need printing.”

What materials are you using and why?

“In general we print with colorFabb’s range of co-polyester filaments and with XT-CF20 in particular. Its surface finish, stiffness and accuracy are the main avantages. For the big prints we use PETG. Strong prints that need to be heat resistant are usually printer with colorFabb_HT.”

Visit Optima’s website (Dutch)

 

 

 

Optima Staaltechniek is a a perfect example of how 3D printing brings added value to a company that needs reliability and quality delivered to its customers. The match of the Stacker printer with our range of functional co-polyester is a perfect all-in-one solution.

The Stacker S2 and S4 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.

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 5 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.

Interested? Get a quote or contact us!

nGen Transparent Colors

This season has nGen written all over it. Right after our very successful launch of the long awaited nGen_LUX last week are adding new colors to our “regular” nGen portfolio. And they are all transparent colors!

In the past two years we have had quite some demand for transparent colors in the nGen range. As from today we offer the following colors:

Twisty Vase by TimLParis: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1371418

The colors are added to a rich mix of 17 colors, bringing the total to 23 colors of nGen filament you can choose from as from today! With nGen Transparent colors you can print objects that have a great shine and stand out from the crowd, even from far away.

nGen 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.


Poly Bracelet by 3dfactorytlv: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:415835

It was launched over two years ago and 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.

You can read more on our dedicated landing page, our blog about co-polyesters or our most recent blog revisiting this filament.

Our brand new nGen transparent colors are available now in our webshop and ship from stock. Click here to go directly to our webshop. Samples will be available end of next week.

Faceted Bowl and Vase by billbo1958: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2230232

 

Also available: nGen_LUX, our brand new luxurious high-end filament. Read more about what makes this filament so special here.

nGen_LUX is here

It’s finally here… We proudly present our brand new filament nGen_LUX.

Custom design by colorFabb

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.

Polygon Vase by Antonin Nosek (EDGEdesign): https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2755758

 

Carved Stone Vase Pair by davvyk: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2181381

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.

Printed at 0.2mm

Vase by Kristaps Politis (KRISP3D): https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2519263

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

Villa Desk Plant Pot by David Payne (Qrome): https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2779537

 

Colors

We initially launch 5 colors, with more to come in the next few months. The colors we selected to begin with are:

Champagne Gold

This pale shade of gold reminds of the subtle and unmistakably beautiful color of champagne. It’s elegant and classy and will add instant luxury to any 3D printing project.

Diamond Black

Stylish and luxurious, our Diamond Black looks like diamond dust has used during the production of this filament. A beautiful black is combined with a rich shade of sparkles, resulting in the ultimate black filament.

Regal Violet

Violet is the color of majesty, luxury and extravagance and thus perfectly suited for nGen_LUX. Make your prints stand out with a lustrous, rich cherry like violet – perfectly suited for making the most amazing final parts.

Star Yellow

A bright yellow gold, with loads of sparkly goodness that seems to be forged inside a star. A highly visible color that looks great from afar and even better up close. This might be the brightest yellow gold we’ve seen in a filament.

Nature Green

Green means positive. Green means life. Green means nature. Bring an extraordinary and unique look to your creations. This shade of green is a mix of the most amazing emerald green and decent amount of what looks like fairy dust.

As mentioned there will be more colors coming up! Stay tuned.

nGen_LUX is available for ordering now. Shipping starts on Monday February 26th. RRP is € 66.07 / € 79.95 (excl / incl VAT) for 750 grams of filament.

Click here to go directly to our webshop.

 

Tips & Tricks

Build platform

nGen_LUX gives the best results on a heated build platform, 75C to about 85C is usually needed for proper adhesion to a glass plate. Optionally users could decide to use products such as 3DLac to improve adhesion.

Printing on a cold bed is possible for small to medium sized parts but not advised for large parts which will be prone to warping.

 

Cooling

Too much cooling will create brittle parts with bad layer-to-layer adhesion. Therefor we recommend starting with 50% cooling. It’s always best to print with the least amount of cooling to get the best possible layer-to-layer adhesion.

 

The brand new nGen_LUX fits perfectly in colorFabb’s portfolio that consists of both functional and aesthetical filaments.  Pictures can say more than a thousand words, but prints made with nGen_LUX have to be seen!

nGen_LUX was announced during the TCT in Birmingham last year. Originally planned for release in November 2017 we had to postpone the release to ensure a high quality filament. The audience at the show was unanimous with praise when they saw the printed parts we had there. Best reaction of them all: “This just looks too good!”

nGen_LUX is based on our trusted bestseller nGen. We have been testing the filament in our print lab on the most popular printers in the market right now: the Prusa i3, both the Stacker S2 and S4, the Lulzbot TAZ 6 and Mini, the Robo R2 and C2, the Ultimaker range of printers and the Mass Portal Pharaoh. Rest assured that if your printer works with nGen (and most of them with a heated bed do) you can achieve the stellar results we have seen so far.

Origami Vase by Kristaps Politis (KRISP3D): https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2500119

 

colorFabb: Five Years

Has it really been five years this month? 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 five 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 500+ SKUs (with more to come in 2018), expanded our staff from 3 to 20+, 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. We started to produce and ship filaments, but we do so much more these days: we advice, we design, we print, we offer various printers. Check our services page for more information.

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

Which brings us to the beginning of 2018. And we know, but don’t tell yet, it is going to be an amazing year. We have some great developments in the pipeline and will share news with you soon. Of course we have nGen_LUX coming up later this month, but also some more great projects lined up.

But now, our fifth birthday party. How are we going to celebrate, you ask?

Buy 5, Pay 4!

First of all, a discount for you. Or rather a free spool! For the rest of the month you get your fifth spool for free. Add five spools (or a multiplier) in your basket and we deduct the costs of the cheapest spool! Easy. Small print made big: This discount not work on samples or printers though and not in combination with other discounts, but you will find this to be a great deal! Due to the nature of our XL spools a slight variety in pricing may arise when choosing those.

What do you have to do? Nothing, we have already set up the system this way.

Go to our webshop now to get the best deal in town. Remember, we ship daily, worldwide and from stock.

 

Contest

Last week we shared a lot of prints that we saw coming by in one week alone (check out the blog here) and we have seen thousands of prints in the past five years. We ask you to post or re-post your favorite prints made with colorFabb filaments on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram and use the hashtag #5yearscolorfabb. Also mention the colorFabb filament used. At the end of the month we will choose one post and that person will get a valuepack of colorFabb filaments of his or her choice. That is 16 spools!

So, that’s quite an easy way to participate. Please tag us and use that particular hashtag (#5yearscolorfabb) to participate so we can track all entries.

Our official social media channels are:

Furthermore we will highlight some of the greatest prints, pictures, shows, etc. in the weeks to come. Stay tuned.

All posts concering our fifth anniversary are bundled here.