Copy mode: a bronzeFill story

In the south of the Netherlands and neighboring regions we have the carnaval tradition. Worldwide known for the Brazilian variety, the version known to us is a different affair. It is an annual festival, celebrated widely, of Catholic origin in which people go wild and party one more time before Lent. It is a tradition chiseled into the fabric of society. It features mocking of establishment amongst other things, represented by clowns, demons and jesters.

The original statue

A local carnaval society needed a copy of a statue they use annually. The best way we found was to scan it, print it with bronzeFill and post-process it.

The scanning was done by local specialists at Hagenaars. This engineering company from nearby Roermond was founded in 1994 and specializes in 3D scanning solutions, amongst other things. They bought the first FARO laser scanning equipment in 2007 and this meant that 3D scanning and measuring became the main focus of this small family owned company. Their engineering background gives them an advantage over competitors since their customer base is more technical minded. You can visit their website here (Dutch only) and give some specific attention to their project page.

Scanning in progress…

With the .stl file generated we went to work and printed a copy on the Ultimaker 2+. (Before you ask, we are not allowed to share the .stl) Settings used:

Layer Height: 0.2mm
Speed: 30mm/s
Temperature: 215C
Material Flow: 106%

After that, the crucial phase of post-processing commenced.

The model was first sanded and polished. After that, we post-processed (and give it the old patina look) by using a mixture of salt, vinegar and ammonia. To achieve accelerated aging, add salt to the vinegar until the salt does not dissolve anymore and the vinegar is saturated. The Lulzbot team already did an extensive blog about this, which you can read here.

Post-processing these kind of prints require a lot of work and effort, but the results are rewarding and quite good, if we say so ourselves and the model aged quite nicely.

bronzeFill was our first truly special filament, launched over 3 years ago and still one of our most popular filaments. The added weight and unique aesthetic properties have made this an extremely popular material. Last year we published quite a bit about bronzeFill,  like the enormous Octolamp, the museum worthy Greek helmet and the stellar fountain pen.

If you want to have more information on how to print with bronzeFill, visit our handy tutorial: How to print with bronzeFill

If you are looking for more tips and advice regarding post-processing bronzeFill and our other metal filled filaments, we have a nice collection of articles collected on our site.

Interested in bronzeFill? It is readily available in our webshop as 750 grams and 1500 grams spools.

Diamond Black Panther

We love it when our users design their own creations and use our filaments to bring their ideas to life. Sebastien Carcone from Luxembourg based NewOne shared his Black Panther (not the movie) with us and printed it in nGen_LUX.

Sebastien used Cinema 4D and the model was printed with supports on a Raise N2+.

The settings used were:

Layer height: 0,2 mm

Infill: 15%

Shells: 3

Extruder temperature: 235° C

Heated Bed: 85° C

Size: 27 cm

Total print time: approx. 21 hours

 

The Panther was printed with nGen_LUX Diamond Black. Original post can be found here.

NewOne not only prints, but also advices companies in regards to 3D printing and additive manufacturing. Check out their site here (French).

 

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. 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.

It is now available in 5 awesome colors:

nGen_LUX 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. 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. Believe us when we say that the photos don’t do the prints real justice…

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. It can be printed with the very same settings as nGen.

Click here to go directly to our webshop. For a bit more information, click here.

 

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!

Smartwatch charger stand

In an age where time is of the essence and mostly against us, it helps to treat your smartwatch to a nice looking stand. That’s why we have printed not one, but two charger stands for our smartwathes and we printed them in nGen_LUX.

Ticwatch S&E charger stand by Midnightmare_CZ printed with nGen_LUX Nature Green
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2668691

Misfit Vapor Smartwatch Charging Stand by PhilD41 printed with nGen_LUX Star Yellow
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2674787

Both prints were made on the Ultimaker 3  at 0.16mm layer height and using the standard nGen settings.

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. 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.

It is now available in 5 awesome colors:

nGen_LUX 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. 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. Believe us when we say that the photos don’t do the prints real justice…

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. It can be printed with the very same settings as nGen.

Click here to go directly to our webshop. For a bit more information, click here.

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:

Repairing parts with PA-CF Low Warp

Another field where 3D printing excels in is the replacement of parts. With the right materials 3D printing is a great tool to extend the life of many everyday items. Crucial to this are various factors like modeling skills (if the file of the part is not readily available) and the right material. A functional filament like our PA-CF Low Warp is a perfect match when it comes that latter part.

About a year ago we posted abouy the laundry dryer part printed with colorFabb_HT:

Original post: https://learn.colorfabb.com/laundry-dryer/

This week we saw two examples on Twitter of users making parts with PA-CF Low Warp, our highly functional engineering grade nylon based filament.

First up is Brent Wright. We recently wrote a blog about the use of 3D printing in the field of prosthetics. Brent has been doing fantastic work at a hospital in Guatamala by printing prosthetics making it more accessible and cheaper for local people. You can read the original blog here.

Turns out that Brent is using his 3D printer for other parts as well:

 

https://twitter.com/lifenabled/status/977729672401379328

Image courtesy of Brent Wright

As you can see the original part is no longer available and instead of replacing the entire bed or having an expensive spare part made, Brent went to work and modeled & printed it. This way one saves money, time and also the environment. A small piece of plastic ensures not only that an entire bed is made obsolete, but a new bed also does not need to be transported through the Guatamalan jungle.

Brent has been using PA-CF Low Warp for a bit now, especially for prosthetics:

And we’re happy he has found yet another use for this great filament!

But the need to repair stuff can be found everywhere in the world. We make a small leap from the jungle of Central America to the UK, where Steve Cox resides. Steve is of course no stranger to 3D printing and colorFabb as his excellent skills with bronzeFill have shown. (Click here and here for examples).

Now, Steve was already working with PA-CF Low Warp (see this thread here for an excellent example) and when the vacuum cleaner broke he had the right material in house to print a new part:

When we contacted Steve about this he said: “I think this particular way of utilising 3D printing is something that should get more publicity, especially as we have such environmental pressures on us now.  I think it can definitely play a part in the circular economy because it puts us in a position where we are able to repair and reuse things more effectively than ever before.”

We couldn’t agree more. Steve was so generous to send us some high-res pictures:

 

 

All images courtesy of Steve Cox

Interestingly the vacuum cleaner head is now even stronger than it was before it broke.

Steve also notified us about a website called Happy3D: https://www.happy3d.fr/en/ This website specializes in designs to repair every day objects. You should definitely check this one out!

This was the second Dyson part Steve printed. Before he printed a part that went in the front of the head and held the bearings for the rotating brush. He modelled the part from photographs they sent him and a few critical dimensions.  He then printed the repair part in white nGen and it worked perfectly – the material cost for the part was around 16 Euro cents!

The CAD design by Steve Cox

The printed part, made with nGen White

 

We thank Brent and Steve for sharing their work on Twitter and their ultra fast responses after we contacted them. True makers and problem solvers who are showing us how 3D printing can and should be used. Great job, guys!

 

 

It is a well established fact by now that our new PA-CF Low Warp filament is all about functionality. We developed this filament with only one goal: to make sure a lot of users have the ability to print high quality printed parts. Even on a cold bed. PA-CF Low Warp is, due to its stiffness and strength, a perfect material for replacement parts and custom made parts.

The PA-CF Low Warp filament 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.

PA-CF Low Warp allows continuous use at 120°C while retaining sufficient properties for the intended application. Most high heat resistant materials will be difficult to print and require heated chambers and / or heated platforms to keep parts from warping the bottom layer. PA-CF Low Warp shows a very low tendency to warp, even at ambient temperature platform.

Eager to get started? Click here to get the basics on how to print with PA_CF Low Warp.

PA-CF Low Warp is available now in our webshop and ships from stock. We currently stock spools of 700 grams, but as from late next week large spools containing 2kg of material will be available as well.

You can also opt to get a unique bundle package, containing one spool of PA-CF Low Warp and the Olsson Ruby Nozzle 0.4mm in our webshop.

 

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.

Indicator Light

3D printing is an excellent tool for visual prototyping. Today’s print is a great example of a prototype to give a customer a good look and feel of the part before mass production starts. We printed an indicator light.

Custom in-house design

Printed on the Ultimaker 2+ with both nGen Transparent and PLA Economy Black. Both of them with 0.2mm layer height. nGen was printed at 240⁰C and a bed temp of 75⁰C while PLA Economy was printed a bit cooler, resp. 215⁰C and 55⁰C.

nGen Orange Transparent was recently added, as well as five other transparent colors in our nGen portfolio – bringing the total number of available colors to 23.

For another great use of nGen transparent filament, check out the blog earlier this week where we printed a working traffic light.

With our nGen Transparent colors you can print objects that have a great shine and stand out from the crowd, even from far away. With the right settings you can even print translucent objects to a degree as you can see!

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.

The black part was printed with PLA Economy.

PLA Economy is a fantastic PLA grade which we launched in November 2016. Initially we released four colors: white, red, black and silver. In 2017 we added the always popular Dark Blue, which is similar to our very own Ultra Marine Blue that we offer in our portfolio of PLA/PHA filaments.

PLA Economy offers a great value for your money. One spool consists of 2.2kg of filament for a dirt cheap price of a little over € 35 (ex VAT and shipping). It is a different grade than our range of PLA/PHA, but we guarantee the same colorFabb quality. Our filaments are readily available from our webshop.

Traffic Light

Today’s print is a multi-material print since we like to mix up the filaments we have in our ever expanding portfolio. Our intern Sven Hacken went to work and designed a fully functional traffic light!

Design by Sven Hacken / CLOUD3D: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2826057

And the funny thing is: it works like a charm!

All parts were made on the Ultimaker 2, 2+ and 3. Below is a listing of the materials and settings we used:

[table id=13 /]

The variety of materials used is exemplary of the work Sven is doing in our print lab. Material of choice for the opaque, rigid parts was PLA Economy. For the transparent parts the obvious choice was our new line of transparent nGen colors and even nGen_FLEX was needed for the base feet.

For the light inside, Sven used a USB camping light (link here).

 

We recently added 6 new transparent colors to our portfolio of nGen filaments:

These six 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. With the right settings you can even print translucent objects to a degree as you can see!

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.

PLA Economy is a fantastic PLA grade which we launched in November 2016. Initially we released four colors: white, red, black and silver. In 2017 we added the always popular Dark Blue, which is similar to our very own Ultra Marine Blue that we offer in our portfolio of PLA/PHA filaments.

PLA Economy offers a great value for your money. One spool consists of 2.2kg of filament for a dirt cheap price of a little over € 35 (ex VAT and shipping). It is a different grade than our range of PLA/PHA, but we guarantee the same colorFabb quality. Our filaments are readily available from our webshop.

The small feet on the bottom were printed with nGen_FLEX. nGen_FLEX was our very first step into flexible filaments. Our main focus before had been rigid and stiff materials, but we found that we should add a functional filament to our portfolio that met the needs of our users. Our co-operation with Eastman Chemical Company has lead to the release in the fall of 2016 of nGen_FLEX – made with Eastman Amphora FL6000.

nGen_FLEX is a semi-flexible filament with a Shore A hardness of 95. This enables users with the Bowden tube printer (like Ultimakers, for instance) to print with this filament without an effort. Of course the user can influence how flexible a print should feel by adjusting infill and perimeter settings. nGen_FLEX is temperature resistant to about 130C. That means 3D printed objects can be steam sterilized at 121C which is a great asset for medical / laboratory environments.
You can read more in our recent blog post where we revisited nGen_FLEX.