Survey 2017

Want to get a 20% discount? Sure you do. We only ask a bit of your time. Read on…

At colorFabb we value your opinion. Your opinion helps us to improve our products and services. We read all your emails, value all the feedback on social media and try improve where we can. In May 2016 we held a survey and received very positive feedback. Have a look:

  • Over 86% of our customers rate our products and services a 8 or higher!
  • Over 95% of our customers would definitely recommend our products to other users!
  • Over 91% of customers who contacted our support desk rated the service as “Awesome”!

The most heard replies we received last year were about price and shipping. We took your comments and ran with them. In November we launched PLA Economy, followed two weeks ago by PETG Economy. This Economy line provides the large volume user for a better kg price for the filament, while maintaining the high colorFabb quality.

We also negotiated a better deal with DHL, which went into effect earlier this year. We can now offer cheaper shipping to more countries (unfortunately, not for all of them) and with the EU we have a lot of free shipping options. Check them out here.

But we’re not done yet. The 3D printing industry is moving fast, needs change and we are always eager to what those needs are. We have created a new survey which you can access here:

Click here to take our survey!

It only takes about five minutes. As you can see from the examples above, we actually do something with your feedback. If you receive our news letter you will find this same survey in your inbox as well (no need to fill it out twice).

To thank you, we want to extend a 20% discount for every survey that is filled out complete and correct. We will send you the coupon code soon after completing the survey. Only one per person and the discount code cannot be combined with other discounts (nor does it apply to printers and gift cards).

Thank you for your time!

– Team colorFabb

Camera housing

Today’s featured print serves two goals. First of all, we’re always looking to use our filaments to make the best use of it. In this case we have used PLA Economy to make a prototype of a security camera housing. The second purpose was to make our new intern Pierre known with the Ultimaker 2 and Cura slicer software. We can safely say both goals were met.

 

Designed by Toby Lankford: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:993974

Working from a design by Toby Lankford, Pierre made this model in 3 days. It was a perfect model for Pierre to get the printer and slicer known and to print multiple parts.

We used this case to welcome our new intern Pierre. This was a perfect project to get to know the Ultimaker 2 and Cura slicer software. Pierre also used a Raspberry Pi to show how the internal parts should be mounted.

Printed on the UM2 with PLA Economy Silver. Everything is printed at 0.2mm layerheight, 210/125C and 60C bed temperature.

We used PLA Economy as it’s perfect for making a first visual model of a new product. For outdoor use we would not advice using PLA Economy if durability is important, but it has proven to be an excellent filament for indoor use and visual prototyping.

PLA Economy is a fantastic PLA grade which we launched in November last year. Initially we released four colors: white, red, black and silver.

Recently 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.

Here are some print settings to get started:

Adviced 3d printing temperature: 195C-220C

Adviced 3d print speed: 40 – 100 mm/s

Advised Heated bed (if you have one, not strictly necessary): 50-60C

Cooling fan: 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.

Or: You can use the standard PLA settings if your printer has these pre-defined and these should work fine.

You can also opt for the PLA Economy Value Pack: order four spools as a value pack and receive an immediate 10% discount!

Buy PLA Economy                                      Buy PLA Economy Value Pack

PLA Economy is very well suited for the maker who needs quality at an affordable price. It is a perfect filament for large volume and small series production, made with the guaranteed colorFabb quality that we are known for.

Garden sprinkler

We all know Daniel Norée as the designer and maker behind the Open R/C project (remember the big F1 car we printed last year? It was his design!). But of course, Daniel is also known for his very active YouTube channel and his great work in 3D printing in general.

Last year he used our colorFabb_XT to print a self-designed garden sprinkler:

We found this design to be an excellent example for our brand new PETG Economy filament!

Design by Daniel Norée: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2077154

You can follow Daniel and the projects he is working on via YouTube and Twitter

The parts were printed with PETG Economy on the Lulzbot Mini. We used 0.25mm layerheight at 235C printing temperature and manually slowed down printing to optimize the overhang quality.

 

We have received a lot of requests for PETG in our portfolio and have recently added PETG Economy to our portfolio. We initially started with 3 colors: Black, White and Red.

All of these are available exclusively on 2.2kg spools. You can buy PETG Economy here.

Material specifications

Material: colorFabb PETG Economy

Diameter Tolerance: ± 0.1 mm

Density: 1.28 g/cm3

Glass Transition Temperature: 70C

Full data sheets are available now: http://colorfabb.com/Materials/

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.

The Lulzbot Mini is available at colorFabb. As Lulzbot’s official reseller we ship from stock. We offer free shipping in Europe and two free spools of filament!

The LulzBot Mini was built to work out of the box, with no complicated assembly process getting in the way of you creating. Operating the Mini is the same- straightforward software, easy to read documentation and an army of LulzBot enthusiasts eager to help out people getting started. This printer is not only easy. you will still find flexible, industrial strength capacity from this machine.

Read Make Magazine’s review of the Lulzbot Mini here.

The Lulzbot Mini is now available in our webshop at € 1.573 including VAT / € 1.300 excluding VAT.

 

Octolamp

At colorFabb we know a lot of cool things are made with our filaments. We see a lot of them on social media and what our users share with us via email. We love seeing how the materials we make are being used to make useful, functional and beautiful prints. But every now and again we come across a project that is just plain awesome, like a huge, entirely printed bronzeFill octopus – now known as the Octolamp!

Esteban Pacheco contacted us last winter and told us about the project he was working on. In his initial email he wrote: “It’s a huge figure of an octopus (around 1m x 1m x 0.4 m) that I’m producing to work as a Roof lamp – the head is pointing down, so it looks like the octopus is attached to the ceiling by the tentacles. There’s a total of 156 pieces. I’m finishig to print all the pieces, and im polishing them.”

By the description alone we knew it was a huge project and undertaking. Last week we received the pictures made by Esteban and we were blown away. We asked Esteban to tell us more about himself and the Octolamp project:

“My name is Esteban Pacheco born in Panamá. I am an Architect working and living in Germany since 2008. I got my Master’s Degree in Architecture in Germany. I’m fascinated about digital technologies and fabrication processes in Architecture, 3D parametric form finding methods, and non-conventional geometries.”

About his motivation he says:  “The reason for this project was to test my modelling and printing skills. Since a new ceiling lamp for my studio was needed and I personally consider the class “cephalopoda“ really astonishing due to its characteristics, I decided to mix both ideas to create something called  “Octolamp”.”

The Octolamp 3D model took around 13 months to complete. Because of its geometric complexity, the 4 million polygons and around 4 GB File was sliced in 156 unique parts to make it printable. Each one of the parts was checked to find errors like: invalid mesh faces, non-manifold mesh faces and naked edges among others. This task took one month to complete.

Of course he needed a reliable printer and through his 3D Hub he already had extensive experience with the Ultimaker 2+. Esteban explains:  “An Ultimaker 2+ was used due to its reliability and nozzle diameter flexibility. This allowed me to print with several different layer heights and outline thickness, depending in the grade of detail needed.”

The software used for generate the toolpaths was Cura 2.4, but for a few specific parts Simplify 3d was used. Esteban used the following printing parameters:

Print speed: 40 mm/s

Temperature: 230 C°

Material Flow: 108%

Support: 25 % [Grid pattern]

Infill: 30 % for arms / 20 % for head

Retraction length: 4.5 mm

Retraction speed: 45 mm/s

Esteban is a fan of colorFabb filaments and bronzeFill in particular, especially since this special filament fits this project perfectly.

“ColorFabb’s bronzeFill was selected because it can be post – processed to achieve a noble finish, in contrast with normal PLA. This material can be polish to a high glossy level and also is able to oxidize to acquire an antique – eerie greenish – looking overlay. This feature fits totally with the concept of an octopus. It just adds “Character” to the end result, like a piece recovered from an old sunken ship. For this specific project a total of 18 spools of material were needed, in other words, around 27 Kg of filament. That amount includes support material and print failures. And the end the lamp total weight is 23 kg.”

bronzeFill was our first truly special filament, launched 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. Seeing a project like the Octolamp materialize with this filament is fantastic!

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

Of course the trick with our metal filled filaments is the post-processing, which was a huge undertaking on its own. It took 4 months and included 3 different stages:

  1. Sanding stage: using 240, 400 and 1000 grit metal sandpaper.
  2. Polishing stage: several polishing creams were tested.
  3. Oxidation stage: for this a mixture of Vinegar and Salt applied directly to the model using a tiny brush was used to accelerate the oxidation process, in some areas.

The results are downright stunning and please keep in mind post-processing was done on all 156 pieces that were printed!! This is a dedication to the project that is rarely seen at this scale.

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.

For the assembly, no screws were needed for the Octolamp itself. All pieces were glued together using very strong epoxy adhesives.

We thank Esteban for sharing this project with us. Again, we were extremely surprised to see bronzeFill being used for such a big and long term project. As said, Esteban has his own 3D Hub. He started in January of this year and he has only received five star reviews. The work and dedication he put into the Octolamp makes this easy to understand. Of course, not all projects take 18 months to complete, but Esteban knows what he’s doing and aims for the best quality in his prints. We cannot wait to see more work from him!

Alternatively, you can also follow him on Facebook.

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

If you have an awesome project to share, made with our materials, do no hesitate to contact us at sales@colorfabb.com

Design of the Octolamp by Esteban Pacheco (email)

All images made by Esteban Pacheco and used with permission

Bracket

Summer’s here & we are all spending more and more time outside. Considering the erratic behaviour of Dutch weather, a lot of people here have party tents to keep a bit safe from wind, the odd rain shower or just to protect their precious barbecue.

The brackets that connect the frame and cloth often break due to poor quality, storage or just by dropping them. With 3D printing it is easy to fix this. We printed these replacement brackets for our customer Paul Noij, who also designed these.

We printed these parts on the Stacker S4 with our brand new PETG Economy Black. By using 2 of the 4 heads at the same time at 0,12mm layerheight, this set was now finished overnight instead of taking a full day extra.

3D printing once again proofs to be extremely useful to replace every day parts.

We launched PETG Economy last week. After the release of PLA Economy in November 2016 we have expanded our Economy range with PETG now. PETG is a functional material widely used in 3D printing. By adding PETG Economy to our portfolio we give our users a brand new grade with the trusted colorFabb quality.

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.

colorFabb’s Economy line is developed for users who need a lot of filament. 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.

PETG Economy is available in our webshop.

About the Stacker

Tough, reliable and industrial grade: Stacker printers are produced in the US and are known for their reliability and high performance.  We are the distributor of this US made machine in Europe and have printed many hours on it. One of the big advantages of the Stacker printer is its versatility: You can print 4 prints at the same time or print one big print. Stacker is affordable. Stacker fits into any workplace. Stacker is highly mobile. You go from prototype to production in no time.

You can find more information on our landing page or request a quote at sales@colorfabb.com

Two Stacker S4 printers on the side and the latest S2 in the middle. And with, yes, a 3D printed logo

Introducing Job Windhorst, our new COO

As from this week the colorFabb team is reinforced with Job Windhorst, our new COO. The growth of colorFabb and the 3D printing landscape in general has been tumultuous and very, very exciting.

Job Windhorst, our new COO with added CFO responsibilities. LinkedIn

At colorFabb we have not been sitting still and the organisation grew from an idea in CEO Ruud Rouleaux’ mind with a few dedicated, but part-time, employees to a middle sized company with over 20 employees in four rollercoaster years. You can see the development of colorFabb on our timeline. No growth comes without its specific set of challenges and we are not done growing yet.

It is Job’s focus to manage this growth in a sustainable way and make sure the growth scenarios that colorFabb has envisioned can be realized. His COO job will have added CFO responsibilities as well.

Job Windhorst’s background is in finance, management and HR and his experience in this field makes him a perfect fit within colorFabb’s current team.

Says Job Windhorst: “It’s a fantastic challenge for the Colorfabb team and myself to make the next step and grow up to a fullservice organisation within the dynamic market where we operate.”

Ruud Rouleaux, CEO and founder of colorFabb adds: “With the addition of Job to the colorFabb team, the road has been cleared to start new business development and allocate the necessary time for several high profile market opportunities in terms of materials, 3D Printers and engineering services.”

In a demanding market that is always on the move, the organisation needs to be flexible and at colorFabb we know we have found the right person in Job Windhorst to manage the growth while maintaining the can-do attitude we have had from the very beginning.

We wish Job good luck in his new job!

PETG Economy

In November 2016 we launched our PLA Economy line. PLA Economy filament was the result of many requests for a more cost-conscious filament in the colorFabb portfolio. After a lot of testing we released a brand new PLA grade, available now in 5 colors and only on 2.2kg spools. Today it is time to take the next step and we proudly announce PETG Economy.

We have received a lot of requests for PETG in our portfolio and have added this under our Economy banner as from today. We initially start with 3 colors: Black, White and Red. All of these are available exclusively on 2.2kg spools. Shipping starts on Monday. You can buy PETG Economy here.

 

Material specifications

Material: colorFabb PETG Economy

Diameter Tolerance: ± 0.1 mm

Density: 1.28 g/cm3

Glass Transition Temperature: 70C

Full data sheets will be available as from mid June.

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.

Attributions designs plus settings used

4040 adjustable feet / stud by Fra Elstak: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1887810

Printed on the Lulzbot Mini, at 0.25 mm layerheight at 235C and 70C bed temp. Cooling at 100%.

 

Filament duck 2.2kg spools by colorFabb: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1862683

Printed on the Stacker S4, at 0.25mm layerheight at 250C and 70C bed temp, 20/30% cooling.

 

Front head Light LED by Nicolas Garnier: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2085081

Printed on the Lulzbot Mini, at 0.25 mm layerheight at 235C and 70C bed temp. Cooling at 100%.

 

 

Garden Wobble Sprinkler by Chris Dalby (a.k.a. moose4621): https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1532652

Printed on MassPortal at 0.2mm layerheight, 240C, 70C bed temp and 75% cooling.

 

Wavy organic bowl, cups, vase and flower pot. by PRATRIK: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2268356

Printed on MassPortal at 0.27mm layerheight, 240C, 70C bed temp and 75% cooling.

 

Blackbelt 3D Printer

Eagle-eyed observers in the Twitterverse may have already deduced that we are closely tied to the new and awesome Blackbelt 3D printer.

This brand new 3D printer company revealed its concept a little over a month ago on Twitter and has gained a following of nearly 700 3D printing enthusiasts ever since. We were among the first followers and strong advocates. And this is not without reason.

The Blackbelt 3D printer’s concept is of producing its printed pieces on a small conveyor belt (made with a unique composite material) and prints at an angle of 45 degrees. This enables production of very long (even endless?) parts that also allow for unsupported overhangs.

Big prints

Production of parts… continuously

The creator of the Blackbelt 3D printer is none other than our former colleague Stephan Schürmann. You may remember him from the 3D printed bike that was released two years ago (you can find the full blog here).

Stephan left colorFabb earlier this year to start Blackbelt 3D BV and spend all his time on the further development of his printer.

The printer has been in development for the better part of the past four years, first in Stephan’s mind and then with a first prototype.

The first prototype

The first prototype

The release of the printer to the market is imminent and in a (by now) time honoured tradition the Blackbelt 3D will be released through Kickstarter. The Kickstarter campaign goes live this Thursday at 3 PM CET. Click here for the page’s preview link.

We are proud to announce that colorFabb is Blackbelt’s official material partner. In the testing phase colorFabb’s materials were used exclusively.

The BlackBelt 3D printer is not just a concept and not just a new prototype. Four years of engineering has lead to proven technology that is now available for you as well.

We will keep you updated on the progress of the printer as we enter this summer, but the easiest way to keep yourself informed is by signing up to the Blackbelt 3D news letter of follow Blackbelt on social media, like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

Stephan, your former colleagues at colorFabb wish you good luck with the Blackbelt Kickstarter campaign!

 

Spring Break

‘Tis the season of public holidays here in the Netherlands. Thursday is Ascension Day and due to this we will be officially closed on Friday as well. We are not the kind of company to leave you all by yourself, so we are having a flash sale on our website: 20% off on all filaments.

Click on the banner below or on this link. You will be re-directed to our webshop and the discount is automatically applied to your order.

This sale cannot be combined with other discounts and is valid only from now on and on Thursday May 25th.

Please note that no orders will be shipped on Thursday. On Friday we will resume shipping webshop orders again.

We have a plethora of filaments to choose from. Recently, our copperFill was mentioned by testing and comparison site 3D Matter as the 3D printing filament with the highest visual quality:

Source: 3D Matter

It is a truly astonishing filament with great post-processing possibilities. copperFill contains 80% copper by weight, but is not conductive in a thermal or electrical sense. This material, similar to bronzeFill, steelFill and brassFill, has been developed for aesthetical purposes only. We are excited this is recognized by the comparison tests that 3D Matter has done.

Check out how to print with copperFill

Original post on this print can be found here.

Another highlight of these tests was their conclusion that our flagship PLA/PHA is in their opinion (and their data supports it), the easiest filament to print with. In an ever expanding market with dozens, if not hundreds of (PLA) filament brand this is of course a great honor!

Source: 3D Matter

You can read our complete write-up on 3D Matter’s testing here.

We have a wide range of filaments. Choose from 30 PLA/PHA colors, from 17 nGen colors, 7  nGen_FLEX colors (including 5 skin tones), 5 colorFabb_HT colors or 14 colorFabb_XT colors! And that’s not even counting the special filaments!

Recently we also released a fifth PLA Economy color: Dark Blue. Why not give that one a try?

 

Please remember: this flash sale is for a very limited time only! Order now to get your 20% discount!