bambooFill

Update (March 28th): bambooFill spools are now officially sold out. Samples are still available.

It’s always hard to say goodbye and this is time it’s no different. Recently we had to make the decision to take bambooFill out of our portfolio. This was not an easy decision. The last time we discontinued a product was early 2014 when woodFill coarse was taken out of our portfolio.

Launched in the fall of 2014, bambooFill was the second of our bio filled filaments, following woodFill and preceding corkFill.

Last week we have produced our last batch of bambooFill:

The cost price of the raw materials have risen dramatically in the past few months for bambooFill to a point where it was no longer economically viable to produce this filament. Although not a bestseller like woodFill or corkFill, bambooFill had its fair share of fans. As said, it was not an easy decision but this allows us to focus on our current portfolio and development of new filaments as well – which are surely going to please our users!

Sad to see bambooFill go? So are we, but we still have other special filaments that have excellent aesthetic properties.

Raspberry Pi 7 display case, printed with booth bambooFill and woodFill (http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1585924)

The current stock we have in our warehouse is the last stock we will have, so if you are a bambooFan (or are a panda who likes to print), we recommend to take action quickly. bambooFill is available in our webshop and at several distributors and resellers. Again, the spools that have been produced now are the last ones ever.

 

Meet Niels, our intern

Today we want to introduce a new member to the team, our intern Niels. Well, we’ll let him introduce himself…

I am Niels van Valburg, and I am a soon to be industrial designer, creator and overall problem solver through design. With 3D printing I can realise my ideas.

For my bachelor thesis I am going to work with nGen_FLEX to print a seating object, like a chair or stool. The end product will be designed for FFF 3D printing!

Through experimenting with different designs and researching the material I want to understand it better in order to make a design for a chair that not only is a next step in 3D printing capabilities, but also showcases the various material characteristics of nGen_Flex.

So I am interested to hear what you think about it!

I am currently going through my own design process at the moment, but feel free to leave a comment to tell me what you think!

Until next time!

Niels

 

This is the first in a series of updates on Niels’  progress. Every few weeks he will publish what he has been doing and share the results. 

RapidPro – A Visual Recap

This week we attended the RapidPro for the fifth consecutive year. It was exactly four years ago that colorFabb started here at this very show and it has been a great ride ever since. We had a great three days in Veldhoven and thank everybody who visited us and took the time to have a chat with us.

Below is a visual recap of this year’s RapidPro

The booth

Our basis and business card. For the first time we positioned ourselves in the Industrial part of the show, showcasing not only our functional co-polyester filaments, made with Eastman Amphora™, but also the Stacker printer which we distribute as well as our new services like modeling for 3D printing, engineering and printing itself.

 

The visitors

The one factor that makes or breaks a show are the visitors. And we seem to get the best of them every show! Thanks everybody for dropping by.

The Stacker 3D Printer

Featured printer in our booth this year was the recently launched Stacker S2 (available here and on Kickstarter). With two printers in our booth and one at the Mikro Centrum central booth it was easily the best represented printer of the show!  Interested in this printer? Contact us at sales@colorfabb.com

 

Moveo Robotic Arm

The Moveo robotic arm was designed by BCN (and we teased it before). Entirely printed, even the belts, we were proud to finally reveal this project at the RapidPro this year, where it was part of the Mikro Centrum booth in the middle of all the action.

And, of course, the full video of the robotic arm in action:

 

We had a blast during the show and hope to welcome you again next year. For everybody who couldn’t make it, we will keep the 10% discount on all our spools of filament for the remainder of this weekend (Sunday night midnight CET). Go to http://colorfabb.com/ and use coupon code RAPIDPRO2017 when checking out, or simply click here.

RapidPro

This week, starting today,  you can find us at the RapidPro Trade show and conference in Veldhoven on March 7, 8 and 9. It was four years ago that colorFabb debuted at this very show and we are attending again for the fifth consecutive year.

For the first time, we will be at the Industrial part of the show floor. You can find us at stand 16.


Stacker S2

This year the Stacker S2 3D printer will makes it debut at the colorFabb stand. The S2 was launched on Kickstarter last week and reached its goal within 4 hours after the campaign kick-off. The S2 is a two head industrial grade printer specifically built for education, manufacturing and design pro markets.

colorFabb is proud partner of Stacker and is the official distributor for the EMEA region. At colorFabb we have been extensively testing with both the S2 and S4 in our print lab with our entire range of filaments.

Read our previous blog on our experience with the Stacker S2.
The S2 shares most of the same design and engineering of its bigger sibling, the model S4. The larger model S4 has been shipped to customers since August of 2016 and has proven itself as a reliable industrial grade 3D printer.

For Stacker the term “industrial grade” is not a hollow marketing term. It means the S2 was designed for extra long service life, extremely low maintenance and that the printer will maintain its positional accuracy throughout its life cycle. The way “industrial grade” is achieved begins with superior engineering and high-quality components, and ends with an Stacker’s innovative new assembly method.

Come and see for yourself at the RapidPro in the next few days at stand 16. A full product description of the Stacker printers can be found here.

At the show we will be printing on both the Stacker S2 and S4. Materials of choice are the range of co-polyesters we released in the past few years. Co-polyesters are made with Eastman Amphora™ 3D polymer, materials which provide for low-odor and styrene-free options that are uniquely suited for 3D printing applications. With Amphora, items can be created that are more functional, more durable, more efficient, and attractive.

A featured print at the organizer’s booth is the Moveo Robot Arm by BCN3D, entirely printed with co-polyester filaments. Printed with colorFabb_XT Yellow and nGen Dark Gray. For the timing belts, we used nGen_FLEX Black. Printed by our own 3D print engineer Jos Deelen.

We have teased about this project before (here and here), but you can now and we are proud to finally show the results at the RapidPro!

Design: https://www.bcn3dtechnologies.com/en/bcn3d-moveo-the-future-of-learning/

Find out more about Amphora in this blog we posted last year. colorFabb_XT was our first co-polyester based filament, released in 2014. Our portfolio of co-polyester based filaments, made with Eastman Amphora polymers, has since extended with the all-round nGen, the high temperature resistant colorFabb_HT (enabled by Eastman Tritan™ copolyester technology).and semi-flexible nGen_FLEX.

Our range of co-polyester based filaments are available online.

During the entire week you can get a 10% discount on all our spools of filaments (samples and printers excluded) by using the discount code RAPIDPRO2017 in our webshop. (Use this link to immediately get your 10% discount!)

 

We hope to see you in the next few days in Veldhoven and if you can’t make it, keep an eye out on our social media accounts for the latest updates!

Stacker S2

In the past 4 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 (as detailed here and here). One company on top of this trend is Stacker from Minneapolis, MN. A couple of years ago they succesfully launched their first 3D printer on Kickstarter. This printer was all about functionality: printing small series or big prototypes – an industrial grade printer for the workspace.

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. The way “industrial grade” is achieved begins with superior engineering and high-quality components, and ends with an Stacker’s innovative new assembly method.

Before the launch of Stacker’s first printer we at colorFabb were already in touch with the Stacker team and we both had the same vision for 3D printing in that it was all about functionality. Our range of filaments, especially the co-polyester range made with Eastman Amphora™ 3D polymer, are a perfect match with Stacker’s range of printers.

Yes, a range of printers. As from yesterday, Stacker’s latest offering is available on Kickstarter. The S2 launched yesterday and was already completely funded within 4 hours after launching. Unlike other 3D printers that were not able to make the cut during the process of fulfilling their Kickstarter obligations, Stacker has already proven itself to bring a reliable printer to the market.

You can see the Kickstarter video here:

https://vimeo.com/205107978

Although the Kickstarter pledges will be delivered in May / June of this year, you can already pre-order the S2 through us, as the official Stacker distributor in the EMEA region, or Stacker itself. Delivery of the pre-order printers will be in April. Get your quote now!

We received our first S2 recently and have been printing non-stop since. One of the projects we have been working on are these prototypes for leg prosthetics:

Design: https://grabcad.com/library/prosthetic-leg

We printed these parts with nGen on the brand new Stacker S2. (And yes, these are the same prints we printed before).

colorFabb is proud partner of Stacker and official distributor for the EMEA region. At colorFabb we have been extensively testing with both the S2 and S4 in our print lab with our entire range of filaments. What makes this printer so different from the rest? First of all, it is based on the technology that has made the Stacker S4 such a success.

You can also expect the following:

  • Copy mode for printing two objects at once for 2X print speeds
  • Dual print heads can be offset to prevent the idle head from dripping on the print when not in use to achieve super clean dual material prints
  • Large build volume: 395mm (X) axis, 325mm (Y) axis, 525mm (Z) Axis
  • Built-in mobile base, essential for EDU and work groups
  • Superior print quality
  • STACKER designed and manufactured hot ends and filament drives produce a superior finish, and work with all filaments, including flexible and metal filled
  • Uses 1.75mm filament for high-speed printing.
  • Quick change nozzles in a range of sizes from .25mm to 1mm
  • Comes with a single license of Simplify3D slicing software
  • Includes a sheet of BuildTak print bed surface but will accept glass

 

As said, we test all our filaments, but we are always looking for more functionality. One of our favorite filaments for this is nGen.

This all-round filament was released a little over a year ago. It is has many advantages over, say, a PLA. The temperature resistance is over 80 degrees C and it works on most printers with a heated build plate.

nGen is a low-odor, styrene-free material uniquely suited for 3D printing enthusiasts, particularly those who need the flexibility to print within a wide processing temperature range. With nGen you will have good flow properties through the printer nozzle—even at lower temperatures than some other polymers require. These properties make nGen more workable at a wider breadth of temperatures, producing reliable results and resulting in less waste. Visual prototyping has never been better than with nGen.

nGen is available in our webshop, through Stacker and our distributor network worldwide.

You can find more about what co-polyesters are by clicking here.

A look inside our new building

“Buildings should serve people, not the other way around.”
– John Portman, US architect

What is a building but a structure with walls and a roof? It is what you do with a building that gives it added value. We recently moved to a new building, as we announced several weeks ago. One of the most popular posts on social media in recent months was the revelation of our logo on the building last Monday:

As with many start ups in the tech sector, colorFabb started with an idea and a garage. A small office on top of that garage with one extruder running at some times day and night. Within a year we saw the need to move from that garage, expand our production and logistics capacity. We moved.

It was not too long after moving that we found that the vision we had for colorFabb did not fit the building we were in.

We have an ambitious vision and to accomplish this vision we need the right tools. Moving into the new building is important for colorFabb, since it enables us to bring that vision to reality in 2017 and beyond.

That vision not only consists of more and better filaments, but also of 3D printing services, engineering skills, strategic partnerships and more. All of it to bring 3D printing solutions, in the broadest sense of the word, to our customers.

In the next few months we will keep you updated on the latest developments.

We are now located in Belfeld, a small town just south of Venlo, in a state of the art building. We remain in the same region, which has excellent logistic facilities and is close to the German and Belgian borders.

We already gave you  a quick sneak peek a few weeks ago, Below you find the first official look inside our new building, which is now being converted into a 3D Printing Centre: developing and production of materials, services like printing, design and engineering as well as customer support and B2B sollutions.

Once you enter the building you immediately see the bike, which was printed with XT-CF20.

Moving on, next to the offices on the lower floor we have another showpiece: the Saturn V Rocket. Designed by Paul Fischer and printed by Korneel Bullens, it was entirely printed with nGen. You can find the original blog on this print here.

Design: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:911891 

It may look small in this building, but the entire print is 2.5 meters tall!

Past the offices are our print labs. Yes, that is plural – we now have two print labs. Here we do all our tests with new materials, material characterizations, the prints we make for this blog, support, etc.

30+ printers (not all shown) are continuously printing and testing.

We have already teased you a bit with images from our production site:

This is the heart of the company where a dedicated production crew works every day to produce the filaments you are using.

Finally, we move on to logistics. Our logistics team ships to 70+ countries – webshop, resellers and distributors alike. DHL picks up from our warehouse every day to make sure your orders will delivered as soon as possible.

 

As you can see, we are very proud of our new home. This building gives us the room to expand according to our vision and bring you even better products, improved quality and more services suited to your needs.

Please note that we will be at the RapidPro Trade Fair and Conference in Veldhoven, The Netherlands on March 7, 8 and 9. You can find us at stand 16. Drop by to find out our latests plans and how we can help you with your 3D printing needs.

If you have any questions you can also drop us an email: sales@colorfabb.com

 

Stacker

As many of you know, we are the distributor of Stacker 3D printers in Europe. We have been working with Stacker ever since the first prototype and now have several in our print lab. With the upcoming Stacker S2 being available for pre-order now and soon on Kickstarter we are testing A LOT.

Late last week we received an S2 printer and we immediately took it for a spin. The part we printed (and shown briefly yesterday) is the rocker arm by Ericthepoolboy. It is part of the bigger Toyota Engine that was printed by Korneel Bullens almost two years ago.

Design: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:644933

We scaled this part 500% and printed with colorFabb_XT at 0.2mm layer height. The new Stacker S2, like the S4 before it, is an excellent printer for small series production, prototyping and printing technical parts. Its industrial design and build allow for great accuracy and fantastic prints.

In two weeks we will be at the RapidPro Fair in Veldhoven, the Netherlands. We will be showcasing the Stacker printers, printing with our co-polyester filaments at booth 16. Drop by to see the latest and greatest in 3D printing!

Of course we keep testing on the Stacker S4 in our print lab as well. We have designed a callibration part ourselves, which we printed with our colorFabb_XT Black:

We have designed this calibration part for size and XYZ dimension as a benchmark for other platforms and materials.

As mentioned before, colorFabb is the official European distributor for Stacker. Stacker printers are manufactured in the USA. Check out the awesome features here and wonder why you have not one yourself!

If you are interested in a Stacker, please click here or contact us at sales@colorfabb.com

colorFabb_XT is made with Eastman Amphora™ 3D polymer AM1800. Launched in September 2014, it is a fantastic functional engineering material. With colorFabb_XT we achieved to produce a filament that provides good strength and toughness, as well as certain FDA food contact compliances. It has found a wide audience amongst users looking for extra functionality. With a temperature resistance of 75+ degrees, this filament offers (aside from its high strength and very high toughness) odor neutral processing, a styrene free formulation, FDA food contact compliance and BPA (Bisphenol A ) free formulation.

You can find more about what co-polyesters are by clicking here.

 

Fully printed vise

Back in the day (September last year) we printed a vise with nGen on the Lulzbot Mini. Although nice it still needed screws. Now we have printed a vise that is 100% 3d-printed – no screw or other piece of hardware is needed to hold the individual pieces together. Pieces clip and snap together easily!

We used colorFabb_XT, nGen and nGen_FLEX for this print.

Design: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2064269

The “Yet ANOTHER Machine Vise” is designed by Christoph Laimer a.k.a. TheGoofy from Switzerland. The design was uploaded merely weeks ago, but we found it an excellent model for our various co-polyesters.

We used nGen Yellow, colorFabb_XT Light Blue and nGen_FLEX Black printing this vise.

Remember the “3D-printed Watch with Tourbillon” we printed last year? Same talented designer!

All parts were printed on the Ultimaker 2 and Ultimaker 2+ in our print lab.

 

As Christopher explains on the Thingiverse page:

“Very often people just try to 3d-print common mechanical objects. But the traditional shape of these objects is often not 3d-printable, and if an object was successfully printed, it maybe does not work, or it is not strong enough.

For mechanical objects it is therefore required to adapt the design depending on its future use. If you’re familiar with some CAD-tool, and if your creating designs for 3d-printing. I recommend to think about the special material properties of 3d-printed parts.”

colorFabb_XT is made with Eastman Amphora™ 3D polymer AM1800. Launched in September 2014, it is a fantastic functional engineering material. With colorFabb_XT we achieved to produce a filament that provides good strength and toughness, as well as certain FDA food contact compliances. It has found a wide audience amongst users looking for extra functionality. With a temperature resistance of 75+ degrees, this filament offers (aside from its high strength and very high toughness) odor neutral processing, a styrene free formulation, FDA food contact compliance and BPA (Bisphenol A ) free formulation.

colorFabb_XT was our first co-polyester based filament and we followed it up with nGen , which was released a little over a year ago. It is an all-round filament which has many advantages over, say, a PLA. The temperature resistance is over 80 degrees C and it works on most printers with a heated build plate.

nGen is a low-odor, styrene-free material uniquely suited for 3D printing enthusiasts, particularly those who need the flexibility to print within a wide processing temperature range. With nGen you will have good flow properties through the printer nozzle—even at lower temperatures than some other polymers require. These properties make nGen more workable at a wider breadth of temperatures, producing reliable results and resulting in less waste. Visual prototyping has never been better than with nGen.

nGen_FLEX was released in September 2016 at the TCT Show and is our first semi-flexible material. With a Shore A hardness of 95 it is a material that is ideally suited for functional parts. It is not soft and squishy like other flexible materials in the market, but allows for fast printing and printing on 3D printers using a Bowden tube. nGen_FLEX is a material for users looking for an engineering grade flexible filament with a high temperature resistance (over 120 degrees C) and good chemical resistance.

You can read the initial reception of nGen_FLEX here.

You can find more about what co-polyesters are by clicking here.

Pangolin

A pangolin is a mammal that is covered with touch, overlapping scales. These scales normally offer great defense against predators in the wild. This benign creature however is currently being threatened with extinction. They’re considered the world’s most hunted animal because people believe that the meat is prized for medicinal ingredient.

To get some attention for this little fella we have printed one. We challenged Niels, our new intern, with this multipart design to learn how to use the Ultimaker 2+ and our PLA Economy. It took him only a few days to get flawless quality from the Ultimaker 2+.

Design: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2064359

This print was made on the Ultimaker 2+ with 0.1mm layer height, using PLA Economy Silver.

Designed by Amao Chan from Taiwan, who has a real heart for the little Pangolin. In Amao’s words: “Pangolins now are facing critical crisis as they are closing to extinct. In fact, humans are the murderers of this disaster, superstition and greed are the main reason to cause this massacre.”

“Nowadays, the numbers of pangolins are less and less, some people eat them only for the reason of showing their ostentatious wealth, what they do to these helpless animals is to make them approach to endangered.”

About the design: “Pangolin is a really skillful and difficult work that I have spent a lot of time on it. It has been passed at least six editions before presenting to all of you. What I was trying to challenge is an artwork with both perfect appearance and function. It was a little struggle for me to share this work at the beginning since I’ve fallen in love with it when it’s first done and stood in front of me. At this moment, what I am wondering more is to let you firsthand it, holding and feeling the variation with actions. Enjoy and I believe you’ll like it.”

Well, we like it a lot! For this print we chose PLA Economy to print with.

PLA Economy was launched November 2016 and it has been a big hit ever since. Only now we are catching up with the demand for this new and great filament! We have been printing quite a lot with our new PLA Economy line. A few examples are:

We have been testing this material for the better part of last year and have found this filament a great alternative those customers who need a lot of PLA. We are initially releasing PLA Economy in four colors: White (RAL 9010), Black (RAL 9005, Red (RAL 3020) and Silver (RAL 9023). This PLA grade has been tested extensively and is being produced and shipped by the same colorFabb team you are used to so you know we are not compromising on quality. You can rely with this filament on the same high standards that colorFabb is known for. It is available only on 2.2kg spools.

PLA Economy is an addition to our range of PLA/PHA, which is available in 30 colors (and on 750 grams spools).

GoPro Bike Mount

Let’s gopro for this one and explore the outdoors. Today’s featured print is a small, but highly functional one. We have printed a GoPro Bike Mount with colorFabb_XT:

Design: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:248893

We printed this part with colorFabb_XT Red on the Ultimaker 2 with a 0.6mm nozzle. Due to the quite extreme overhang we slowed down to get the perfect overhang performance.

Such an overhang is not easily achieved, but we managed it with our colorFabb_XT, a material that keeps performing at an awesome level. You can find out how to print with colorFabb_XT in our tutorial or contact support@colorfabb.com for the most optimal settings for your printer!

We even took it for a ride outside!

One of our 3D print engineer’s (Stephan) daily bike ride to the office. Not in real time…

colorFabb_XT is made with Eastman Amphora™ 3D polymer AM1800. Launched in September 2014, it is a fantastic functional engineering material. With colorFabb_XT we achieved to produce a filament that provides good strength and toughness, as well as certain FDA food contact compliances. It has found a wide audience amongst users looking for extra functionality. With a temperature resistance of 75+ degrees, this filament offers (aside from its high strength and very high toughness) odor neutral processing, a styrene free formulation, FDA food contact compliance and BPA (Bisphenol A ) free formulation.

colorFabb_XT was our first co-polyester based filament. Our portfolio of co-polyester based filaments, made with Eastman Amphora polymers, has since extended with the all-round nGen, the high temperature resistant colorFabb_HT and semi-flexible nGen_FLEX. You can find more about what co-polyesters are by clicking here.

colorFabb_XT is available in our webshop and through our worldwide network of distributors and resellers.