The Olsson Ruby nozzle

Recently we announced the winners of our Design Challenge. The idea was to send us functional designs that we would print with PA-CF Low Warp, our engineering grade and nylon based filament. The PA-CF Low Warp is a one of a kind polyamide formulation with the ability to print nearly warp free on non heated buildplatforms. PA-CF Low Warp excels in tensile and impact strength and allows continues use at 120°C while retaining sufficient mechanical properties.

A special point of attention is the abrasive nature of the carbon fibers. In general these fibers will accelerate the nozzle-wear of brass nozzles, much faster than unfilled filaments. ColorFabb recommends to using wear resistant nozzles, such as the Olsson Ruby nozzle.

Last week, Swedish 3D specialist 3DVerkstan – our distributor in the Nordic countries contacted us. They were more than happy to provide the five winners of the challenge with an Olsson Ruby Nozzle, which would be added to the the 2 spools of PA-CF Low Warp they were already getting.

The Olsson Ruby nozzles

A fantastic gift and a very useful one as well. The winners, who were contacted about this, were very grateful and they can expect the nozzles with them soon. Thank you, 3DVerkstkan for providing these nozzles!

In a world where 3D printing users require more functional and exotic filaments, we try to keep up with the demands. Although we aim to make sure our filaments work on as many printers as possible, we know that not all materials are a good fit for every printer. Abrasive materials like PA-CF Low Warp, XT-CF20, steelFill and to a lesser extent glowFill wear out the standard brass nozzles too fast.

In the words of Daniel Ljungstig, CEO of 3DVerkstan: “The Olsson Ruby is a high-tech nozzle with a carefully designed ruby tip, which makes it have unique properties. The ruby nozzle is designed by Anders Olsson, inventor of the popular Olsson Block that is also part of the Ultimaker 2+ 3D Printers. He designed it to be able to print extremely hard materials for scientific research at Uppsala University in Sweden.”

We have seen quite some benefits over the regular brass nozzles that are the current industry standard: The ruby nozzle retains the excellent heat conducting properties of brass, while being extremely resistant to wear. This means that you can print your standard materials as usual, but also very abrasive materials such as PA-CF Low Warp, XT-CF20 and steelFill. Daniel Ljungstig adds: “In addition to this, many of our test users have reported an improved surface quality compared to standard nozzles.” 

The Olsson Ruby is a high-tech nozzle with a carefully designed ruby tip, which makes it have unique properties. The ruby nozzle is designed by Anders Olsson, inventor of the popular Olsson Block that is also part of the Ultimaker 2+ 3D Printers. You can visit the website here.

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.

3D Printing Day

Today is December 3rd and traditionally this date is known as 3D Printing Day. It was declared 3D Printing Day by 3D Hubs last year and this year again, so technically we can speak of a tradition.

There will be events all over the world at 3D Hubs. Check them out here. Last year we had an open house day on December 3rd which was fairly well attended. The people who visited us and toured our factory & print lab even saw an early version of the material that was to become nGen_FLEX a full 10 months before it was officially released!

3dprintingday-banner

Actually, as you read this our R&D team is working hard testing new materials and making sure the future of 3D printing materials is at least as exciting as it has been in the past four years.

This year we will not have an open day (no use ringing our doorbell – we will not open the door), but instead we have collected some of the coolest prints of the year. Some of them made by us, other prints made by others. We see a wide variety of awesome prints coming by every day on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and what you – our users – send us by email. This is by no means a complete list and we will highlight the most astonishing prints of the year at a later date, but we found that these astonishing showpieces deserved another moment in the spotlight…

 

The gCreate Rocket

rocket lala-5

Design: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:427789

From our own print lab, the trick of this print was in the post-processing. Ever since releasing our first metal filled filament, bronzeFill, in 2014 we have received a lot of requests about post-processing these special materials. We finally caved in and set one of our print engineers Jos to work to print the rocket, sand it, polish it and to write about it. You can find the full blog here, but before you read it just look at the image above and wonder if this really looks printed…

 

Saturn V Rocket

rocket-ig

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

“Per aspera ad astra” as they say in Latin. Who said we can’t be pretentious? O, we do love our rockets… One of the biggest eye catchers ever is the Saturn V rocket printed by Korneel Bullens. We had this collossal print (600+ pieces, 3500+ hours of printing on 4 Ultimakers and over 2.5 meters high – thank you very much) on our stand during the AM Show in Amsterdam in June of this year. Korneel is one of our most enthusiastic users with an extremely active 3D Hub here in the Netherlans. Entirely printed with nGen, our all-round co-polyester, made with Amphora™ AM3300 polymer by Eastman Chemical Company. Korneel printed the Toyota Engine with colorFabb_XT earlier and rumors have it that he is working on another ambitious project with colorFabb filaments…

You can read the full blog on the Saturn V rocket here.

 

colorFabb gift box

box-1

Design: custom made by Tony Short

It’s the little things that count. Things like running into one of our users at the TCT Show for the first time. Especially when that user is Tony Short and he has brought a gift! Tony’s background in typography and love for 3D printing (and especially our special filaments) have resulted in this fantastic gift box, based on our very own logo! The box is still a very much admired (and coveted) object in our office. Made with woodFill, bronzeFill and copperFill it was post-processed by Tony. You can find all the details in the blog we wrote about it a little while a go.

 

Medieval castle

castle

Design: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:862724

Published only yesterday by the Stacker team, this print measures 57.5mm high and was printed on their Stacker S4. Famed for its four nozzles to accommodate small series production, you can also use one nozzle on this versatile printer to create one highly detailed and impressive print like this Medieval Castle. The material of choice is, like the Saturn V rocket, nGen, an excellent material for highly detailed prints like this one. We printed this castle ourselves earlier this year, but the size that the Stacker team achieved is just downright impressive.

colorFabb is the exclusive distributor for Stacker in Europe. Get more information here or get a quote here.

 

Printing transparent…

transp_ht

Earlier this year we already posted about how to print transparent with colorFabb_HT and recently we came across Daniel Norée’s tweet where he showcased his results. The transparent block was printed by Robert from 3DVerkstan. You know 3DVerkstan as our distributor in the Nordic region, as well as the Baltics. Printing clear products mainly relies on two key aspects: extruding enough material and getting enough heat (energy) into the new material. Optimal settings can lead to some very clear and transparent parts straight from the printer and it seems that Robert has found those optimal settings. You can find our full blog on transparent printing here.

Note: an earlier version of this blog ommited the part where we give credit to Robert from 3DVerkstan and created the impression that Daniel Norée printed this transparent block. Thanks you Daniel for pointing this out and sorry Robert!

 

Steve Cox’ printing with bronzeFill

bronze_steve

Whenever Steve Cox is printing something with bronzeFill, we pay attention. Why? Look at the image above and you know. His work is always exciting and stunning. His work with bronzeFill can be considered a standard in printing and polishing. Steve’s enthusiasm about printing and his prints are contagious and we are always happy when we run into him during shows. We were even allowed to borrow the statue you see during the TCT Show! We have written about Steve’s work before, which you can find here and here.

 

The Open RC F1 car

openrc_f1_shoot-4

Design: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1834126

This comes as no surprise. We love our F1 car. Designed by Daniel Norée (yes, he of the transparent printing earlier) we increased the size with 250% and started printing with all our co-polyesters: nGen, colorFabb_XT, colorFabb_HT, XT-CF20 and the then brand new nGen_FLEX for the tires. The design by Daniel, the materials by colorFabb and printed on the Stacker S4 result in one of our most ambitious print projects. The result is stunning. We leave it to the video below to show the result:

Catch up on the full project release blog here.


As said, those are just a few of the many great prints of 2016 so far. We love seeing them coming by on social media and by email. Keep sharing them!! We keep printing ourselves as well. You can find regular updates on this very site: https://learn.colorfabb.com/category/featured-print/ 

Also, don’t forget to check out our collection of tutorials from time to time to get the best results printing with our filaments.

That’s it from colorFabb HQ for now. We hope you enjoy 3D Printing Day this year.

Happy 3D Printing Day and keep sharing your work!

– Team colorFabb

 

 


For the remainder of the year, because it is colorFabb’s fourth anniversary, we continue our Buy 4, Pay 3 promotion. Use coupon code colorfabb4you on our website to get the fourth spool you order for free! Some conditions apply though: cheapest spool is for free and samples and PLA Economy are exempt from this part of the promotion.

celebrating4years_2

Robot Action Figure

Robot Action Figure steelFill

For a little while we’ve been testing The Olsson Ruby, a truly very special nozzle. With a real gemstone at the tip of the nozzle this is one of the most abrasion resistant nozzles made. As expected it fits right into the Olsson heater block which makes it easy to swap between other nozzles.

The olsson ruby

We’ve been running two of our abrasive filaments XT-CF20 and steelFill to see what these nozzles are made of. The temperatures we’ve used during printing have been very similar to regular brass nozzles, so it seems no big temperature difference are expected using The Olsson Ruby.

In this case we printed the Robot Action Figure designed by le Fab Shop for the 2014 Paris Maker Faire. Print quality looks great with nice details and good layer adhesion.

We’ll be printing a lot more with The Olsson Ruby in the next few weeks to really put it through its paces. If you’re interested in more information on The Olsson Ruby project visit the 3D printing forum.