nGen Transparent Prints

With nGen we offer an all-round 3D printing filament for every day use. One advantage over PLA is its glass temperature (of 85 degrees C, double that of PLA). Another is the special chemical make-up of the base material, 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. Read more on what nGen is. Earlier this year we launched 6 more nGen colors – all of them transparent.

Below are some of the recent prints we made:

All designs by Richie_i3: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3028886

All the prints were made in our print lab on the Ultimaker 2+. We used the following settings:

  • Nozzle diameter: 0.8
  • Layerheight: 0.5
  • Nozzle temperature: 240C
  • Bed temperature: 75C
  • Extrusion multiplier: 1.4
  • Vase mode: on

nGen works extremely well on the Ultimaker printers. Find out more on the standard settings we recommend here.

 

Back in March we added 6 transparent colors to our nGen portfolio:

 

 

The colors were added to a rich mix of 17 colors, bringing the total to 23 colors of nGen filament you can choose from and ship from stock! 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.

It was launched almost 3 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 are also available.

 

 

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

The Prudence Project

Whenever people think about 3D printing, they mostly think about desktop 3D printing. Mostly. With the Stacker, Blackbelt and other large printers the world is slowly opening up to larger size prints. But sometimes we come across a print that is just huge. Think: Almost 2 meters huge. Enter The Prudence Project by Mikrotvornica from Zagreb, Croatia, made with colorFabb PLA Economy.

 

 The full sized print (190cm), human for scale

Prudence is a sculpture produced for contemporary artist Abigail O’Brien from Dublin, Ireland. “Last November, the RHA (Royal Hibernian Academy)  presented Abigail O’Brien RHA, Prudence and the Game of Golf in the RHA Ashford Gallery, a photographic, sculpture and sound installation. Having completed Fortitude, The Collector, 2005 and Temperance, Oatfield Sweet Factory, 2009, Prudence is the third body of work in O’Briens series, The Temporal (Cardinal) Virtues, which are Fortitude, Temperance, Prudence, and Justice.”  

Says Marko Salopek of Mikrotvornica: “After the initial contact with Abigail and acceptance of our offer we started with the work. The request was to 3D print sculpture of a female golfer with total height of 190 cm. The STL file we were given was great but since it was produced from 3D scan there were some parts of the model that needed to be repaired and removed to give her that desired look Abigail requested. After we completed 3D model repair, we decided to build our own semi-large size 3D printer to help us 3D print this sculpture. Nikola was an architect in constructing our custom made 3D printer (400x400x350 mm – CoreXY build). Big digital 3D model was cut into 21 pieces at the most optimal places for easiest 3D printing avoiding any support. Also each individual part was optimized for easy assembly and gluing. They were sliced and 3D printed on our Modax3D Core 400 3D printer using exclusively colorFabb material.”

Test models

With PLA Economy Marko, a long-time user of colorFabb filaments, had found a great material that has proven to be very reliable with large print jobs. He continues: “To finish the physical model we used high gloss surface finish as requested by our client. Several layers of syringe putty was applied to remove any imperfections and layers in 3D print and of course lots of hand sanding after every layer. Later on we applied primer paint and finally high gloss paint varnish for the final look.”

 

So far they have made 3 large sculptures of Prudence and total of 15 small (30 cm in height) versions. Below is a short summary of the Prudence in numbers:

  • 21 individual parts glued together
  • total of 17.526 grams of colorFabb PLA was used (in our version 3)
  • total of 453 hours print time (in our version 3)
  • variable layer heights from 120 microns to 300 microns depending on the part of the sculpture and the version of the sculpture (big or small).

Glueing the parts together

About Mikrotvornica

Mikrotvornica is a young startup company founded in Zagreb, Croatia by Nikola Blažević and Marko Salopek. Interesting thing is that Prudence project was a main reason they started Mikrotvornica. Before the project, both of them were working on their own individual ventures in 3D printing. Working on the Prudence project made them realize they worked very well together and decided to join forces.

Now, almost a year later, they have grown into young startup with strong foundations and great potential for growth. In Croatia we started local brand named 3DPrintaj. Under that name they bring everything 3D printing related to the local market. From 3D printing services to 3D modeling, 3D printer and material shop as well as education (as elsewhere in the world, educational sector for 3D printing is growing fast in Croatia).

Regarding their international efforts, Prudence remains our biggest project so far. With that project Marko and Nikola realized there is great opportunity in 3D printing art. That is why they are now actively looking for agents across Europe to connect us with artists who are willing to work with us on their art projects. Interested? Contect them here.

Being painted

About PLA Economy

It makes sense they chose PLA Economy for their project. It is a highly popular filament used for bulk projects by many of our users… and ourselves.

PLA Economy is a fantastic PLA grade which we launched in November of 2016. 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. 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.

 

nGen_LUX on the Builder Extreme

When it comes to printing large and colorful objects, the combination of nGen_LUX on the Builder Extreme is hard to beat. The Extreme series of printers by Dutch printer company Builder are large scale printers for professional, but affordable 3D printing.

nGen_LUX works really well with the color mix tool of the Builder Extreme. Various Builder Extreme customers use nGen_LUX for printing outrageous art which bring the object to life.

How does color mixing work? Exclusive to the Builder printers, Builder has developed software that is able to change the percentage of both extruders in your gcode while printing. For example, printing from 100% yellow (bottom) to 100% pink (top) will create an orange hybrid along the way. On their website they compare it with squeezing out different colors of tooth paste through one opening.

In the words of the Builder team: “nGen_LUX is the perfect material when looking for a shiny finish with almost no visible lines.”

The vases were sliced with Simplify and printed at 0.2mm layer with a 0.4mm nozzle and with general nGen settings. With nGen_LUX we were already able to make amazing prints, but with the color mixing process unique prints are possible that would stun everyone!

When size matters…

 

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.

Ancient Greek Helmet

Back in August we came across the Instagram account of Andreas Mielonen and were immediately blown away by the work he had posted there: An ancient Greek helmet, printed with bronzeFill on his Ultimaker 2+:

All images in this blog post by Andreas Mielonen

We contacted Andreas to share a bit more about this fantastic print and he was very gracious in sharing his pictures and the process of printing. Andreas (31) lives in Stockholm, Sweden, and has been interested in 3D graphics since watching the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Andreas: “I was 3D-modeling as a hobby until five years ago when it became my job. Since then I’ve been involved in making commercials, illustrations for science articles and infomercials. A couple of years ago I started getting interested in 3D-printing and started to go to 3D-printing meetups in Stockholm which spurred my interest even more.”

After attending some workshops he decided to buy an Ultimaker 2+.

About the fantastic print of the Greek helmet he says: “I got the idea for the helmet when I got a roll of colorFabb’s bronzeFill and checked out what other people had done with it and saw how good it looked with the blue/greenish patina. So, instantly I thought of the amazing greek bronze helmets. I  designed the helmet in Maya and sculpted in the details in Mudbox. Before I started to print the helmet in bronzefill I made a test print in standard PLA in 1:4 scale, the scale I wanted for the bronzefill version was 1:3 but knew that if the helmet prints well in 1:4 scale the larger version won’t be a problem.”

The settings Andreas found working best on the Ultimaker 2+ were:

Layer Height: 0.2mm
Speed: 30mm/s
Temperature: 215C
Material Flow: 108%

Andreas used the Olsson Ruby Nozzle. Although not necessary for bronzeFill, he used it nonetheless. Also because the stand was printed with our carbon filled XT-CF20 which requires nozzles that can withstand extra wear due to its abrassive nature. (We wrote about our experiences with the Olsson Ruby Nozzle before).

 

Post-processing

Of course where bronzeFill, and our other metal filled filaments truly shine, is in the post processing of the prints.

Andreas explains the way he worked: “I started the post processing with sanding under water to prevent heat buildup using grit 240 sandpaper and finishing off with grit 600. When I was happy with the sanding I made a mixture of salt and vinegar sprayed the helmet two times a day for a week with the mixture, and kept it in a bucket with a lid to contain the smell and enhance the effect of the salt-vinegar mixture. After one week it had a nice patina and I used black oil paint to make the finishing touches.”

“I like the look of the ColorFabb XT CF20 both when it comes straight off the print bed and when it’s been sanded, so I choose that to print the stand for the helmet.”

We thank Andreas for all his input and the images he so kindly provided to us! Please follow Andreas on Instagram (link here) to see his latest creations. As you can see his love for Lord of the Rings has also translated into a terrific print of a small salt box from the Two Towers, made with woodFill. We will write another post about this soon!

 

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. Before this fantastic ancient Greek helmet we have seen other great projects come to life in this year alone made with bronzeFill like the enormous Octolamp 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.

Dodecahedron with colorFabb nGen

Today’s print, straight from our own print lab, is the Rhombic Dodecahedron Derived Figure by Fred Bartels, which we printed entirely with our all-round nGen filament.

dodecahedron-2

Design by Fred Bartels: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:539489

We used the Delta Tower in our print lab to achieve the build height of 40cm for this print and printed with a 0.2mm layer height. This work of art is perfectly suited for our nGen filament and we selected the stunning light blue color for this print.

Printing high resolution is no problem with nGen. With good performance on overhanging surfaces and great stability during print we think this makes nGen a great all-round filament for every day use.

nGen is made from Eastman Amphora™ AM3300 3D polymer. Like colorFabb_XT, colorFabb_HT and nGen_FLEX, it is part of Eastman’s Amphora range of copolyesters for 3D printing. Find more about co-polyesters, what they are and what the advantages are by visiting our previous blog.

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.

img_9985

Amphora 3300 has been made into high-quality filament that exhibits advanced overhang ability, excellent looks, and large printing temperature range—empowering large panel of users to create durable and useful items. With the unique combination of a low processing temperature and an elevated temperature resistance, nGen can quickly print creations that are functional, durable, efficient, and attractive.

 

You can find more information about nGen by clicking here. nGen is available in 17 colors.

Learn more about printing with nGen by visiting our tutorial.