colorFabb_HT – made with Eastman Tritan™

colorFabb_HT empowers professional users to create more durable and useful items, making prototyping truly functional. This opens up new areas in which 3D printed applications can be successfully applied. With certain FDA approvals and chemical resistance it is an engineering grade material that has been in high demand with the professional users and hobbyists alike.

 

Print near transparent parts with colorFabb_HT (original blog post here)

colorFabb_HT: Tritan Technology

colorFabb_HT is made with Eastman Amphora™ HT5300 and is a low-odor and styrene-free material uniquely suited for advanced 3D printing users, particularly those who need their models to exhibit excellent durability, toughness and high temperature resistance with a Tg of over 100⁰C. Amphora is Eastman’s brand of co-polyesters dedicated for 3D printing. Our nGen, colorFabb_XT and nGen_FLEX are also made with Amphora materials.

Image result for eastman amphora

colorFabb_HT is enabled by Eastman Tritan™ copolyester technology. Tritan is Eastman’s flagship product and has been succesfully added to the 3D printing portfolio with colorFabb_HT. Learn more about Tritan on Eastman’s dedicated website.

You can find more documentation here:

  • Technical Data Sheet (TDS)
  • Safety Data Sheet (SDS)
  • Product Regulatory Information Sheet (PRIS)

 

Copolyesters explained

The way we see it, FDM 3D printing filaments will be all about functionality in the future. How you are going to use your prints in the real world will define what material you choose. We have found a lot of characteristics in Eastman’s range of Amphora co-polyesters that offer functionality, durability and efficiency. Added benefits compared to ABS are the low-odor while printing and that Amphora based filaments are styrene free.

Compared to PLA, Amphora features a much better heat resistance, starting at 75C for colorFabb XT, 85C for colorFabb nGen and 100C for colorFabb HT. Below is a chart how our range of co-polyesters compare to other materials like PLA and ABS:

Learn more about co-polyesters in our previous blog.

 

High tech clamps, printed with colorFabb_HT on the Leapfrog Bolt by Peter de Corte

colorFabb_HT is uniquely suited for advanced 3D printing users, particular those who need their creations to exhibit excellent durability, toughness and temperature resistance. You can find more information on our dedicated landing page.

 

 

colorFabb_HT prints

One of the unique features of colorFabb_HT is the ability to print near transparent parts. Due to the high flow characteristics it is now possible to print parts that are almost see-through. Check out the blog we wrote about it previously here.

 

Original post

Another aspect of the filament is its ability to print extremely detailed prints, like seen below:

Tiny Hellboy by Geoff W. / Hex3D. Original post 

Although our range of co-polyesters already look extremely good, there are quite a few way how you can perform so-called secondary operations, like glueing, painting, etc. Click the image below for more information:

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Below are some of the prints we made in the past few years with colorFabb_HT:

Old and broken laundry dryer part left, new printed one on the right. Original post

 

 

Air gun adapter by colorFabb. Original post

 

Brushless motor by MakeSEA, colorFabb_HT print in combination with steelFill. Original post 

 

Vertical windmill by Michael Broderick. Original post

 

Dremel tool holder by mitchnajmitch, printed with colorFabb_HT and woodFill. Original post

colorFabb_HT is available in five colors, as 700gr and 2kg spools. It ships daily and from stock. Click here to go to our webshop.

colorFabb_HT is available in Clear, Black, White, Light Gray and Dark Gray

OpenRC F1 project release

Earlier this year we came across the new design Daniel Norée made: an F1 car, his follow-up to the OpenRC Truggy design we had printed previously. “After a bit of thinking I came to the conclusion that a Formula 1 car would probably a perfect follow up project to the Truggy!” says Daniel Norée. Hence, the OpenRC Formula 1 car was born.

As he stepped up his game we felt we had to step up ours as well. First of all we set our print engineer Jos Deelen at work with scaling up the design to 250%. When it came to a choice of materials we didn’t have to think for very long: co-polyesters. Which one? All of them. We found that different parts had different requirements and with nGen, colorFabb_XT, colorFabb_HT, XT-CF20 and our brand new nGen_FLEX. we almost had all our bases covered. If you want to know more about co-polyesters, click here for a blog we posted this summer explaining these great materials we developed with Eastman Chemical Company.

The tyres were made with our new nGen_FLEX filament, released during the TCT Show om September 28th 2016. You can read all about our new semi-flexible filament here: https://learn.colorfabb.com/ngen_flex/

We have published the 250% scaled files on Thingiverse: Thing:1834126. On Thingiverse you can find all the files as well as a more detailed description about how to build your own 1m long OpenRC Formula 1 car. The helmet used in the driver seat is Thing:170222.

We are very proud of the result:

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“I learned alot from the OpenRC Truggy and i wanted to use what i had learned in the new project,”  Daniel told us. His aim was to design a car with a simpler design and without the hard-to-source parts. According to Daniel, another important part was the material: “While many failed on the Truggy due to the need of hard to print materials like Polycarbonate and it´s likes this time materials like PLA or Co-Polyesters should do the job.” 

He spent a couple of intense weeks in Fusion 360 CAD designing the F1 and the result was introduced at a trade fair in Sweden together with Autodesk.

Although Daniel aimed to make a simpler design, the sheer size of the F1 car was a great challenge to get it right. And we did get it right. Due to the size of several parts we used the Stacker S4 printer for the bulk of the print work with great results. It measures a full 107cm from the front to the end. Using all the functional materials (old, new and upcoming…) we had at our disposal we completed the job and recently we took the car out for a test drive.

You can see the results below:

The F1 car will be on display at the TCT Show next week where you can find us at stand B36, running the co-polyester filaments on the Stacker S4.

You can find more about our co-polyesters on our dedicated landing pages for nGen and colorFabb_HT. Our colorFabb_XT, nGen, colorFabb_HT and XT-CF20 are available online.

Follow Daniel Norée’s work and especially his Open RC project here: http://danielnoree.com/?cat=6

Get a quote for the Stacker S4! For the USA, click here. For Europe, click here.

openrc_f1_shoot-2

 

openrc_f1_shoot