It's done! I needed a solution to properly store my calipers, so why not print it? Toolbox inlays are a perfect use case for the smooth feel of #varioShore. Printed at 250°C with 65% flow saves material and results in softer parts for extra protection. pic.twitter.com/XBJNDZMrJy
Last year we launched our new flagship filament: varioShore TPU. This week we release the black varioShore TPU in addition to the natural color already available. But we’re not done yet. Hot on the heels of our very succesfull #MadeWithcolorFabb contest we have yet another contest.
This time it is a more specific contest and, you may have guessed it, we are looking for prints made with varioShore TPU. The unique properties enable a large group of makers to create amazing functional prints. We have seen cosplay, insoles and drones being printed and are looking for the next big thing! Inspire us and your fellow makers with your creativity.
What is varioShore TPU?
varioShore TPU allows users to vary the density of the material by adjusting temperature and material throughput (speed & layerheight). At temperatures between 200 and 250C the materials will start to expand to roughly 1.4-1.6 times its original volume. This means the material can be printed at low flow rates (60-70%), to compensate the active foaming, which in return gives very soft printed parts. Between 190-200C the material can be printed without foaming, resulting in different haptics and harder prints compared to foamed samples.
The base TPU is a 92A material, which will work with most standard extruder set-ups for both Bowden and direct drive systems. Learn more about varioShore in our lengthy blog post.
To enable you to print with our innovative filament we also lowered the price of varioShore TPU with 10% during the contest. Click here to head to our webshop!
Contest is now closed. All winners are announced below.
In January 2020 we’re holding a #MadeWithcolorFabb contest. All our customers are invited to share their prints on social media. Every five days we select a winner who gets four spools of filament. At the end of the month we select a winning Read more about the contest here. We will select several winners during the month which will be posted below (most recent one on top).
January overall winner
The big winner is the impressive, and still on-going, Mimphonium project. Check out the website for more information. Printed parts are made with PLA/PHA Standard White. Domenico Marseglia is the winner of 10 spools of colorFabb filaments!
January 30th
https://www.instagram.com/p/B76jVxuItX0/
A holder for a monochrystalline quartz, part of a million dollar laser amplifier by YAGjunky made with PLA/PHA (original Instagram post)
When you need to use a garden hose but you don’t have a garden tap.. Ez! Just print an adaptor to a quick connector and problem solved! Printed on a @Creality3dprint CR10S with @ColorFabb PLA Economy Silver. Design by @incoog on @thingiverse # 2300683.
We’re always curious what you make with our filaments. With the holidays fresh behind us we want to know what you printed recently. With #MadeWithColorFabb we start the new year with a month-long contest. Win four, or maybe even ten (10!) spools of filament! Read the rules & start posting.
It’s easy: Share your print on social media (Twitter, Facebookor Instagram), tag us with our official accounts and use the hashtag #MadeWithColorFabb
That’s all you have to do. O, and give credit to the designer if it is not your own.
What?
Any print will do, as long as it is made with colorFabb filament. We will judge based on originality, functionality, quality and prefer new and recent prints over previously posted prints. You know you’re awesome, we know it. Now it’s time to show the rest of the world and all our followers.
Who?
You post, we judge. Judges will be fair and unbribeable and consist of colorFabb employees.
Why?
Because we like to reward great prints. Every five days we will give away four free spools of filament to what we judge is the best entry. Cut-off dates are January 5th, 10th, 15th, 20th, 25th and 30th. On the 31st we will give away 10 free spools to the best print of the entire month – which may or may not be one of those who have previously won.
When?
The entire month of January. Tag us and use #MadeWithColorFabb and you’re in. Only photos and videos uploaded until January 31st 23:59 CET apply.
Where?
We’ll re-post social media and announce winners there, in our blogs and newsletter. By participating you agree that we can use your work for promotional purposes.
A couple of months ago we challenged our users to come up with a design for us to print. The design had to be functional and to be printed with our highly functional PA-CF Low Warp filament. This Functional Design Challenge was quite a success and we announced 5 winners early July.
One of the perks was that we would print their design and send the prints to them. We have finished the prints and they will be shipped today. Below you can see the results:
Brent Heylen / part for the Shell Eco marathon, a school project
Original design:
Printed results:
Pol Guixe / filter box for a Fiat Panda
Original sesign:
Printed results:
Peter Roodenburg / Prusa fan shroud
Original design:
Printed results:
Oscar Kogenhop / personal shoe stretcher
Original design:
Printed results:
Jaromir Efler / bashguard for a trail bike
Original design:
Printed results:
All entries were judged by three experienced designers and 3D printers:
Brent Wright, US – founder of LifeNabled and changing lifes by using 3D printing. See some of his amazing work here.
Gijs Houdijk, NL – technical development manager at colorFabb, knows 3D printing and our filaments better than you know yourself.
The winners received each 2 spools of PA-CF Low Warp and an Olsson Rubby Nozzle, graciously provided by 3DVerkstan in Sweden. Read more about why you should the Olsson Ruby Nozzle for all abrasive 3D printing materials in our recent blog.
All prints were made on various Ultimaker printers.
About PA-CF Low Warp
We launched PA-CF Low Warp late last year. It 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. The formulation has been modified to reduce the uptake of moisture by half compared to PA6 and it also takes about 4 times longer to reach the saturation point. This makes PA-CF Low Warp less sensitive to moisture than most other nylon filaments available in the market.
This tailormade formulation of polyamide features the mechanical properties of a PA6. Tensile strength was measured at 77,99 MPa and impact strength (notched) was measured at 5,44KJ/m2, test specimens both printed on Ultimaker 2+, 260C 0.1mm layerheight with 100% infill.
PA-CF Low Warp allows continues use at 120°C while retaining sufficient properties for the intended application. For those looking to print with nylon, moisture is a serious topic. PA-CF low warp has been modified to lower the uptake of moisture and slow down the time it takes to fully saturate by 4 times. In practice this means the filament is quite forgiving and user should be able to print with the material without noticing extreme influences of moisture uptake.
Users can now print high strength material without the need of heated chambers. The materials shows very good results for 3D printed parts compared to injection molded data, with only minimal loss in performance. This is a result of the excellent printability of the material, enabling users to acquire optimal performance on desktop FFF 3d printers.
In February 2018 colorFabb celebrates its 5th anniversary and we’re having a small contest. You can win a value pack with 16 colorFabb spools of choice by simply sharing your favorite print you made in the past 5 years with colorFabb filaments!
You can share your print(s) on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram and use the hashtag #5yearscolorfabb. Also mention the colorFabb filament used. At the end of the month we will choose one post and that person will get a value pack of colorFabb filaments of his or her choice. That is 16 spools!
So, that’s quite an easy way to participate. Please tag us and use that particular hashtag (#5yearscolorfabb) to participate so we can track all entries.
Has it really been five years this month? In February 2013 we launched our first products at the RapidPro trade show here in the Netherlands. We had about 20 colors PLA/PHA and only 2.85mm filament. It was still in the early days when there were only a few of us and we constantly had to explain: “No, we are not selling the printers, we make the filament.” (Disclaimer: these days we do sell printers!)
One of our first tweets when we had 10 followers or so.
A lot happened in the past five years. We basically started in a garage booth with an idea and a lot of ambition. The idea is still the same: to bring the best possible filament to the market and make sure we meet the need of our customers. The ambition has only grown over the past years. The only thing we left behind was the small garage and the little office above. To give you an idea, the image below was our print lab / logistics:
Scale: almost 1:1
In the meantime we moved twice, went from 20 products to 500+ SKUs (with more to come in 2018), expanded our staff from 3 to 20+, we became an independent company, ship to 70+ countries worldwide, have the best customers in the world (yes, that’s you) and have been running, working, printing and producing almost 24/7 to make sure you get the best possible filament to print with.
colorFabb has become a company and brand we are very proud of. We started to produce and ship filaments, but we do so much more these days: we advice, we design, we print, we offer various printers. Check our services page for more information.
You can find some recaps per year by clicking below (2013, when we started is sadly lacking, but believe us when we say it was awesome):
Which brings us to the beginning of 2018. And we know, but don’t tell yet, it is going to be an amazing year. We have some great developments in the pipeline and will share news with you soon. Of course we have nGen_LUX coming up later this month, but also some more great projects lined up.
But now, our fifth birthday party. How are we going to celebrate, you ask?
Buy 5, Pay 4!
First of all, a discount for you. Or rather a free spool! For the rest of the month you get your fifth spool for free. Add five spools (or a multiplier) in your basket and we deduct the costs of the cheapest spool! Easy. Small print made big: This discount not work on samples or printers though and not in combination with other discounts, but you will find this to be a great deal! Due to the nature of our XL spools a slight variety in pricing may arise when choosing those.
What do you have to do? Nothing, we have already set up the system this way.
Go to our webshop now to get the best deal in town. Remember, we ship daily, worldwide and from stock.
Contest
Last week we shared a lot of prints that we saw coming by in one week alone (check out the blog here) and we have seen thousands of prints in the past five years. We ask you to post or re-post your favorite prints made with colorFabb filaments on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram and use the hashtag #5yearscolorfabb. Also mention the colorFabb filament used. At the end of the month we will choose one post and that person will get a valuepack of colorFabb filaments of his or her choice. That is 16 spools!
So, that’s quite an easy way to participate. Please tag us and use that particular hashtag (#5yearscolorfabb) to participate so we can track all entries.
Update: we are all out of Print+ head phone kits. If you order a value pack now you will receive our awesome filament, but not the Print+ kit.
Earlier today we posted the prints we made with the Print+ head phone kits we received last week.
We used woodFill & PETG Economy for one headphone set and nGen Dark Gray for the other one. Of course, with our variety of 3D printing filaments, you can make a lot of combinations and make your headphones truly unique. You can read the original post here.
The casual observer may have noticed that in that very same post we mentioned we ordered 25 kits during the Kickstarter campaign. We used some ourselves, but what to do with the remaining 20+ kits? Hint: we are not going to use them ourselves…
Yours… soon.
We had decided to give them away. To you! With every value pack ordered (with the exception of PLA Economy and PETG Economy) you will get a free Print+ headphone kit! (Retail value: € 35). The value packs that are eligible for getting a free headset kit are:
Update: Please note that the limited amount of headset kits we had available has run out and therefor this promotion has ended. But if you have a Print+ headset please enter our challenge below for a chance to win 4 free spools of colorFabb filaments.
But that’s not all…
We challenge you to print the coolest and most original headphone set with colorFabb filaments! Then post it on social media (Twitter, Facebook or Instagram) and tag us.
Extra points for an original combination of materials and if photographed in a cool real-life environment. The most original entry will receive 4 free spools of colorFabb filament!!
So there it is: order a value pack and receive a free Print+ DIY headset kit you have a serious chance to get 4 free spools of colorFabb filaments as well!
Head to our website& choose the value pack of your choice!
It’s time-lapse challenge time again! The rules are pretty basic: switch on the printer, print something cool and make a time lapse of it. A time-lapse allows you to capture the magic of 3d printing one frame at a time, when played back at normal speed time appears to be moving faster and thus lapsing.
You can 3d print anything you want, use any type of 3d printer and material. We’re looking for time-lapses that capture the beauty of 3d printing and do this in an exceptional and clever way.
The winners
We know that making a time-lapse is a lot of work and takes quite a bit of preparation, that’s why we’re rewarding every eligible contestant with a sample pack. All entries that are posted on Twitter and Facebook (hashtag #colorfabbtimelapse) will be re-posted for the world to see.
And what can you win?
First prize:
A year long supply of colorFabb filaments of choice! Every month we will send you four spools of your choice to keep on printing, so that is 48 spools of filaments to be won! That will also include the materials to be released in 2016!
Second prize:
Two value packs with the filaments of your choice: 32 spools.
Third prize:
One value pack with the filaments of your choice: 16 spools.
Every eligible contestant will also receive a sample pack of colorFabb materials! All entries that are posted on Twitter and Facebook (hashtag #colorfabbtimelapse) will be re-posted for the world to see.
Selecting the winner
The contest will stop on January 18th at midnight (CET). colorFabb will choose the 10 best entries and will then conduct a public poll where everybody can vote for a full week. After this, the winner is announced. All prizes and sample packs will be shipped after this date.
Printer settings and slicer settings so other people can learn from you approach.
Do not forget to acknowledge the original designer of the model you’re printing, if possible link to his work, portfolio or website.
State the material that you’re printing with.
Upload the video to youtube with the following tag: „colorfabb timelapse”
include „colorFabb” in the title of your youtube video when uploading
Must be uploaded between 24-12-2015 and 18-01-2016.
colorFabb tag must be visible in your time-lapse, see document colorfabb-time-lapse-contest-tag.pdf
No old entries allowed. To ensure this, you must use our tag which needs to be included in every time lapse video: print it, cut it and place it near the print. colorfabb-time-lapse-contest-tag.pdf
Print guidelines
You are free to print anything you like so get those creative juices flowing and think of something amazing to print!
Time-lapse guidelines:
There is only on rule for the time-lapse, it should show a 3d printer in action. You can decide yourself how you’re going to show this, surprise us with some original thoughts!
Winning designs will be:
original, something we haven’t seen yet.
complex printed parts, showing off your amazing 3d printer.
a quality time-lapse video, take care of composition, timing etc.
[/restab]
[restab title=”Rules”]Entering the competition:
Entering the competition:
The time-lapse contest is open to everyone except employees and families of colorFabb. Multiple entries are welcome, team efforts are also more then welcome.
Furthermore we want you to:
Agree to be bound by the decisions of the judges (Jury).
Warrant that you are eligible to participate.
Warrant that the submission, i.e. time-lapse video, is your original work.
Warrant neither the work nor its use infringes the intellectual property rights (whether a patent, utility model, functional design right, aesthetic design right, trademark, copyright or any other intellectual property right) of any other person.
Are not entitled to any compensation or reimbursement for any costs.Agree colorFabb and associate resellers have the right to promote all entries.
The awarded participant is solely liable for the payment of all taxes, duties and other similar measures if imposed on the reward pursuant to the legislation of the country of his/her residence, domicile, citizenship, workplace, or any other criterion of similar nature.
Winners will be contacted by colorFabb staff to check contact information and any other information necessary to receive the award.
Term
This contest wil start on 24-12-2015 and the deadline for submitting entries will be 18-01-2016.
[/restab]
[restab title=”Winner”]And the winners is :
It has taken us quite a while to decide on a winner for the time-lapse contest. As hard has it was to decide on the 12 finalists, it has taken us considerably longer to find a winner. The jury consisted of:
Criteria we looked at were of course the prints themselves, the quality, application and the film itself. We, the jury, have to come to the following top 3:
#1 – 12x 4 spools of filament
REUse it by Aklih Design:
#2 – 2 value packs!
Cannon by Labern:
#3 – 1 value pack!
What is 3D printing by Colton1981:
We congratulate the winners with their achievements. We will contact them soon about the collection of their prizes. All contestants will be contacted soon about the sample packs that all contestants will receive.
We had a blast in the past few weeks watching all the videos and the hard work that was put into them. We hope you enjoyed it too and we will come up with another contest later this year!
COLORFABB TIME-LAPSE CONTEST – NOW CLOSED WINNERS WILL BE ANOUNCED 8th AUGUST
Get your camera, laptop and 3d printer ready, it’s time for some time-lapse action! At colorFabb we like time-lapse videos a lot! We try to make at least 2 every week, printing great designs posted on thingiverse or youmagine. A time-lapse allows you to capture the magic of 3d printing one frame at a time, when played back at normal speed time appears to be moving faster and thus lapsing.
You can 3d print anything you want, use any type of 3d printer and material. We’re looking for time-lapses that capture the beauty of 3d printing and do this in an exceptional and clever way.
The winners
We know that making a time-lapse is a lot of work and takes quite a bit of preparation, that’s why we’re rewarding the 1st place winner with a colorFabb Value Pack! The Value Pack retails for 400,- euro excl. tax and allows you to configure 16 spools of filament yourself! The Second place will be rewarded with 4 spools of material and the third gets to select 2 spools of material.
1st – colorFabb Value Pack
2nd – 4 spools of colorFabb 3d printing filament
3rd – 2 spools of colorFabb 3d printing filament
Most views – 2 spools of colorFabb 3d printing filament
Printer settings and slicer settings so other people can learn from you approach.
Do not forget to acknowledge the original designer of the model you’re printing, if possible link to his work, portfolio or website.
State the material that you’re printing with.
Upload video to youtube with the following tag: „colorFabb Time-Lapse contest”
include „colorFabb” in the title of your youtube video when uploading
Must be uploaded between 25-06-2014 and 25-07-2014.
Print guidelines:
You are free to print anything you like so get those creative juices flowing and think of something amazing to print!
Time-lapse guidelines:
There is only on rule for the time-lapse, it must show a 3d printer 3d printing a model. You can decide yourself how you’re going to show this, surprise us with some original thoughts!
winning designs will be:
original, something we haven’t seen yet.
complex printed parts, showing off your amazing 3d printer.
a quality time-lapse video, take care of composition, timing etc.
most views:
– although we don’t associate number of views with quality or originality, we do want to reward the video with the most views on youtube.
[/restab]
[restab title=”Rules”]Entering the competition:
The time-lapse contest is open to everyone except employees, beta-testers, resellers and families of the colorFabb brand. Multiple entries are welcome, team efforts are also more then welcome.
By entering the contest you:
Agree to be bound by the decisions of the judges (Jury).
Warrant that you are eligible to participate.
Warrant that the submission, i.e. time-lapse video, is your original work.
Warrant neither the work nor its use infringes the intellectual property rights (whether a patent, utility model, functional design right, aesthetic design right, trademark, copyright or any other intellectual property right) of any other person.
Are not entitled to any compensation or reimbursement for any costs.
Agree colorFabb and associate resellers have the right to promote all entries.
The awarded participant is solely liable for the payment of all taxes, duties and other similar measures if imposed on the reward pursuant to the legislation of the country of his/her residence, domicile, citizenship, workplace, or any other criterion of similar nature.
Winners will be contacted by colorFabb staff to check contact information and any other information necessary to receive the award.
Term
This contest wil start on 25-06-2014 and the deadline for submitting entries will be 25-07-2014 After this a 14 day period will allow all entries to be viewed on youtube and collect as many views as possible. In the mean time colorFabb staff jury will decide on the winning entries which will be announced 08-08-2014.
[/restab]
[restab title=”Winner”]And the winners is :
First of all we need to start this post with a big thank you to all participants of the Time-Lapse contest! Overall we’re impressed with the quality of the videos and the amount of care and attention the contenders have put into their work.
All entries are listed in our youtube playlist which gives a great overview of the various types of 3d printers that are being used nowadays. We’ve seen the new Printrbot Metal but also a few cool RepRap’s and plug-and-play Makerbots and Ultimakers all revealing their print process in a time-lapse.
The winners of the time-lapse contest have been reviewed by Ruud Rouleaux, Sander Strijbos and Gijs Houdijk of the colorFabb team. This wasn’t an easy task since there were so many great entries. The ingredient we were looking for are originality, complex 3d prints and a quality time-lapse video. We think the winners incorporated these elements best and therefore deserve to be the winners of the very first colorFabb challenge!
We also wanted to reward the time-lapse with the most youtube views. At the time of writing this post the most views, not including the 1st, 2nd and 3rd place winners, is [xxx] by:
Once again thank you to all participants! We liked the first challenge so much that we will definitely be organizing another challenge. So expect more opportunities for winning free colorFabb 3d printing filament!
