Hinge

3D printing is a great tool at the work place and around the house for making replacement parts on the go. It even enables people with the right design skills to customize the needed part to his or her liking. To make it even better, if required. We recently printed a hinge, a replacement part for a double hinged connector.

Custom design by colorFabb

We printed this hinge with PETG Economy on the Ultimaker 3, using the default CPE Engineering Fine settings in Cura.

 

The convenience of replacing

This hinge is one of several repaclement parts we have made in recent years with various materials:

Printing on the Ultimaker printers is easier than ever. Various colorFabb materials can be selected in the Market Place in Cura for effortless printing. Filaments like our Color on Demand PLA, XT-CF20, nGen (under AM3300) and woodFill have their settings pre-programmed for the Ultimakers 3, S3 and S5 printers.

Click here to go to our blog about the Ultimaker Market Place.

 

For the hinge print we used the CPE Engineering Fine setting, which resulted in a great and functional print.

 

Original hinge design

 

The hinge in real life

 

About PETG Economy

PETG Economy is part of our Economy line of commodity filaments: PLA and PETG, available on large spools (starting at 2.2kg) in a limited amount of popular colors.

colorFabb Economy: Large volume, High quality, Low price

 

colorFabb’s Economy line is developed for users who need a lot of filament. By adding a specifically sourced PETG to our portfolio we are adding more functionality and diversity to our range of filaments.

As with PLA Economy we have extensively tested this filament in our print lab. Both in production and print lab we have adhered to the highest colorFabb quality – this is something we simply do not compromise on.

The idea behind these filaments is to keep it at a very competitive price. Retail price of PETG Economy is € 40 excluding VAT and shipping. This works out to be a little over € 18 per kg for high quality filament.

 

Tips, tricks and settings

At colorFabb we have a well-equipped 3D printing studio with many popular 3d printers. Our grade of Economy PETG has been tested using various 3D printers, which has resulted in the following recommended settings:

Advised 3d printing temperature: 235C-255C

Advised 3d print speed: 30 – 50 mm/s

Advised Heated bed: 70-80C

Cooling fan: 75/100% fan cooling for best aesthetics, this gives best performance on overhangs and small details. For best mechanical performance try printing with the least amount of cooling needed, for optimal layer adhesion.

For Ultimaker 3, S3 and S5 settings we recommend the CPE Engineering Fine setting in Cura, like we used for this hinge.

 

Availability

PETG Economy is available from stock and ships daily & worldwide. We offer 5 colors (Black, White, Red, Dark Gray and Light Gray) as 2.2kg, 4.5kg and 8kg spools. Click here for the availability.

varioShore TPU infill

Last year we launched our new flagship product: varioShore TPU. It is a 3D printing flament which is flexible in more ways than one. Even after release we keep testing filaments in our printlab to see what the best practice is. One thing we keep testing amongst others is varioShore TPU’s infill and have opted for the gyroid infill.

We used Cura’s gyroid infill setting on the Ultimaker S5. The gyroid structure, aside from having a nice wave-y pattern, ensures an even distribution of strength throughout the model. It belongs to a class of mathematically minimal surfaces, giving the same strength as a hexagon infill, but with less material.

“A gyroid is a naturally occurring structure which be found in butterfly wings and even within membranes inside cells. In 2017, MIT researchers discovered that when graphene was shaped into a gyroid structure, it had exceptional strength properties at low densities. They then discovered however, that the crucial aspect of this was actually the gyroid structure itself, and that other materials such as plastic could benefit from this.” ~ Source: Matt’s Hub

 

The print settings used on the Ultimaker S5 were:

  • 0.2mm layer height
  • 25 mm/s print speed
  • 70% material flow
  • 240C nozzle temperature

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.

 

 

For this development colorFabb partnered with Lubrizol Engineered Polymers, a leading global producer of Thermoplastic Polyurethane (TPU), used in everyday consumer and industrial applications, with a strong global manufacturing and supply network.

Lubrizol Engineered Polymers’ expertise in TPU chemistry was key to provide a customized TPU with a wide range of processing temperatures and adequate melt viscosity, meeting the requirements during extrusion and printing. A wider range of thermal stability and melt rheology allows an extended upper range of printing temperatures to maximize the range of densities achieved through colorFabb’s unique filament foaming technology.

The result is a filament with a base TPU of 92A, which will work with most standard extruder set-ups for both Bowden and direct drive systems.

We’re not done yet with varioShore TPU. You can expect more news soon.

 

 

Ultimaker Market Place

Updated: XT-CF20 has been added as well!

We are proud to announce that two of our filaments have been added to the Ultimaker Market Place. By adding both Color on Demand  ( PLA )  and woodFill to the market place it is easier than ever to start printing with the right settings on Ultimaker printers. How? Download the latest version of Cura (3.6) and add the profiles as detailed in the short video below:

https://youtu.be/h_5mp_TK5zw

Our filaments have always been tested on Ultimaker 3D printers ever since the beginning. In fact, the very idea of colorFabb started with an Ultimaker Original and it was the first printer we tested on back in 2012. Fun fact: that printer is still in our print lab. We have added more printers to our test lab ever since and have made sure that every major Ultimaker release was added to it as well: The Ultimaker 2, 2+, 3 and S5 are all part of our standard range of printers to ensure our filaments work as flawless as possible on these highly popular Dutch printers.

We’re joining an ever expanding range of premium material brands in the market place.

Update December 14th: We are happy to announce that XT-CF20 has been added to the list as well. Simply add the profile the same way as described above to make functional prints that need extra stiffness.


CARBON FIBER IS ABRASIVE: 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. Therefore we  recommend to use hardened steel nozzles for this material.

Will more materials be added? Probably in due time. But rest assured that, as mentioned above, we have tested all of our materials on the Ultimaker printers at our disposal. One can also choose Ultimaker materials as a starting point (like CPE settings for our colorFabb_XT and CPE+ for colorFabb_HT). We also share the settings of most of our materials on dedicated blogs, like:

Still not sure if you’re on the right track? Contact us at support@colorfabb.com so we can help you further!