Lamp Shades

There is no restriction these days where one can find 3D printed parts: gadgets, end parts, tooling, prototypes and, more and more, design pieces that you can find in any home these days. One great application is to use 3D printing to make unique and customized lamp shades. Companies like Gantri are doing amazing things in this field and we recently came across the work of Nicolas Muller, who designed the Shiny Leaves Lamp Shade.

Design and all images by Nicolas Muller

Nicolas uses our nGen Clear to print the lamp shades on his self-built printer using E3D extruder and hot ends. He even used nGen to print parts of the printer, so he is clearly a fan! The ease of use and clarity of the filament has made it the go-to filament for Nicolas.

Nicolas is an architect and enjoys working on lamp shades and other designs when he finds the time. He is located in Strasbourg, France. From time to time he publishes his work on his Facebook page.

Nicolas’ website is still under construction but you can contact him if you would like to have more information: contact@acidstudio.fr. We will definitely follow him and his amazing work!

ABOUT NGEN

A little over three years ago, by the end of 2015, we released a new all-round material called nGen, next Generation, based on Eastman Amphora AM3300. We believed then (and still do) that this filament was a next step for 3D printing materials. It was our goal to bring a filament to the market that has functional properties, looks astonishingly good and prints like a dream.

nGen 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 or our blog about co-polyesters.

nGen is an amazing material which enables users to create parts with gorgeous detail and the benefit of long term stability. Don’t just take our word for it. Below are some of the reviews that our users posted in our webshop:

“Its just the perfect Filament for me!”

“Printing as easy as PLA, but with better material properties.”

“nGen is very predictable and strong.”

“nGen is always my “go to” filament. It just prints beautifully. It’s strong, handles heat well, reliable, and just looks great.”

“… prints like butter 🙂 and the finish is absolutely perfect.”

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.

Chair design update

This spring, Niels van Valburg is our intern here at colorFabb. He is currently working on a design for a 3D printed chair. You can read his previous updates here and here. Below is his third update and progress so far...

Hey there!

It has been a while since my last post, and a lot of work has been done since then. At the time of my previous update I was approaching my midterm presentation, during which I received a lot of feedback to continue my project with.

And that feedback has shifted the focus of the entire design so far. My previous chair was meant to be printed as several big parts that would be connected. And after presenting this the question came up on how much material that would actually cost, and if the chair is meant to be built by other people as well. Which lead to changing the design towards efficient material use, easy printing on desktop machines and also easy assembling. By doing that it becomes possible for people to use their machines to make a simple chair, and see how much is possible with a 3D printer and some filament.

The new design is a chair that consists of 3D printed connectors combined with plywood panels. The sketch on the picture shows a basic impression of how it will look. And one of the cool things about it is that it uses the properties of nGen_FLEX to make the connection to the plywood!

On the pictures you can see several printed tests to see which connection to the wood will be the best. I have also designed several different shapes for the connectors themselves and printed these in PLA Economy to see how printable they were, and how the form itself looks in real life instead of my screen.

And now it is time to start with the printing and assembling process of the entire chair, which will take me about two weeks if everything is going as planned.

So untill next time!

Niels

To be continued…

 

More on the materials

nGen_FLEX

nGen_FLEX was released in September 2016 at the TCT Show and is our first semi-flexible material. With a Shore A hardness of 95 it is a material that is ideally suited for functional parts. It is not soft and squishy like other flexible materials in the market, but allows for fast printing and printing on 3D printers using a Bowden tube. nGen_FLEX is a material for users looking for an engineering grade flexible filament with a high temperature resistance (over 120 degrees C) and good chemical resistance.

You can read the initial reception of nGen_FLEX here.

nGen_FLEX is made with Eastman Amphora™ 3D polymers, a range of co-polyesters developed with Eastman Chemical Company for 3D printing. Amphora co-polyesters are low-odor, styrene-free choices that are uniquely suited for 3D printing applications. With Amphora, items can be created that are more functional, more durable, more efficient and attractive. You can find more information about co-polyesters in the article we published last summer: What we talk about when we talk about co-polyesters.

 

PLA Economy

We launched PLA Economy in November last year and has been a best seller ever since. We offer 2.2kg filament on a big spool for a little over € 35 (excluding VAT and shipping) at the best colorFabb quality you are used to. We have extensively tested this PLA grade in our print lab. Since this week we offer a fifth color to our portfolio: Dark Blue, which ships now from stock.

Visit our webshop now.

Dodecahedron with XT-CF20

A few weeks ago we printed a Rhombic Dodecahedron Derived Figure with nGen Light Blue. You can find the original post here. We use this model, made by Fred Bartels, a lot lately to test our filaments with. The print we want to share today is the same dodecahedron, but printed with XT-CF20.

dodecahedron-xtcf20

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

We introducted XT-CF20 early 2015, containing 20% carbon fibres with colorFabb_XT.

Due to the abrasive nature of XT-CF20 we always used hardened steel nozzles to print this filament. In recent weeks, however, we have been extensively testing with the Olsson Ruby nozzle, provided to us by 3DVerkstan, our distributor in the Nordic region and producer of these new nozzles. You can find the Death Gun mask here and Robot Action figure here for examples printed with this new nozzle that will be released in November.

As you can see we have had fantastic results with this new nozzle.

We printed the dodecahedron on an Ultimaker 2 at 0.1mm layer height.

XT-CF20 is available now in our webshop.