Housing

3D printing is uniquely suitable for customizing parts that one needs on the fly. A custom housing, for instance. The original design by Printcontrol was made to be a housing for electronics, but you can use it as a housing in general. We chose our new PA-CF Low Warp filament to print for extra stiffness and toughness.

Original design: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:243905

And the matte finish just gives it a very cool and industrial look. We printed on the Ultimaker 2+, using the Olsson Ruby nozzle. Print temperature at 260C and a 50C bed. Layer height is 0.3mm.

As the name indicates, PA-CF Low Warp is a polyamide (nylon) with carbon fiber. An added bonus is that, unlike many other engineering grade filaments, it has very little warping when printing large objects! Low infill prints come out perfectly flat on cold bed for higher infill prints 40/50C temperature is enough to obtain flat prints. It is an engineering grade filament for a wide range of printers and users alike.

We have printed a lot with PA-CF Low Warp recently. Below are a few examples:

As said, functionality is key with this filament and it is a material that suits the needs of the professional user perfectly.

The PA-CF Low Warp 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.

PA-CF Low Warp allows continuous use at 120°C while retaining sufficient properties for the intended application. Most high heat resistant materials will be difficult to print and require heated chambers and / or heated platforms to keep parts from warping the bottom layer. PA-CF Low Warp shows a very low tendency to warp, even at ambient temperature platform.

PA-CF Low Warp is a material that has a lot of practical applications. One of them is within the automotive industry. The unique combination of high strength, good temperature resistance and good chemical stability makes this material a good choice for parts in and around the car. It’s used a lot already for brackets and covers.

In general it can be used for functional prototyping and final part manufacturing. For functional prototyping users are often looking for materials which have good toughness, strength and resistance to abrasion. Because of the excellent mechanical strength and heat resistance het material can even be considers for use in final applications. PA-CF low warp has great dimensional stability, because of extremely low warp. The material is therefor unique suited for applications such as jigs & fixtures which require parts with accurate dimensions.

Eager to get started? Click here to get the basics on how to print with PA_CF Low Warp.

PA-CF Low Warp is available now in our webshop and ships from stock.

 

The Olsson Ruby Nozzle – One nozzle for all materials

Due to the abrassive nature of the filament we recommend the use of hardened nozzles for the best performance of the material and printer. For this reason we are offering the Olsson Ruby Nozzles with the purchase of PA-CF Low Warp. You can find the combined offer here.

We have published about the use of the Olsson Ruby Nozzle before and we are very enthusiastic about the use of this filament combined with abrassive materials like PA-CF Low Warp, but also XT-CF20 and steelFill.

The ruby mounted at the tip assures that even the toughest materials will be printable. It was originally designed for printing with a composite of Boron Carbide (B4C), the third hardest known material in the world. Since most of the Olsson Ruby is made from brass, with its excellent heat conductivity, performance and throughput is first-class.

This nozzle, soon on your printer!

The Olsson Ruby is manufactured, assembled and tested in a high-quality facility in Sweden. This is why 3DVerkstan – also colorFabb’s partner in the region – guarantees the very best quality and tolerances.

As from now you can purchase the Olsson Ruby Nozzle 0.4mm in combination with PA-CF Low Warp in our webshop.

 

 

Remote control housing

To start the week we printed a housing for FGS-2xx Fibaro remote control double relay. This relay is used to control outside lighting with a webinterface. For this print we used two of our finest materials: colorFabb_XT for the housing and nGen_FLEX for the sealing parts. Both are based on Amphora 3D Polymer by Eastman Chemical Company.

img_9993Design: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1860624

The rigid housing was printed on the Kossel XL, while the seal – printed with nGen_FLEX, was printed on the MassPortal Pharaoh ED. In both cases we used a 0.1mm layer height.

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We launched colorFabb_XT 2 years ago at the London 3D Print Show together with Eastman Chemical Company. Eastman is our material partner for co-polyesters. colorFabb_XT is made with Amphora AM1800 and has a unique formulation for 3D Printing that features excellent properties: High strength and very high toughness, Odor Neutral processing, High Tg / improved temp. resistance, Styrene free formulation, FDA food contact compliance, BPA (Bisphenol A ) free formulation. It will allow the user to produce 3D printed functional products in a safe way.

With nGen_FLEX we created a truly functional print of this design. nGen_FLEX was launched succesfully at the TCT Show recently and is our first semi-flexible filament. It has a Shore A hardness of 95 and has very good printability on a wide variety of printers, even the ones with Bowden tubes which are in general challenging to print flexible filaments on. The heat resistance of over 120 degrees C adds to the functionality and even allows steam sterilization of your print when needed! You can find more information about the material, the data sheets and print tutorials on our dedicated landing page.

colorFabb_XT is available in fourteen colors in our webshop.

nGen_FLEX is available in two colors in our webshop.