Wire stripper

Here in the colorFabb print lab we like to see what 3D printing can offer us to make our lives a bit easier. Especially when it comes to small tools we need on a daily basis. Sure, you can go to the store and buy stuff, but where is the fun in that? Plus, with 3D printing we can design, customize and print with a lot of choice in materials. Our own, of course. For instance, consider the micrometer holder we printed with colorFabb_XT. Or spool holders for our XL spools, which many not fit on all printers.

We came accross this simple but clever design by Raphael Bruno. He designed a wire cutter which uses standard cutter blades as inserts. This model was printed on the Lulzbot Mini, with woodFill filament.

Design by raphaelbruno3d: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2468753

Our woodFill performs very well on the Lulzbot Mini. We printed at 0.2mm layer height at 215C and a 50C heated bed.

woodFill was launched nearly 4 years ago during the London 3D Print Show and was our first special filament. Other natural filled special filaments have followed, like bambooFill (which we recently discontinued) and more recently corkFill. Our woodFill has been a hit from day one due to easy processing and its fantastic looks. Added bonus is that your print room smells like a wood shop when printing with woodFill.

Check out the product page on the website and read the 5 star reviews!

woodFill is available in our webshop and also at Lulzbot’s webstore. You can find a handy tutorial here.

Speaking of Lulzbot… Did you know we have the Lulzbot Mini available on our website and ship from stock? Better even: we ship for free in Europe and send out two free spools of nGen with the printer!

The LulzBot Mini was built to work out of the box, with no complicated assembly process getting in the way of you creating. Operating the Mini is the same- straightforward software, easy to read documentation and an army of LulzBot enthusiasts eager to help out people getting started. This printer is not only easy. you will still find flexible, industrial strength capacity from this machine.

You can print a wide range of materials on the Lulzbot Mini: of course the woodFill and our other specials, but especially nGen – our go-to, all-round 3D printing filament.

Read Make Magazine’s review of the Lulzbot Mini here.

The Lulzbot Mini is now available in our webshop at € 1.573 including VAT / € 1.300 excluding VAT. (Free shipping in the EU+ 2 free spools of filament)

Print+ headphone

After a successful Kickstarter campaign in 2015, the Print+ headphones have finally started shipping! At colorFabb we saw the potential of these DIY headphones immediately and backed the campaign by buying 25 of these headphone kits. We even made one of the headphone a featured print during the launch of our nGen filament:

From our nGen landing page. Print+ headphone printed with nGen Purple

We were also among the first to showcase the Print+ headphones during the 2015 TCT Show in Birmingham:

Source: colorFabb Vine account

Last week we received Print+ DIY Headphone kits. The kit contains all the necessary components such as speakers, cables and a remote. The remaining parts, to customize your headphone and make it truly yours, can be printed after downloading the files from their site. The Kickstarter campaign ended many moons ago, but the kit is available from their site now.

The variety in our colorFabb portfolio allows for some really cool combinations & unique headsets to be printed. Make it yours!

We have printed and assembled two of these headphones. One has been made in woodFill and our brand new PETG Economy Black filament:

Print+ headphone printed with woodFill and PETG Economy

We chose woodFill for the visual quality of the material and PETG Economy since it is strong enough, which is necessary for the headphone frame. The woodFill was printed on the Lulzbot Mini with standard woodFill profile settings (provided by Lulzbot) at 0.2mm layer height and a standard nozzle.

Another headphone was printed with nGen Dark Gray:

And for the other headphone nGen was chosen because of the visual quality and the layer on layer adhesion of the material. Aside from functionality, the nGen portfolio contains the brightest and some unique colors to really stand out.

This nGen print was made Ultimaker 2+ with a 0.4mm nozzle and printed at a 0.2mm layer height.

The Print+ project is not only a very cool idea, it is also a sustainable one. You don’t need to buy new headphones if one part breaks. You print one or two new parts right away! You can read the Print+ vision here or contact them directly if you have any further questions: https://www.print.plus/contact/

 

About the materials

woodFill

woodFill was launched in November 2013 during the London 3D Print Show and was our first special filament. Other natural filled special filaments have followed, like bambooFill (which we recently discontinued) and more recently corkFill. Our woodFill has been a hit from day one due to easy processing and its fantastic looks. Added bonus is that your print room smells like a wood shop when printing with woodFill. Check it out online: it has received nothing but 5 star reviews on our site!

PETG Economy

Earlier this month we released PETG Economy, a high quality filament for functional prototyping. It is available exclusively on 2.2kg spools and in three colors: black, white and red. We currently ship from stock and the PETG Economy range is also available as a value pack.

nGen

nGen has proven itself to be a very versatile material that can be used for a lot of applications, visual prototyping being one of them! It has become our default, all-round filament for printing all sorts of prototypes and prints just have to look damn good!

nGen is an all-round filament which has many advantages over PLA. The temperature resistance is over 80 degrees C and it works on most printers with a heated build plate.  nGen is a low-odor, styrene-free material uniquely suited for 3D printing enthusiasts, particularly those who need the flexibility to print within a wide processing temperature range.

With nGen you will have good flow properties through the printer nozzle—even at lower temperatures than some other polymers require. These properties make nGen more workable at a wider breadth of temperatures, producing reliable results and resulting in less waste. You can find more information on our dedicated landing page.

Ever since launching in november 2015 (and later in a big way during the CES Show early 2016), nGen has been a bestseller and a material that has been adopted by users worldwide very rapidly.

nGen is available through our webshop and our network of distributors and resellers worldwide as well as our partner Lulzbot.

Speaking of the Lulzbot Mini printer… Did you know we have it available on our website and ship from stock? Better even: we ship for free in Europe and send out two free spools of nGen with the printer!

The LulzBot Mini was built to work out of the box, with no complicated assembly process getting in the way of you creating. Operating the Mini is the same- straightforward software, easy to read documentation and an army of LulzBot enthusiasts eager to help out people getting started. This printer is not only easy. you will still find flexible, industrial strength capacity from this machine.

Read Make Magazine’s review of the Lulzbot Mini here.

The Lulzbot Mini is now available in our webshop at € 1.573 including VAT / € 1.300 excluding VAT.

Garden sprinkler

We all know Daniel Norée as the designer and maker behind the Open R/C project (remember the big F1 car we printed last year? It was his design!). But of course, Daniel is also known for his very active YouTube channel and his great work in 3D printing in general.

Last year he used our colorFabb_XT to print a self-designed garden sprinkler:

We found this design to be an excellent example for our brand new PETG Economy filament!

Design by Daniel Norée: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2077154

You can follow Daniel and the projects he is working on via YouTube and Twitter

The parts were printed with PETG Economy on the Lulzbot Mini. We used 0.25mm layerheight at 235C printing temperature and manually slowed down printing to optimize the overhang quality.

 

We have received a lot of requests for PETG in our portfolio and have recently added PETG Economy to our portfolio. We initially started with 3 colors: Black, White and Red.

All of these are available exclusively on 2.2kg spools. You can buy PETG Economy here.

Material specifications

Material: colorFabb PETG Economy

Diameter Tolerance: ± 0.1 mm

Density: 1.28 g/cm3

Glass Transition Temperature: 70C

Full data sheets are available now: http://colorfabb.com/Materials/

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.

The Lulzbot Mini is available at colorFabb. As Lulzbot’s official reseller we ship from stock. We offer free shipping in Europe and two free spools of filament!

The LulzBot Mini was built to work out of the box, with no complicated assembly process getting in the way of you creating. Operating the Mini is the same- straightforward software, easy to read documentation and an army of LulzBot enthusiasts eager to help out people getting started. This printer is not only easy. you will still find flexible, industrial strength capacity from this machine.

Read Make Magazine’s review of the Lulzbot Mini here.

The Lulzbot Mini is now available in our webshop at € 1.573 including VAT / € 1.300 excluding VAT.

 

Oil funnel

An oil funnel is one of those often overlooked, but necessary things you need with your car. And if you need one, print one. We needed an oil funnel for the Toyota Prius, one of our company cars, and printed it with nGen_FLEX.

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Design: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1916234

The oil funnel was designed by Joshyu and has proven itself to be quite handy! Printed in colorFabb’s nGen_FLEX. Although you could also print this in a more rigid material, using a semi-flex material ensures that it lasts longer and can be dropped from time to time without any consequences.

We printed the funnel on Aleph Objects’ Lulzbot Mini. Although we recommend a Buildtak sheet for nGen_FLEX we have found that small parts print pretty well on the PEI sheet that is standard on the Lulzbot printers. We printed this part with a 0.16mm layer height.

colorfabb_ngen_flex_dark_gray-4

Our brand new semi flexible nGen_FLEX was launched a little over two months ago during the TCT Show. With a Shore A hardness of 95 and the high glass temperature of 120+ degrees C this is a truly functional 3D printing filament.

colorfabb_ngen_flex_dark_gray

nGen_FLEX is our first foray in flexible filaments. We aimed for a more functional, semi-flexible filament. The first reactions after launching were unanimously positive and we have seen fantastic prints with nGen_FLEX in the wild ever since.

nGen_FLEX is a new elastomer material added to our existing range of co-polyester functional 3D printing filaments. It is made from Eastman Amphora™ Flex 3D Polymer FL6000 and the fourth filament in our range of Amphora based co-polyester, following colorFabb_XT, nGen and colorFabb_HT.

nGen_FLEX is available in our webshop: Click here.

nGen_FLEX is best described as a semi-flexible material with good printability on most 3D printers eliminating the use for specialized flex extruders. By adjusting infill and perimeter settings it’s possible to influence how flexible a part should feel after printing. You can find more information on our dedicated nGen_FLEX landing page.

colorfabb_ngen_flex_dark_gray-5


And remember, For the remainder of the year, because it is colorFabb’s fourth anniversary, we continue our Buy 4, Pay 3 promotion. Use coupon code colorfabb4you on our website to get the fourth spool you order for free! Some conditions apply though: cheapest spool is for free and samples and PLA Economy are exempt from this part of the promotion.

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