Excelsior! With Avengers: Endgame finally being released this week, it is only fitting that we honor the man who started most, if not all of it: Mr Stan Lee. One of our colleagues printed this very nice bust with PLA Economy.
Printed on the Prusa Mk3 with standard PLA settings it is a fitting tribute of the creator of so many beloved Marvel heroes who passed away too soon and too young last year. His work in comics and the subsequent MCU movies cannot be valued enough.
This Stan Lee bust already has found a place in one of our colleague’s living room – a true fan!
About the filament
PLA Economy offers a great value for your money. One spool consists of 2.2kg of filament for a dirt cheap price of a little over € 35 (ex VAT and shipping). It is a different grade than our range of PLA/PHA, but we guarantee the same colorFabb quality. Our filaments are readily available from our webshop. You can use the standard PLA settings if your printer has these pre-defined and these should work fine.
It is the perfect filament to make your fan memorabilia.
You can also opt for the PLA Economy Value Pack: order four spools as a value pack and receive an immediate 10% discount!
PLA Economy is very well suited for the maker who needs quality at an affordable price. It is a perfect filament for large volume and small series production, made with the guaranteed colorFabb quality that we are known for. It has been one of colorFabb’s most popular filaments ever since launching 3 years ago.
Designed by David Östman, this Deadpool bust was printed with PLA Economy Black on the Prusa i3 MK3 with standard PLA settings. The design is the second, improved design by Östman.
PLA Economy offers a great value for your money. One spool consists of 2.2kg of filament for a dirt cheap price of a little over € 35 (ex VAT and shipping). It is a different grade than our range of PLA/PHA, but we guarantee the same colorFabb quality. Our filaments are readily available from our webshop. You can use the standard PLA settings if your printer has these pre-defined and these should work fine.
It is the perfect filament to make your fan memorabilia.
You can also opt for the PLA Economy Value Pack: order four spools as a value pack and receive an immediate 10% discount!
PLA Economy is very well suited for the maker who needs quality at an affordable price. It is a perfect filament for large volume and small series production, made with the guaranteed colorFabb quality that we are known for. It has been one of colorFabb’s most popular filaments ever since launching 3 years ago.
Updated: We have added the link to the Thingiverse page so you can print your own inlay!
With 3D printing comes great customization. With the right design skills, the right printer and the right materials one can make unique prints that not only look good, but are also extremely handy. Speaking of handy, having the right tools on hand is essential in every work space (print labs in particular), but what starts with some plyers and a screwdriver can easily grow into a collection of dozens of tools. Or more. And no tools are created equally, nor are the needs of the maker. To bring more order into this chaos we decided to design and print our own toolbox inlay:
We used our trusted Stacker S4 printer for this print, making use of the full build plate of this industrial grade 3D printer. We printed with a 0.6mm nozzle and 0.2mm layer height. Infill was 10% (printed every two layers).
Material of choice to print the toolbox inlay was our very own (and extremely popular) PLA Economy Silver.
We printed 3 layers to store our tools, which fit inside a standard case which can be bought at any hardware store. This way you can easily store your tools in the way you want it: Everything is always in the right place, your tools can easily be moved from one work site to the other and when you pack up you see at a glance if you have not forgotten anything.
PLA Economy offers a great value for your money. One spool consists of 2.2kg of filament for a dirt cheap price of a little over € 35 (ex VAT and shipping). It is a different grade than our range of PLA/PHA, but we guarantee the same colorFabb quality. Our filaments are readily available from our webshop. You can use the standard PLA settings if your printer has these pre-defined and these should work fine.
You can also opt for the PLA Economy Value Pack: order four spools as a value pack and receive an immediate 10% discount!
PLA Economy is very well suited for the maker who needs quality at an affordable price. It is a perfect filament for large volume and small series production, made with the guaranteed colorFabb quality that we are known for.
About Stacker
The Stacker 3D printers are industrial grade FFF 3D printers. Recently the even larger Stacker S4 XL was added to the portfolio. Multiple print heads and a large build volume make them versatile printers. Small series production or large scale prototyping are no problem for the Stacker printers! This US based printer is very reliable and is a perfect match for any professional looking for serious 3D printing. You can find the full product specifications on our dedicated Stacker page.
For Stacker the term “industrial grade” is not a hollow marketing term. It means their printers are designed for extra long service life, extremely low maintenance and that the printer will maintain its positional accuracy throughout its life cycle. This printer has been designed to be used in a professional environment, be it for large prototypes or small series production.
The Stacker printers on display in our print lab
As many of you know, we are the distributor of Stacker 3D printers in Europe. We have been working with Stacker ever since their first prototype and now have several in our print lab. In the past 6 years we have seen 3D printing emerging from a hobby market to more professional uses. A lot of our users are using 3D printing to make a living or at least support their business in one way or another.
Safety first! Whenever printing, in daily life and also in our production plant safety is of our highest concern. That’s why we require all our guests when they enter the production area to wear safety glasses. Since this should not be forgotten we have them ready to grab at the entrance of our building and made a safety glasses holder to display them well:
We chose the Snap together sunglass holder by rockah as the basis and created the footing ourselves (design by our print engineer Sven Hacker). It is an ideal design and easy to print. Perfect for safety glasses or for your collection of sunglasses.
Settings used on the Ultimaker 2+ were:
0.4mm nozzle
0.2mm layerheight
Printspeed: 45mm/s
For this print we used our trusted PLA Economy, a highly popular filament used for bulk projects by many of our users… and ourselves.
PLA Economy is a fantastic PLA grade which we launched in November of 2016. Initially we released four colors: white, red, black and silver. We added the always popular Dark Blue slightly later, which is similar to our very own Ultra Marine Blue that we offer in our portfolio of PLA/PHA filaments.
PLA Economy offers a great value for your money. One spool consists of 2.2kg of filament for a dirt cheap price of a little over € 35 (ex VAT and shipping). It is a different grade than our range of PLA/PHA, but we guarantee the same colorFabb quality. Our filaments are readily available from our webshop. You can use the standard PLA settings if your printer has these pre-defined and these should work fine.
You can also opt for the PLA Economy Value Pack: order four spools as a value pack and receive an immediate 10% discount!
PLA Economy is very well suited for the maker who needs quality at an affordable price. It is a perfect filament for large volume and small series production, made with the guaranteed colorFabb quality that we are known for.
Whenever people think about 3D printing, they mostly think about desktop 3D printing. Mostly. With the Stacker, Blackbelt and other large printers the world is slowly opening up to larger size prints. But sometimes we come across a print that is just huge. Think: Almost 2 meters huge. Enter The Prudence Project by Mikrotvornica from Zagreb, Croatia, made with colorFabb PLA Economy.
The full sized print (190cm), human for scale
Prudence is a sculpture produced for contemporary artist Abigail O’Brien from Dublin, Ireland. “Last November, the RHA (Royal Hibernian Academy) presented Abigail O’Brien RHA, Prudence and the Game of Golf in the RHA Ashford Gallery, a photographic, sculpture and sound installation. Having completed Fortitude, The Collector, 2005 and Temperance, Oatfield Sweet Factory, 2009, Prudence is the third body of work in O’Briens series, The Temporal (Cardinal) Virtues, which are Fortitude, Temperance, Prudence, and Justice.”
Says Marko Salopek of Mikrotvornica: “After the initial contact with Abigail and acceptance of our offer we started with the work. The request was to 3D print sculpture of a female golfer with total height of 190 cm. The STL file we were given was great but since it was produced from 3D scan there were some parts of the model that needed to be repaired and removed to give her that desired look Abigail requested. After we completed 3D model repair, we decided to build our own semi-large size 3D printer to help us 3D print this sculpture. Nikola was an architect in constructing our custom made 3D printer (400x400x350 mm – CoreXY build). Big digital 3D model was cut into 21 pieces at the most optimal places for easiest 3D printing avoiding any support. Also each individual part was optimized for easy assembly and gluing. They were sliced and 3D printed on our Modax3D Core 400 3D printer using exclusively colorFabb material.”
Test models
With PLA Economy Marko, a long-time user of colorFabb filaments, had found a great material that has proven to be very reliable with large print jobs. He continues: “To finish the physical model we used high gloss surface finish as requested by our client. Several layers of syringe putty was applied to remove any imperfections and layers in 3D print and of course lots of hand sanding after every layer. Later on we applied primer paint and finally high gloss paint varnish for the final look.”
So far they have made 3 large sculptures of Prudence and total of 15 small (30 cm in height) versions. Below is a short summary of the Prudence in numbers:
21 individual parts glued together
total of 17.526 grams of colorFabb PLA was used (in our version 3)
total of 453 hours print time (in our version 3)
variable layer heights from 120 microns to 300 microns depending on the part of the sculpture and the version of the sculpture (big or small).
Glueing the parts together
About Mikrotvornica
Mikrotvornica is a young startup company founded in Zagreb, Croatia by Nikola Blažević and Marko Salopek. Interesting thing is that Prudence project was a main reason they started Mikrotvornica. Before the project, both of them were working on their own individual ventures in 3D printing. Working on the Prudence project made them realize they worked very well together and decided to join forces.
Now, almost a year later, they have grown into young startup with strong foundations and great potential for growth. In Croatia we started local brand named 3DPrintaj. Under that name they bring everything 3D printing related to the local market. From 3D printing services to 3D modeling, 3D printer and material shop as well as education (as elsewhere in the world, educational sector for 3D printing is growing fast in Croatia).
Regarding their international efforts, Prudence remains our biggest project so far. With that project Marko and Nikola realized there is great opportunity in 3D printing art. That is why they are now actively looking for agents across Europe to connect us with artists who are willing to work with us on their art projects. Interested? Contect them here.
Being painted
About PLA Economy
It makes sense they chose PLA Economy for their project. It is a highly popular filament used for bulk projects by many of our users… and ourselves.
PLA Economy is a fantastic PLA grade which we launched in November of 2016. Initially we released four colors: white, red, black and silver. Recently added the always popular Dark Blue, which is similar to our very own Ultra Marine Blue that we offer in our portfolio of PLA/PHA filaments.
PLA Economy offers a great value for your money. One spool consists of 2.2kg of filament for a dirt cheap price of a little over € 35 (ex VAT and shipping). It is a different grade than our range of PLA/PHA, but we guarantee the same colorFabb quality. Our filaments are readily available from our webshop. You can use the standard PLA settings if your printer has these pre-defined and these should work fine.
You can also opt for the PLA Economy Value Pack: order four spools as a value pack and receive an immediate 10% discount!
PLA Economy is very well suited for the maker who needs quality at an affordable price. It is a perfect filament for large volume and small series production, made with the guaranteed colorFabb quality that we are known for.
Another application that 3D printing has made more accessible is the creation of 3D maps. We all have seen the 3D maps at tourist attractions and information centers of mountainous regions. Making these maps is quite expensive. We were recently approached by a customer to look into the possibilities of making a 3D map for the region he is active in. We may publish about that project later, but in the meantime we produced a map of our own, using the full print bed of the Stacker S2 and using PLA Economy White. When choosing a mountainous region to print we settled for nothing less than the mountain range on this planet – the Himalayas to be exact.
The black thread indicates the Everest base camp trek, approximately, and in real life takes about 8 days.
The region printed here is the Sagarmatha National Park in Nepal, the region where one can walk the Everest Base Camp trek. From Lukla airport, at the bottom of the print it takes up to 7 or 8 days to reach base camp – a stunning trek in real life and marked in black on this printed model.
We created the file by using Terrain2STL – a great online application to make your own custom 3D maps. We printed on the Stacker S2 at 0.16mm layer height, using a 0.8mm nozzle. The making of the print took 67 hours, using the full print bed size of the S2.
For this print we used our trusted PLA Economy, a highly popular filament used for bulk projects by many of our users… and ourselves.
PLA Economy is a fantastic PLA grade which we launched in November of 2016. Initially we released four colors: white, red, black and silver. Recently added the always popular Dark Blue, which is similar to our very own Ultra Marine Blue that we offer in our portfolio of PLA/PHA filaments.
PLA Economy offers a great value for your money. One spool consists of 2.2kg of filament for a dirt cheap price of a little over € 35 (ex VAT and shipping). It is a different grade than our range of PLA/PHA, but we guarantee the same colorFabb quality. Our filaments are readily available from our webshop. You can use the standard PLA settings if your printer has these pre-defined and these should work fine.
You can also opt for the PLA Economy Value Pack: order four spools as a value pack and receive an immediate 10% discount!
PLA Economy is very well suited for the maker who needs quality at an affordable price. It is a perfect filament for large volume and small series production, made with the guaranteed colorFabb quality that we are known for.
About the Stacker
Both the Stacker S2 and its larger sibling Stacker S4 are industrial grade FFF 3D printers. Multiple print heads and a large build volume make them versatile printers. Small series production or large scale prototyping are no problem for the Stacker printers! This US based printer is very reliable and is a perfect match for any professional looking for serious 3D printing. You can find the full product specifications on our dedicated Stacker page.
For Stacker the term “industrial grade” is not a hollow marketing term. It means their printers are designed for extra long service life, extremely low maintenance and that the printer will maintain its positional accuracy throughout its life cycle. This printer has been designed to be used in a professional environment, be it for large prototypes or small series production.
The Stacker S2 in the middle
As many of you know, we are the distributor of Stacker 3D printers in Europe. We have been working with Stacker ever since their first prototype and now have several in our print lab. In the past 5 years we have seen 3D printing emerging from a hobby market to more professional uses. A lot of our users are using 3D printing to make a living or at least support their business in one way or another.
3D printing is an excellent tool for visual prototyping. Today’s print is a great example of a prototype to give a customer a good look and feel of the part before mass production starts. We printed an indicator light.
Custom in-house design
Printed on the Ultimaker 2+ with both nGen Transparent and PLA Economy Black. Both of them with 0.2mm layer height. nGen was printed at 240⁰C and a bed temp of 75⁰C while PLA Economy was printed a bit cooler, resp. 215⁰C and 55⁰C.
nGen Orange Transparent was recently added, as well as five other transparent colors in our nGen portfolio – bringing the total number of available colors to 23.
For another great use of nGen transparent filament, check out the blog earlier this week where we printed a working traffic light.
With our nGen Transparent colors you can print objects that have a great shine and stand out from the crowd, even from far away. With the right settings you can even print translucent objects to a degree as you can see!
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.
The black part was printed with PLA Economy.
PLA Economy is a fantastic PLA grade which we launched in November 2016. Initially we released four colors: white, red, black and silver. In 2017 we added the always popular Dark Blue, which is similar to our very own Ultra Marine Blue that we offer in our portfolio of PLA/PHA filaments.
PLA Economy offers a great value for your money. One spool consists of 2.2kg of filament for a dirt cheap price of a little over € 35 (ex VAT and shipping). It is a different grade than our range of PLA/PHA, but we guarantee the same colorFabb quality. Our filaments are readily available from our webshop.
Today’s print is a multi-material print since we like to mix up the filaments we have in our ever expanding portfolio. Our intern Sven Hacken went to work and designed a fully functional traffic light!
All parts were made on the Ultimaker 2, 2+ and 3. Below is a listing of the materials and settings we used:
[table id=13 /]
The variety of materials used is exemplary of the work Sven is doing in our print lab. Material of choice for the opaque, rigid parts was PLA Economy. For the transparent parts the obvious choice was our new line of transparent nGen colors and even nGen_FLEX was needed for the base feet.
For the light inside, Sven used a USB camping light (link here).
We recently added 6 new transparent colors to our portfolio of nGen filaments:
These six are added to a rich mix of 17 colors, bringing the total to 23 colors of nGen filament you can choose from as from today! With nGen Transparent colors you can print objects that have a great shine and stand out from the crowd, even from far away. With the right settings you can even print translucent objects to a degree as you can see!
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.
PLA Economy is a fantastic PLA grade which we launched in November 2016. Initially we released four colors: white, red, black and silver. In 2017 we added the always popular Dark Blue, which is similar to our very own Ultra Marine Blue that we offer in our portfolio of PLA/PHA filaments.
PLA Economy offers a great value for your money. One spool consists of 2.2kg of filament for a dirt cheap price of a little over € 35 (ex VAT and shipping). It is a different grade than our range of PLA/PHA, but we guarantee the same colorFabb quality. Our filaments are readily available from our webshop.
The small feet on the bottom were printed with nGen_FLEX. nGen_FLEX was our very first step into flexible filaments. Our main focus before had been rigid and stiff materials, but we found that we should add a functional filament to our portfolio that met the needs of our users. Our co-operation with Eastman Chemical Company has lead to the release in the fall of 2016 of nGen_FLEX – made with Eastman Amphora FL6000.
nGen_FLEX is a semi-flexible filament with a Shore A hardness of 95. This enables users with the Bowden tube printer (like Ultimakers, for instance) to print with this filament without an effort. Of course the user can influence how flexible a print should feel by adjusting infill and perimeter settings. nGen_FLEX is temperature resistant to about 130C. That means 3D printed objects can be steam sterilized at 121C which is a great asset for medical / laboratory environments.
You can read more in our recent blog post where we revisited nGen_FLEX.
It is the season of gift giving and one of the more peculiar traditions in the Netherlands is to be creative with how to present the actual gift. Simple gift wrapping paper does not suffice anymore and people go at great lengths to make something special of the gift. A request came into our print lab to print a football trophy with a hollow ball on top so the present can fit in.
Designed by BadDevices this football trophy makes for a truly special gift for all football fans. And football (soccer for our North American readers) is still part of the Dutch DNA, despite the abysmal performance of the national team of late.
We went full PLA for this print! For the ball we used PLA/PHA Standard White and PLA Economy Black on the Ultimaker 3 with a layer height of 0.2mm. For the standard we utilized the Stacker S4 and used PLA Economy Silver, again printing a 0.2mm layer height.
And what a standard it is! We started with this modified grade of PLA almost 5 years ago and this filament remains one of our biggest hits. The unique blend of PLA with PHA make it a fantastic filament to print with on a wide variety of printers.
About a year ago we listened to you – our users – and brought a more economic version of PLA to the market. This new grade of PLA, with an added impact modifier, has been in huge demand from the moment of release. We developed this new PLA, separate from our lauded PLA/PHA, as a filament for large volume users. Because it’s made with the same processing technology used for other premium colorFabb products, this PLA Economy filament is just as reliable. PLA Economy is available on 2.2kg spools only, delivering a whopping 740 meters of 1.75mm filament and 270 meters of 2.85mm filament.
We have all seen 3D printed Star Wars gadgets before. Ever since 3D printing took off years ago, Star Wars memorabilia have been printed by the community. Popular YouTuber and avid 3D printer Dave Bagnall (online known as DaveChaos) has taken this to a whole new level by printing a full scale BB-8! When he recently posted on Twitter that he finished the project we got in touch with Dave and asked him for more details, knowing he had used quite a bit of colorFabb filament while making the replica of the beloved Star Wars character.
Dave is a true maker and obviously a Star Wars fan. He was kind enough to share a lot of pictures of the proces with us.
Without any further delay, here is the final result, which is frankly awesome:
The finished BB-8 by Dave Bagnall
For a project of this magnitude, Dave needed a lot of quality filament, which lead him to colorFabb’s PLA Economy. Our low cost PLA Economy filament was used for 95% of the prints.
You can find Dave’s playlist of the build on YouTube here:
We’ll let Dave talk a bit more about himself and the project:
So a little about myself, I’m a home dad and I’m also a Youtuber. My channel is here I have been making videos on Tech for quite a few years. I originally reached out to Ultimaker to review their 2+ printer but I decided to pitch them my grand idea of 3D printing BB8 and they agreed to loan me their Ultimaker 2+.
In July last year I joined the BB8 Builder Club and started printing.
All the BB8 body files are provided by the club, the drive train that I’m working (but heavily modified) on for him is designed by Ed over at Ed’s Junk
I had a few ups and downs of bad decisions (like the time I spent a 1000 hours on a inner sphere only to trash it in favor of an aluminium one) and failed prints but ultimately I finished all the printing spread over 12 months. all in all it took me a total of 2500 hours of print time and an unspeakable about of PLA. I used the colorFabb Economy while on about 95% of the project.
I worked on the project in bursts as I was busy with my regular YouTube videos and looking after my two children it took me 12 months to finally finish him as a static droid to the tune of £3000 (this figure includes all PLA, material cost of primer, paints, glues, nut & bolts and all the parts needed for the dive)
I have a drive train for him that I have been working on on and off for the past 6 months.
And finally a video showing BB8’s dome working with audio:
BB-8 and his proud creator
We thank Dave for sharing this with us. Don’t forget to follow Dave on Twitter and YouTube.
Recently added the always popular Dark Blue, which is similar to our very own Ultra Marine Blue that we offer in our portfolio of PLA/PHA filaments.
PLA Economy offers a great value for your money. One spool consists of 2.2kg of filament for a dirt cheap price of a little over € 35 (ex VAT and shipping). It is a different grade than our range of PLA/PHA, but we guarantee the same colorFabb quality. Our filaments are readily available from our webshop.
Here are some print settings to get started:
Adviced 3d printing temperature: 195C-220C
Adviced 3d print speed: 40 – 100 mm/s
Advised Heated bed (if you have one, not strictly necessary): 50-60C
Cooling fan: 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.
Or: You can use the standard PLA settings if your printer has these pre-defined and these should work fine.
You can also opt for the PLA Economy Value Pack: order four spools as a value pack and receive an immediate 10% discount!
PLA Economy is very well suited for the maker who needs quality at an affordable price. It is a perfect filament for large volume and small series production, made with the guaranteed colorFabb quality that we are known for.
