Engines

Our avid online followers remember the stellar work that Korneel Bullens does on his Ultimakers. Not only has he one of the busiest 3DHubs in the Netherlands (with excellent reviews to booth), he also finds time to print some side projects. Back in 2015 he printed the Toyota Engine for us with colorFabb_XT (check it here working on our ancient Vine account).

As if that was not enough he took on the next challenge like a trooper and printed the Saturn V rocket with our all-round filament nGen:

The Saturn V rocket as showcased on the Amsterdam AM Show. Original post here.

A while ago Korneel approached us with the idea to print not one, but two engines: The Subaru Boxer Engine and the Chevy Camaro LS3 V8. The results are simply awesome:

Subaru engine. Original design: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1643878

Chevy engine. Original design: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1911808

Like the Toyota engine, these two engines were designed and modeled by the insanely talented Eric Harrell, aka ericthepoolboy on Thingiverse. You can find Eric’s website here. His design talent, combined with Korneel’s printing skills resulted in a fully functional Subaru engine:

Korneel has 5 Ultimaker 3 printers and he used four of them to complete this project. Estimated printing time was about 200 hours per engine and assembling the prints took about 40 hours each in total. All parts were printed with a 0.15mm layer height.

The Chevy engine, opened up. One of the great features of these prints is that they can be disassembled with great ease due to magnets being used to hold several parts together.

The material he used was PLA Economy, which may be Korneel’s favorite filament at the moment. He receives a lot of requests for PLA prints and uses our PLA Economy due to its ease of printing on his Ultimakers.

PLA Economy works great with basic PLA settings on a wide range of printers. We see a lot of demand for this filament and it has been a favorite of our users ever since launching it in November last year.

Some close ups of the Subaru engine:

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.

Close up of the Chevy engine

You can also opt for the PLA Economy Value Pack: order four spools as a value pack and receive an immediate 10% discount!

Buy PLA Economy                                      Buy PLA Economy Value Pack

PLA Economy is very well suited for the maker who needs high quality filament 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.

Once again it has been great to see Korneel’s work again (and we quietly wonder what he will come up with next…) Visit his site and contact him if you need a print job to be done!

 

 

 

Camera housing

Today’s featured print serves two goals. First of all, we’re always looking to use our filaments to make the best use of it. In this case we have used PLA Economy to make a prototype of a security camera housing. The second purpose was to make our new intern Pierre known with the Ultimaker 2 and Cura slicer software. We can safely say both goals were met.

 

Designed by Toby Lankford: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:993974

Working from a design by Toby Lankford, Pierre made this model in 3 days. It was a perfect model for Pierre to get the printer and slicer known and to print multiple parts.

We used this case to welcome our new intern Pierre. This was a perfect project to get to know the Ultimaker 2 and Cura slicer software. Pierre also used a Raspberry Pi to show how the internal parts should be mounted.

Printed on the UM2 with PLA Economy Silver. Everything is printed at 0.2mm layerheight, 210/125C and 60C bed temperature.

We used PLA Economy as it’s perfect for making a first visual model of a new product. For outdoor use we would not advice using PLA Economy if durability is important, but it has proven to be an excellent filament for indoor use and visual prototyping.

PLA Economy is a fantastic PLA grade which we launched in November last year. 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.

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!

Buy PLA Economy                                      Buy PLA Economy Value Pack

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.

Helian logo

Ever since moving into the new building we have been working to decorate the interior in a uniform way. One thing (of many) is to print the names of the companies: we have already printed the Stacker logo, which is hanging nicely in our print lab and last week we posted about the colorFabb logo proudly hanging on our wall.

This week we have printed the logo for Helian Polymers:

Helian is, of course, the company where it all started for colorFabb. colorFabb started as a project of Helian Polymers. Helian Polymers BV is a young and dynamic company which was founded by Ruud Rouleaux at the end of 2011. In September 2015 the old company Peter Holland BV, that was founded in 1974, was incorporated into Helian Polymers, to combine all masterbatch activity into one company. In 2013 colorFabb started as part of Helian Polymers and became its own legal entity, colorFabb BV, in September 2015.

Helian Polymers is your partner for masterbatches, compounding and also the driving force behind bioplastics.online where small lots of bioplastics can be ordered. You can find the Helian website here and the biolplastics.online website here.

The logo is now on the wall in their office in our mutual building.

For this print job we used two printers: The Stacker S4 and the Ultimaker 2. The material of choice was PLA Economy Silver, similar to the logos we printed for colorFabb and Stacker. It took 3 days to print all the letters and pieces of the logo, with a total use of 1.2kg of filament.

Top-Tip: using some leftover PLA/PHA we printed some spacers for the “leaves of the logo” to ensure the spacing and orientation was right.
This is easily done in most CAD systems by simply sketching with a small offset to the logo and closing the sketch loops with some straight lines.
These spacers can of course be printed with the lowest possible settings and some left-over material and will make your job a lot easier on the more difficult shapes.

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.

3D Matter

In the past four years we have been active in the world of 3D printing, we have seen a lot of filament brands coming up. We understand only too well that it is often hard for users to choose the right filament for their respective applications. Luckily there are now review sites like filaments.directory (where colorFabb is the most tested and most awarded brand). One step further goes 3D Matter. With their platform Optimatter, 3D Matter thoroughly tests filaments from all over the world and makes comparisons. Recently they released a list of, what they see, are the best filaments of 2017. Needless to say they test a lot of filaments and for convenience sake 3D Matter has split the results up in 9 categories.

You can read the full test results here.

Of all the filaments tested, colorFabb came out on top or near the top in the 5 categories it participated in (not all our filaments were tested in all categories). Given all the quality brands in the world of 3D printing, we are very proud of the results!

 

Category: Ease of printing

Winner: PLA/PHA

Our very first material is still, over four years after launching, a favorite as an easy-to-print filament. PLA is already seen as an easy to print material in general and it is also still the most common in 3D printing. To come out on top is an honor, to say the least.

Graph courtesy of 3D Matter

When we launched our portfolio of PLA/PHA early 2013 (with currently 30 colors available) our aim was to make a less brittle and easy to use 3D printing filament for visual prototyping. We are happy to find that after four years it is still very well regarded.

 

Category: Visual quality

Winner: copperFill

When we released woodFill as our first special filament, we wanted to make something truly special. Not the first wood filled filament in the world, but it was a truly special filament. Within a few months we released a truly unique filament: bronzeFill and within half a year we came up with a new variety: copperFill. This very copperFill was found by 3D Matter to be the filament with the highest visual quality.

Graph courtesy of 3D Matter

Containing 80% of copper by weight, copperFill truly shines when properly post-processed. Our copperFill has been developed for aesthetical purposes and been a hit since the launch in the fall of 2014. It is a perfect material for, for instance, busts and statues, like this bust of Teddy Roosevelt:

Design: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:274086

After copperFill we launched brassFill and steelFill to our product line of metal filled filaments.

 

Category: High temperature

Runner-up: colorFabb_HT

It is a tough category, but we still came up in the top 4. colorFabb_HT was launched a year ago as the third filament in our range of co-polyesters. After colorFabb_XT and nGen we found that the market was in need of a high temperature resistant filament. colorFabb_HT has a glass temperature of over 100 degrees C and has proven to be a favorite of the high-end professional users.

colorFabb_HT is enabled by Eastman Tritan™ copolyester technology and is uniquely suited for advanced 3D printing users, particular those who need their creations to exhibit excellent durability, toughness and temperature resistance. You can find more information on our dedicated landing page.

Aside from its functionality in practical prints, colorFabb_HT Clear also allows to print near transparent prints. Another feature, as a recent post shows, is the ability to print with extreme detail.

 

Category: Affordable

Runner-up: PLA Economy

colorFabb has never been positioned to be the cheapest filament around. All in-house development, the best raw materials, high quality and our aim to have top after sales support comes at a price. However, we aim to keep the price as low as possible. Last year we listened to your calls for a more economical filament to be available from us and in November of 2016 we launched PLA Economy. We are glad to read that we have made the top of the affordable filaments tested by 3D Matter, especially since we know this is a field which is already well served in terms of the quantity of different filaments and brands that are available.

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. 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.

 

Category: All-round

Runner-up: nGen

What is an all-round filament? There is no such thing as a filament that can do everything and has all the characteristics that everybody needs for every application and print. At 3D Matter they asked themselves:  “If we don’t know what we are going to print, what material would we like?” And we are happy to read that nGen is one of the filaments that come out the best.

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.

 

All filaments are available in our webshop or through our network of distributors and resellers worldwide.

 

 

 

PLA Economy Dark Blue

Yesterday we added a fifth color to our range of PLA Economy filaments: Dark Blue. Recently we held a poll on Twitter and we asked what color our users would prefer next. Dark Blue was the obvious winner and as from today we are shipping PLA Economy Dark Blue:

PLA Economy is a fantastic PLA grade which we launched in November last year. Initially we released four colors: white, red, black and silver.

 

Now we have 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 works great with basic PLA settings on a wide range of printers. Below is the first test print, our very own mascot Sir Fill:

Design: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:501831

We printed our Dark Blue Knight on the Prusa i3 Mk 2 with standard PLA settings and a 0.2mm layer height.

The XL spool does not fit on the Prusa itself, so we used one of our spool holders (design can be found here). If you want to know if the PLA Economy XL spool fits on your printer, check out the spool sizes we carry here.

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!

Buy PLA Economy                                      Buy PLA Economy Value Pack

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.

Pangolin

A pangolin is a mammal that is covered with touch, overlapping scales. These scales normally offer great defense against predators in the wild. This benign creature however is currently being threatened with extinction. They’re considered the world’s most hunted animal because people believe that the meat is prized for medicinal ingredient.

To get some attention for this little fella we have printed one. We challenged Niels, our new intern, with this multipart design to learn how to use the Ultimaker 2+ and our PLA Economy. It took him only a few days to get flawless quality from the Ultimaker 2+.

Design: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2064359

This print was made on the Ultimaker 2+ with 0.1mm layer height, using PLA Economy Silver.

Designed by Amao Chan from Taiwan, who has a real heart for the little Pangolin. In Amao’s words: “Pangolins now are facing critical crisis as they are closing to extinct. In fact, humans are the murderers of this disaster, superstition and greed are the main reason to cause this massacre.”

“Nowadays, the numbers of pangolins are less and less, some people eat them only for the reason of showing their ostentatious wealth, what they do to these helpless animals is to make them approach to endangered.”

About the design: “Pangolin is a really skillful and difficult work that I have spent a lot of time on it. It has been passed at least six editions before presenting to all of you. What I was trying to challenge is an artwork with both perfect appearance and function. It was a little struggle for me to share this work at the beginning since I’ve fallen in love with it when it’s first done and stood in front of me. At this moment, what I am wondering more is to let you firsthand it, holding and feeling the variation with actions. Enjoy and I believe you’ll like it.”

Well, we like it a lot! For this print we chose PLA Economy to print with.

PLA Economy was launched November 2016 and it has been a big hit ever since. Only now we are catching up with the demand for this new and great filament! We have been printing quite a lot with our new PLA Economy line. A few examples are:

We have been testing this material for the better part of last year and have found this filament a great alternative those customers who need a lot of PLA. We are initially releasing PLA Economy in four colors: White (RAL 9010), Black (RAL 9005, Red (RAL 3020) and Silver (RAL 9023). This PLA grade has been tested extensively and is being produced and shipped by the same colorFabb team you are used to so you know we are not compromising on quality. You can rely with this filament on the same high standards that colorFabb is known for. It is available only on 2.2kg spools.

PLA Economy is an addition to our range of PLA/PHA, which is available in 30 colors (and on 750 grams spools).

3D Scanner

Combining several technologies is what we love here at colorFabb. 3D Scanning, smart phones and a little thing called 3D printing (you may have heard about it). We even combined two vastly different materials, namely colorFabb_XT and PLA Economy.

Today’s featured print, straight from our print lab, is Dave Clarke’s $30 3D scanner:

Design: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1762299

This scanner won the Pinshape 2016 Top Functional Design award, and rightfully so. Congrats, Dave!

You can spend a lot of money on accessories for your smart phone, but why not print a fully functional scanner? We will give the scanner and the results a spin soon, but for now we have the scanner printed:

You can find the full tutorial for this model here.

We printed on one of the Ultimaker 2+ in our print lab. For the housing parts we used PLA Economy Black with 0,6 nozzle on 0,2mm layerheight.
The technical parts and phone holder we printed with  colorFabb_XT Clear with 0,25mm nozzle on 0,1mm layerheight.

PLA Economy was launched November 2016 and it has been a big hit ever since. Only now we are catching up with the demand for this new and great filament! We have been printing quite a lot with our new PLA Economy line. A few examples are:

We have been testing this material for the better part of the summer and have found this filament a great alternative those customers who need a lot of PLA. We are initially releasing PLA Economy in four colors: White (RAL 9010), Black (RAL 9005, Red (RAL 3020) and Silver (RAL 9023). This PLA grade has been tested extensively and is being produced and shipped by the same colorFabb team you are used to so you know we are not compromising on quality. You can rely with this filament on the same high standards that colorFabb is known for. It is available only on 2.2kg spools.

PLA Economy is an addition to our range of PLA/PHA, which is available in 30 colors (and on 750 grams spools).

As said, the technical parts were printed with colorFabb_XT. We launched colorFabb_XT over 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.

Both colorFabb_XT is made with Eastman Amphora™ 3D polymer AM1800. With Amphora, items can be created that are more functional, more durable, more efficient, and attractive.

Our filaments available in our webshop and through our network of distributors and resellers worldwide.

http://colorfabb.com/storelocator/

Have you tried PLA Economy?

colorFabb’s PLA Economy: Large volume, High quality, Low price

In November we launched a new product line: PLA Economy. This new grade of PLA, with an added impact modifier, has been a hit 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.

So far, we have released PLA Economy in four colors: White (RAL 9010), Black (RAL 9005, Red (RAL 3020) and Silver (RAL 9023). More colors will be made available in 2017.

We advice the following settings:

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.

 

Design spool holder: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1862683

At a little over €35 (excl. VAT) for 2.2kg pricing for this filament is extremely attractive. That comes basically down to a little less than € 16 per kg for a high quality filament! But wait, there is more….

You can also opt for the PLA Economy Value Pack: order four spools as a value pack and receive an immediate 10% discount!

Buy PLA Economy                                      Buy PLA Economy Value Pack

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.

Happy printing!