XXL spool holder

Size does matter it seems… Back in the day we started out with small spools containing 750 grams of filament (7 years ago now, man time flies…). Over the past few years we have made materials available as 2.2kg, 4.5kg and 8kg spools. More and more customers need a steady flow of filament, but most printers do not support large spool formats of themselves. That’s why we have adjusted our Duck Spool holder for XXL spools (containing 4.5kg of quality colorFabb filament):

Download your XXL spools holder here

Our filament spool holder is a remix of the FIlament Duck by Lukas Rambold (original design here) and already our third iteration:

(We currently do not have any plans to release one for our 8kg spools)

We printed the XXL spool holders, which we actively use in our own print lab, with PLA Economy Red on the Stacker S4 XL. This print was made with 0.2 layer height, 20% infill and a 0.6mm nozzle.

Please note: 2.2kg, 4.5kg and 8kg are mostly available in our Economy range of filaments (PLA and PETG). Please check stock levels per individual article for availability. We can produce most of our materials on larger spools, but lead times of up to several weeks do apply. Contact us for the options.

About PLA Economy

PLA Economy is available on 2.2kg, 4.5kg and 8kg spools only. It is very well suited for the maker who needs quality filament at an affordable price. It is a perfect material for large volume and small series production, made with the guaranteed colorFabb quality that we are known for.

PLA Economy is now available in six of the most popular colors. ColorFabb PLA Economy is not a standard PLA. It has been modified for better layer adhesion and flow properties to get better performance over other basic PLA filaments. Because it’s made with the same processing technology used for other premium colorFabb products, this PLA Economy will be just as reliable.

About Stacker S4 XL

The Stacker S4 XL is the latest offering in the Stacker portfolio. It is next generation industrial grade 3D printing, based on the technology and experience of the S2 and S4 printers. Featuring unique closed loop servo motor system and a massive 61cm build space (in all directions), the Stacker S4 XL is the ultimate production platform within FDM for large scale and small series 3D printing.

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 7 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. We recently published two blogs about Dutch companies Optima and Mifa and their use of Stacker 3D printers.

 

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.

Interested? Get a quote or contact us!

Ceiling housing

Series production on a 3D printer can be done one by one. But what if you did it four by four? On the Stacker S4 it is possible to produce multiple parts at the same time due to the large print bed (345x525mm) and four print heads. Like these ceiling housings for a passive infrared (PIR) sensor, printed with nGen Dark Gray.

Design by TerroBladeZ

Printing small series is easier than ever with the Stacker combined with colorFabb filaments. Not only is it faster, it enables the user more flexibility and it saves money over conventional production. It took merely 18 hours to print 16 ceiling housings with a 0.4mm nozzle and at 0.12mm layer height.

 

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.”

 

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.

Interested? Get a quote or contact us!

Print your own toolbox inlay

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:

Custom in-house design (Thingiverse link)

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.

Print your own inlay now by heading to our Thingiverse page.

The design was made in SolidWorks, our design software of choice:

Render of the design in SolidWorks

PLA Economy is a fantastic PLA grade which we launched in November of 2016. Initially we released four colors: white, red, black, silver and dark blue.

 

PLA Economy

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!

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.

 

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.

Interested? Get a quote or contact us!

 

Lodewijk van der Grinten Prize 2017

3D printing allows for unique prints and what needs to be more unique than an award or trophy? Recently we printed the Bioplastics Magazine Award for the third consecutive year. Last year we printed the nominee awards for the Lodewijk van der Grinten prize, a local award. This year, once again, we were asked to print the commemorative trophies for all the nominees and used our upcoming nGen_LUX:

This year the prize was won by Seacon Logistics. Congratulations!

For these commemorative trophies we printed on the Stacker s4 with dual extrusion mode at 0.2mm layer height and with a 0.4mm nozzle at 240C 85C bed temp.

All nominees received this award.

 

A little bit about the award…

The Entrepreneur Award is named after Lodewijkvan der Grinten (1831 – 1895), founder of the current Océ. The name is not chosen without reason. Océ has become one of the biggest economic powers in Venlo and its region. The award is an initiative of the Foundation Lodewijk van der Grinten Business Award, in which LLTB Horst Venlo, Venlo Small and Medium Businesses (MKB), Entrepreneurial Venlo and the city of Venlo participate. It is handed out during a ceremony ever since 2010. The award is also made possible by sponsors, of which colorFabb is one.

The city if Venlo is located in the south of the Netherlands, next to the German border and in between the big harbors of Rotterdam and Antwerpen on one side and the German Ruhr area and Central Europe on the other side. Venlo and its surrounding region has been called one of the (if not the) best logistics hubs of Europe! With so much business in the area it is hard to stand out, which makes winning the award such an achievement!

nGen_LUX is our upcoming new 3D printing filament that will be released early 2018. With nGen_LUX we put years of experience in development, 3D printing, R&D and production into a single 3D printing filament that will bridge the gap to production with unmatched surface quality.

As the name indicates, nGen_LUX is based on nGen – the highly successful co-polyester based filament we launched nearly 2 years ago. nGen is currently our best-selling filament and go-to material for all your prints. It is a truly all-round filament made with Eastman Amphora™ AM3300.

Years of development, unique light diffusion additives and compounding know-how have lead to nGen_LUX. The “Lux” not only stands for luxurious – which is definitely the look of the prints – but also refers to the unit of illumination used worldwide. And light is what makes this filament truly special.

Keep your eyes and ears open for the release date in the next year!

The Stacker S4 can be set-up for small series production, or single large part printing. Mounting up to 4 toolheads on the x-carriage gives the user higher output, but reduces the build volume. The alternative is to mount only a single toolhead and take advantage of the entire buildvolume of the S4 or its smaller sibling, the S2.

Multi-material printing is an option with the Stacker printers.

The Stacker S4 is an industrial grade FFF 3D printer. Multiple print heads and a large build volume make it a versatile printer. 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.

colorFabb is proud partner of Stacker and official distributor for the EMEA region. At colorFabb we have been extensively testing with both the S2 and S4 in our print lab with our entire range of filaments.

Football trophy

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.

So we went to work:

Design: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:439592

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.

3D printing proofs once again to have a lot of diverse applications. Investment casting, model making, museum pieces, pens, head phones, chairs, signs, housings, lamps and gifts!

 

The materials we used…

PLA/PHA Standard White

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.

PLA Economy

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.

Stacker S4 head storage rail

Updated: scroll down for the version in XT-CF20

The Stacker S4 is a fantastic printer. Tough, reliable and industrial grade. We are the distributor of this US made machine in Europe and have printed many hours on it. One of the big advantages of the Stacker printer is its versatility: You can print 4 prints at the same time or print one big print. But what to do with the other print heads if you don’t need them?

Simple: store them!

Design: http://stacker3d.com/stacker-3d-printer-support/

We printed this part, obviously, on the Stacker S4 with colorFabb_XT Light Gray. We used a 0.12mm layer height which resulted in a 16 hour print.

The head storage allows the use of the maximum print volume with the remaining print heads.

Stacker recently launched the Stacker S2 on Kickstarter. You can read more about this printer here. It is the smaller sibling of the S4 with a smaller build volume and two, instead of four, print heads. The technology is the same as the S4, which has already been tested and tried by the market for almost a year.

Check out the Stacker S2 Kickstarter video below.

https://vimeo.com/205107978

For functional materials in such an application, we do not look any further than our colorFabb_XT.

colorFabb_XT is made with Eastman Amphora™ 3D polymer AM1800. Launched in September 2014, it is a fantastic functional engineering material. With colorFabb_XT we achieved to produce a filament that provides good strength and toughness, as well as certain FDA food contact compliances. It has found a wide audience amongst users looking for extra functionality. With a temperature resistance of 75+ degrees, this filament offers (aside from its high strength and very high toughness) odor neutral processing, a styrene free formulation, FDA food contact compliance and BPA (Bisphenol A ) free formulation.

colorFabb_XT is available in various colors. We have released it in Light Gray (RAL 7035) and Dark Gray (RAL 7043) as well for the more functional looking prints.

You can find more about what co-polyesters are by clicking here.

Update: April 6th 2017

We made another version, but now in XT-CF20:

Of course this one was printed on the Stacker S4 at a 0.2mm layer height. The matte surface quality is just plain awesome as you can see and the look fits the industrial grade build of the printer perfectly.

XT-CF20 is our first Amphora based special filament, launched nearly two years ago, made with colorFabb_XT and 20% carbon fibres. More information can be found here. XT-CF20 has received some really good reviews on our website. It may not be the easiest filament to print with, but the results can be stunning. The functionality, stiffness and the matte finish are true selling points of this material.

XT-CF20 is available online.