printedsolid

It is a blend of polymers. No particle fill. I believe the satin finish, and the weird behavior where the material globs back on itself when you extrude into air, has to do with internal stresses in the material

Hello. I haven't been around much lately, but I'm a pretty avid UM1 fan and run a US reseller for colorFabb: printedsolid.com. colorFabb tests all of their filament on Ultimaker printers as part of the development process and offers suggested printing profiles for the UM2 based on this testing. I've put a coupon code up for 10% good for today only UMCOMMUNITY

Ouch. USPS usually does pretty well, but when they screw up, they do it well. Go to youtube and search on USPS delivery gone wrong. At least you don't have a dog who likes to eat Ultimaker boxes...

That looks great! I've used Ethyl Acetate as a substitute for acetone to vapor polish PLA, but your process is giving a much better result.

Hello, I'm a little biased as I'm the US colorFabb reseller, but I can tell you that all of colorFabb's materials work quite well in the Ultimaker 1 and 2. All of the development testing is done on Ultimakers (and a few other printers) and they publish Cura profiles for UM1 and 2 for their more exotic materials at learn.colorfabb.com. I don't have a recommendation for a good Canadian ABS supplier for the Ultimaker.

I've had the printers set on vacation for my hub for the past month or so (preparing for NY Makerfaire, then a bunch of other stuff through October, bronzefill launch, etc) and it wasn't super active before that. I show a 10% discount. So, I'm guessing they're offering a 10% discount as a base to everyone with higher rates based on $$ sales or some other statistic. They capture so much data, who knows what they could be using for decisions, but I'm sure it's something good.

It was great meeting many of you for the first time and seeing some of you again. I was really surprised by how many people from this forum introduced themselves. Such a great community! Pretty psyched about all the announcements and managed to pick up a UM1 heated bed upgrade kit for myself.

They are very similar and are both going after that market of a really functional 3D printing material. XT is stronger and tends to have better layer bonding.

You could do that if you were using a raft (does anyone use a raft with an ultimaker?) and can definitely mix it with other PLA based materials (plain PLA, woodfill, soft PLA, etc) for cool effects. If you're really really awesome, you could go into the gcode and figure out exactly how much length you need for support vs object at each layer and load a bunch of little chunks, then pause and load more. Or use a dual.

doh! I did the same thing when I first got my hands on woodfill. Ran an incredibly beautiful print at 100 microns. Almost doesn't look printed. I got through the whole thing somehow, but then clog clog clog after that. A few months ago, esun launched an extruder cleanout filament. I got to try some out and it is amazing if you're printing with a lot of different filament types. It is especially useful if you're printing with woodfill or other filled materials. Just cut off about a 4" section and pop it into the bowden to push through at each new material type. I'm trying to get some to include with all woodfill shipments, but haven't been able to yet. Toybuilderlabs sells it here in the US. Not sure if they ship internationally.

Actually, acetone works on XT, T-glase, and PET+. Similar to the Ethyl Acetate with PLA, results are much more dependent on technique and settings than they are with ABS. I've found that a very short exposure works incredibly well, but if you overdo it, the material starts to whiten. I suspect that the amount of moisture in the air either when printing or polishing may also be a factor. There is a lot of room for optimization and deeper understanding, but it's a starting point. Also, this blog post was done with the original lower temperature XT. Not sure if I've tried it with the newer XT yet. http://www.printedsolid.com/vapor-polishing-colorfabb-xt/

I really like the way this came out, so I'm sharing. Printed on an Ultimaker Original at full build volume. 0.8mm nozzle. 0.2mm layer height. colorfabb woodfill filament. Lighter color is as-printed. Darker is after stain with Red Mahogany wood stain. Model is here: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:438143

Every filament is a little different, especially when you start getting to exotic things like bronzefill. The extruder test will help determine the best temperature settings for your printer. If your thermocouple is reading a little bit off, this will be very useful in helping get you printing well with bronze.

I flagged Gijs at colorfabb on this, so hopefully he'll weight in, but I think anon4321 nailed it. Some explanation on what is happening and your obervations. I agree that for PLA you would want to increase cooling and decrease temp to resolve this, but XT is a little bit of a different beast, especially the new formula. It has a really high melt strength, so it's going to want to hold a round shape rather than spreading out like PLA does. When you're crossing the non-supported areas, it bridges well for the first layer you put down. Then when you go to later layers, instead of just spreading nicely across the previous layer, the material holds the round shape and pushes the previous material down. Going to a higher temp will make it less more liquid, so it should make it easier for the material to spread On a side note, I'm surprised your prints are turning out that well in XT at that low of a temperature. I wonder if your calibration is a little bit on the cool side?

Hey, thanks for the plug. I definitely would look into PET. XT actually is a PET. That along with T-glase and PET+. All three are similar but not the same I think a few places might be selling a generic 'PET' as well. I'm convinced that PET is going to overtake ABS as a go-to filament for the reasons that others have listed in this thread. Expect to see more options for colored PET come early Fall.

Hey, just wanted to let you know that we've got a little bit of this in stock for those in the US who have been patiently waiting. I've got a handful of requests from people who have previously expressed interest that I am waiting to hear back on before I go ahead an list it as regular item on the site. If you'd like to call dibs on a spool, PM me here.

That's if you assume a bilateral tolerance Just kidding. They do advertise it as being nominally 3mm w+/- 0.05mm, so something is a little off somewhere. That tolerance works fine on the Ultimaker as long as they actually hold it. Other less reputable vendors call out 3mm and might vary significantly higher. That is where you run into problem. The reason that this whole issue is confusing is that 1.75mm filament typically means 1.75 with a bilateral tolerance, but 3mm typically means it is centered below 3. For a consumer, it's really difficult to tell what will work on a 3mm machine. The magic 2.85 nominal dimension just means that the vendor has specifically taken 3mm bowden into account and not only stays below 3mm, but does so with a comfortable margin.

Thanks Gothampixel and SteveGT. We do ensure that all of our materials at printedsolid.com are compatible with the Ultimaker as we test them ourselves and only work with suppliers who understand the requirement of Bowden feed. We're located in Newark,DE, so we can provide extremely fast shipment to the Northeast and are always willing to meet up if people want to pick up material locally. Steve, Thanks for the feedback. The cascading menu, ironically enough, is intended to provide relatively easy navigation to what is in stock right now. Our quick visual overview of all of the things we carry is here: http://www.printedsolid.com/the-full-catalog/ I'm not able to spend nearly as much time on this forum as I would like, but feel free to DM me any questions. By the way, regarding standard PLA/ABS in the US, my recommendations? I've personally had excellent experience with protoparadigm (on sale now by the way) and toybuilders. I've heard great things about Ultimachine, but haven't used them. edit by gr5: fixed link.

Sounds like I need to get a new dishwasher to process my 3D prints. I think that makes it a business expense :-P

XT has recently been changed to a higher molecular weight formula that is stronger and more heat tolerant. I think there is a discussion on this in the google groups with input from Gijs. So I'm not sure the dishwasher trick probably won't work on newer batches. It did produce a really cool opaque white effect. Now that colored XT is on the way, it probably doesn't matter much anyways. If you do have the older XT around, you can do the dishwasher trick if you can hit about 70C in the dishwasher. dim3nsioneer: totally unrelated to 3D printing, but how do you know what temperature your dishwasher reaches? Have you hacked your dishwasher or do you just have a more sophisticated dishwasher than me? All I know about mine is that it melts anything on the bottom rack! No concerns around fumes. You might smell a sweet smell in the air, but the fumes of XT are very low compared to ABS and PLA.

I believe that colorFabb has decided to only sell the fine variety not the coarse. I will be taking my spool of coarse and locking it in a vault only to be removed for special occasions. :( So, the 1.75 and 2.85 available now are the same.

Here is a little pushing the boundaries : ) 3D Hubs Marvin in Woodfill Fine. Ultimaker original with a 0.8mm nozzle and 100um layer height. Ducted cooling on full blast and 30mm/s speed.

sigi, those are great tips! Thanks for helping spread settings for printing with this material. Aaron and others in the US, we'll have some 3mm in stock next week (unless customs decides they want to hold on to it for a little while) in both full spools and in the sample pack (40g each of woodfill, XT, and PLA/PHA).

haha. Same here, and I have a decent amount of experience validating manufacturing processes, so I really should know better : ) Going to follow this thread to see if someone comes along with some good suggestions...

Yeah, I'll try to remember to take some, but I'm sure you've probably already seen the pics that UM posted of their beautiful new booth. Pikey and anyone else listening in. Want to plan to meet up at the UM booth, say by their nice U2 styled chairs, at 2? I'll bring you a little sample of colorfabb to try out. I don't think I'm going to load up my whole backpack with samples, but if anyone else will be there and wants to try some out, let me know.