Colorfabb LW-PLA

[Xalara 5]

Has anyone used Colorfabb's LW-PLA? If so what kind of settings are you using?

 

I'm interested in trying out the material. It seems to get similar results to Ultimaker PLA you want around 230-235C for the nozzle, and flow to 40%?

[dxp 20]

If you are able to read german, check this out: Toller Schaumschläger: Colorfabb LW-PLA

[Xalara 5]

On 10/15/2019 at 11:11 PM, dxp said:

If you are able to read german, check this out: Toller Schaumschläger: Colorfabb LW-PLA

 

I cannot read German, but luckily Google Translate does 🙂 Thank you for the link.

 

For those finding this thread in the future: I also reached out to ColorFabb themselves and a material profile should be out on the Ultimaker Marketplace soon.

[Xalara 5]

Update: I spent the last week tuning the Generic PLA profile on my Ultimaker 3 to work with ColorFabb's LW-PLA and managed to get it to reliably print at a 50% weight reduction. I've attached an image highlighting the settings I used to get there if others want to try printing with it. I highly recommend reading their article on how to print with it first: https://learn.colorfabb.com/print-lw-pla/

 

I'd like to get it to a 60%-65% weight reduction, but so far I haven't been able to figure out how to get it to expand further and am happy with just a 50% for what I am printing.

 

Some explanations:

- No retraction: Due to the foaming nature of the filament, retraction can actually cause clogs. While this does result in stringing, they're easy to sand off and remove. Most of the things I print end up being sanded/painted so stringing isn't an issue for me.

- No cooling: Again, you want this to foam which requires heat. So you don't really want to cool it. If your part requires bridging, you can play with this setting.

- Acceleration/jerk: To keep the parts dimensionally accurate, especially on sharp corners, you do want to have fairly high acceleration compared to the generic PLA profile to avoid over extrusion. This does result in some ringing, but it's not a concern for what I was shooting for.

- Build plate temperature: I have to set to 30 degrees because for whatever reason PLA prints deform on my UM3 when set to the defaults. I also almost never print without Ultimaker adhesive sheets. You will want to tweak this if you use a straight glass bed.

Edited March 30, 2020 by Xalara
Added some context to the settings.

[Iceywolf 0]

I tried this on my S3 firmware 5.8.2, changed the heated bed to 60c always (not just during initial layer) since I don't use any adhesive sheets, and it's coming out perfect at roughly 50% weight reduction. Thanks for the settings! Hope they make a profile for this on the marketplace.