Renowned 3D printing materials supplier colorFabb is set to release its next stonking metal effect copolymer filament copperFill. The company’s most popular materials to date are woodFill and bronzeFill. On the back of the success of these copolymers colorFabb is to open a pre-order period for its brand spanking new copperFill material.
Davide recently had face to face conversations with some of the colorfabb people from the increasingly renowned 3D printing materials supplier. 3DPI’s resident Italian chatted to Gijs Houdijk, tester of ColorFabb’s materials, and heard about materials inventor and ColorFab founder Ruud Rouleaux from Sander Strijbos, the company’s sales and marketing specialist.
Sanders explained that: “We develop everything in house. Ruud is the materials expert. He comes up with innovative ideas and we try to get them into production. He also has great expertise in coloring.” And that is the expertise that has been applied to the new copper material — as all the pieces start to fit together.
Gijs told Davide:“The testing process depends on how much we know already about the material. Mostly we look for extruding temperatures and try to understand how necessary the heated bed is and how it handles retractions. We need to establish whether it is too brittle, too hard or too soft. We need to make sure we can standardize the material’s performance and find the exact settings, especially for exotic products such as the bronzeFill.” And, he was obviously referring to copperFill too.
The team state that they have shown reliable results using the all metal hotends, such as that found in the Makerbot Replicator 2. Teflon isolator coupler hotends generate adhesion to the new filament which may lead to clogs, so colorFabb say it’s best that novice users wait until further materials testing has been completed. The new filament will be priced the same as the popular bronzeFill feedstock.
