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Discussion about the Bronze Filament
I just wanted to start a thread to see how yall guys think about the new Bronze filament for FDM printers. I think it is pretty exciting that FDM are getting a taste of metal printing. I ordered a pound of it yesterday. I will keep yall updated on what my experiences are. Has anyone else tried it?
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tjones - Do you have a link? This is the fist I'm hearing about it. How does it work? And is it really metal? So cool
9 years, 10 months ago
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vinnie90 - http://colorfabb.com/bronzefill#.U5niafldWSo


Supposedly it has 80% bronze particles in it. You can sand it and polish it.
9 years, 10 months ago
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mhagan - It is interesting, I think it is going to tear up nozzles pretty quickly though. The look of some of the example pictures is amazing. With many of the other composite filaments Printing has to be done very slowly. I would assume it is the same with this.
9 years, 10 months ago
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vinnie90 - I think I read somewhere that it needs to be at a 40-100 speed. and 190 -220 heat.

I do have the worry with the nozzles though!! Im worried about cogging up.

Another thing to throw out there is that it is pretty expensive for a spool. I ordered a pound and it came out to $71.00
9 years, 10 months ago
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mhagan - I am also worried about this filament being more brittle. I have worked with Alumide powder from EOS and tried extruding some into filament. It wrecked a hardened steel nozzle and was to brittle to be pushed by an extruder. I am not sure how much of that is from the nylon being thermally damaged or from the aluminum powder in the mixture.

Colorfabb seems to be doing a lot of testing so they may have checked this, but I would feel better with some quantitative physical properties listed.
9 years, 10 months ago
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vinnie90 - I agree.
9 years, 10 months ago
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mkapras - It looks very cool though! If it doesn't trash your nozzle, probably better for smaller prints, figurines, etc.
9 years, 10 months ago
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elpulpo - Worth just mentioning. Bronze is a very dense metal. Just don't expect to get a full reel when you order half a kilo. I've pre-ordered 500g so we'll see how it goes :-)
9 years, 10 months ago
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vinnie90 - I ordered the minimum just to test it out. It was already kinda expensive. Im excited for it...I still havent recieved it yet. I sign in and it was still "Processing". Im sure alot of people is ordering it.
9 years, 10 months ago
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printedsolid - I'm the US reseller for colorfabb and usually get everything in beta before it goes out. Not this stuff though! They've kept the distribution in house. So, I think they really have a precious short supply.

It likely will be relatively brittle, but I have not heard any reports of nozzle damage. I wouldn't be surprised if there is some amount of erosion though.

As has been pointed out, it is not cheap. My speculation is that a lot of people will try it, then it will find a small niche of people who love it and use it all the time. For people that are paying that price for filament, the price of replacing an occasional nozzle will probably not be a major concern.

For those of you in the US, if you want advance notification for when we will get this stuff in stock to save a few $$ shipping, you can sign up to our mailing list here: http://www.printedsolid.com/the-full-catalog/
9 years, 10 months ago
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elpulpo - Hmmm..

Standard PLA/PHA: 1.4g/cm**3.

Bronze: 8.5g/cm**3

Bronzefill: 3.9g/cm**3

Guess that's 80% by weight. Not by volume. I make it around 30% by volume.
9 years, 10 months ago
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printedsolid - I can't imagine how they would push 80% by volume through an extruder, so that makes sense.
9 years, 10 months ago
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vinnie90 - FYI I ordered this stuff on June 11.....and it still says that it is processing. I sent an email to get an update. Im pretty sure they will just say that they are working on it...
9 years, 9 months ago
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vinnie90 - Dear Vincent,

The BronzeFill was initially during the month of June for pre-ordering.
I am happy to announce that production started this week and your order will be shipped later this week (we are shipping in batches, starting today). Rest assured that your order will be with you soon.

Sander
- Team ColorFabb
9 years, 9 months ago
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printedsolid - If you need a little more proof: They posted an update on facebook showing the spools ready to go out this morning. https://www.facebook.com/ColorFabb?fref=nf

As you've found, Sander (their sales rep) is amazingly responsive, but if you're ever waiting on a s response, feel free to ping me on here. I'm in frequent contact with them.
9 years, 9 months ago
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vinnie90 - ok awesome
9 years, 9 months ago
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printedsolid - Vinnie, have your received yours yet? Looks like a few US customers have received their orders.

Anyone in the US looking to order this material and save a little on shipping going forward, it has now been opened up to resellers. I have some on order and hope to have it in 3-4 weeks. Pricing is $99.99 for a 1.5kg spool and $67.99 for a 750g spool with $5.49/spool shipping and free shipping with a total order of $195 or up so you'll save a decent amount vs ordering from overseas. DM me if you want to claim one before they're formally put up on the site.
9 years, 9 months ago
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vinnie90 - I still have not received anything yet :/
9 years, 9 months ago
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elpulpo - Received mine today!!

Clear spool. Standard size. Around 8" diameter and 2" wide. Inner diameter is around 4" and actual filament is, like 1/2" to 3/4" thick. Think about the amount where you'd usually say to yourself "Hmm. Better place an order for some more!" i.e. Doesn't look like much on the spool but it weighs plenty! :-D
9 years, 9 months ago
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vinnie90 - you ordered yours before or after me?
9 years, 9 months ago
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elpulpo - I think we ordered ours just around the same time, Vinnie. Let's not forget that I'm far closer to the Netherlands though. I'd be prepared to wager you'll get yours by the weekend! :-)
9 years, 9 months ago
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vinnie90 - I actually got mine the same day...just at the end of it.


I havent printed with it yet! But, just taking it out the box it feels interesting. I would think that it would be really hard, but it is rather soft.
9 years, 9 months ago
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elpulpo - I'm in the midst of a half dozen or so 7-10 hour prints so I won't be doing any experimentation for a week or so. :-(
9 years, 9 months ago
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printedsolid - Hoping to get mine this week.
How are you making out with the material? colorFabb has been sending out pics of users prints on their twitter feed. https://twitter.com/ColorFabb
The stuff from Bernhard Bauer is just insanely awesome (and miles above any level of talent I will ever have) but the Airwolf celtic skull looks awesome as well and doable for those with a little less artistic talent.
9 years, 9 months ago
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elpulpo - I had a go with the bronze filament over the weekend but no luck yet. I was trying out a new extruder, from Recreus. I found that the softening point is very low, which ain't good on an Up! Mini. It has a direct extruder and the stepper tends to get very warm ( Too warm to keep your fingers on it! ). I'll keep plugging on when I get time though! :-D
9 years, 9 months ago
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vinnie90 - Bronze filament still on the desk.....expensive paper weight...lol
9 years, 9 months ago
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elpulpo - LOL!! How come??
9 years, 9 months ago
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vinnie90 - Working a on project that I hope to get me future projects...lol

Its going to be about a week of printing
9 years, 9 months ago
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vinnie90 - what about you?
9 years, 9 months ago
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elpulpo - Working on a Fredini-style scanning rig.
9 years, 9 months ago
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elpulpo - Scanned 27 eleven-year-olds last Friday evening. 100% humidity 85 degrees. Next to the DJ's desk. If I could do that I can do ANYTHING!! LOL

And the bloody DJ unplugged me because there was nobody dancing! Talk about professional jealousy!
9 years, 9 months ago
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mkapras - @elpulpo - tell us about your scanning rig! What scanner? What computer (specs) is it hooked up to? What kind of rig did you build?
9 years, 9 months ago
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elpulpo - @mkpras Sure. It's still developing slowly but I'm getting reasonable results so, hey. Must say, the heavy lifting was done by Fred Kahl, aka The Great Fredini. You can read all about his Coney Island Scan-a-rama here..

http://thegreatfredini.com/scan-a-rama/

My rig comprises a 28 inch diameter motorised turntable, a modified XBox Kinect, a PC and the software to run on it.

I built the turntable out of 18mm plywood. Two payers for the turntable and one for the base. Fred uses a BBQ rotisserie motor a car wheel bearing and a bike inner tube. I used a car windshield wiper motor, 50 cedar wood balls running in slots routed into the bottom surface of the turntable and the upper surface of the base and GT5 toothed belt. It'll take two fully grown adults and has a full hex-bridge motor controller that allows me to set its speed. It'll turn a full rotation in 20 seconds up to 3 minutes.

The PC is an old game tower system running Windows 7 on a dual core Core i5 and a Cyclone GTX450 graphics card, a 1TB hard drive and a 128GB SSD drive. All sounds very high-tech I suppose but it's trailing edge as far as gaming is concerned. I can use my Mid-2012 13" MACBook Pro too and still get somewhere around 15 frames per second running Skanect.

Right now I'm using Skanect but have used ReconstructMe as Fred does. My preference kinda flips between the two and although you can use the demo software, I finally bit the bullet and bought the pro version of Skanect.

I've modded the Kinect with a dual laser ranging device that allows me to keep within the range of the Kinect and also a 3D printed handle so I can scan the model comfortably.

I'm still working out a couple of wrinkles so I can't really give you too much detail about the process as it's constantly evolving. Suffice it to say I'm basing it on improvements I've made to Fred's process, as documented in his YouTube videos.

Feel free to message me if you have any questions.

Cheers!

AndyL
9 years, 9 months ago
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fraguo - Great!
I just bought a Xbox kinect and am going to try build something like that.
What are your experiences with Kinect-scanning?
9 years, 8 months ago
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vinnie90 - I bought a xbox too! I wanted to do the same thing......


Then I found out that you cant do it with the xbox one...yet....

You also cant return the xbox if it is open
9 years, 8 months ago
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fraguo - But you can do it with the xbox kinect scanner
9 years, 8 months ago
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fraguo - Right?
(hopefully...)
9 years, 8 months ago
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vinnie90 - doesnt have a usb plug on it....it has weird looking plug
9 years, 8 months ago
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elpulpo - If the plug has 6 contacts and an orange plastic shroud, you need the power supply. That has a strange kinda Y-cable with a standard USB plug on one end. You can plug that into your PC, so long as you're running the appropriate driver.
9 years, 8 months ago
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elpulpo - You can get the driver at...

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=40278
9 years, 8 months ago
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vinnie90 - that the connector for the 360 kinec. I have the xbox one. the connector looks totally different :/
9 years, 8 months ago
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elpulpo - Ah! Yeah. You've got the Kinect 2. Sorry. My bad. For some reason they're not supporting that on ReconstructMe or Skanect. Can't think why but If it's any help you can pick up an old Kinect for not much on eBay nowadays.
9 years, 8 months ago
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vinnie90 - yea, I figure that is what I would do.
9 years, 8 months ago
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vinnie90 - Printing with bronze today!!!!
9 years, 8 months ago
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elpulpo - Ooh! I'd like to see some pictures! :-D
9 years, 8 months ago
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vinnie90 - [IMG]http://i.imgur.com/F6vA469.jpg[/IMG]
Shows under it. I wanted to see how well it will do without support. I probably could run it cooler. Makerbot normally runs everything kinda hot. I had it at a 220.

Also notice how shinny the bottom is where I chiseled it off the build platform. It kinda "Polished" it up. It was extremely hard to take off the build plate!!!

[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/2YRLG0L.jpg[/IMG]
Shows parts stuck and gold dust on the build plate

[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/bczwdxW.jpg[/IMG]
Showes the top of the print. It was done at a low res as well too hot. so the passes could not cool and stay flat.


It is heavy, and solid! I dont have all the sandpaper needed to polish it up, however, I did a little rough sanding on it and you can see the shine coming out.


I give it a 9/10
9 years, 8 months ago
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elpulpo - Very cool, Vinnie! I noticed the "raw" filament is quite brittle. Hope it's more solid when it's printed.

Be sure to post an image or two when you've polished it. I'll be interested too see how it turns out.

I'm looking into casting my 3DU's in bronze but don't expect many people will be keen on the cost as each one would cost me at least $150 to cast.
9 years, 8 months ago
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printedsolid - very nice. Did you see colorfabb's reccomended profile at learn.colorfabb.com? I mention it since you're lucky enough to be using one of the three machines that they've made life super easy for you by publishing profiles.
Polishing is a process. The best / easiest I've seen people use is putting it into a rock tumbler with drywall screws.

elpulpo, it is a pretty brittle material. Probably more like a metallic clay than a polymer. I don't think any filaments improve mechanical properties after printing.
9 years, 8 months ago
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