In the decade I’ve been playing with 3D printing I’ve used several types of filaments.
Right now I am using mostly PLA along with some Ryno (which I used to print 6-foot-tall Debutante, right) and a little PETG if I don’t have Ryno in the color I want.
I’ve also printed in bronze (80% bronze, 20% PLA) and rubber.
But now I’m wondering what’s out there that would work for me.
There are a lot of things to consider:
- Does the filament bring anything to the artwork? In other words, will a specialty filament make a design more compelling in some way?
- Will my machine do that? I usually test things on my Cerberus 3D 400 or my Cerberus 3D 250, both of which use the deltabot design of my 8-foot-tall Cerberus 3D Gigante 3D printer. I run 1.75 mm filament on the smaller machines and 3 mm on the Gigante.
- Can I get the appropriate filament in colors that work for that sculpture?
- If none of my machines can do the job – gulp – can I modify one of them? If so, what changes do I need to make? Or what equipment do I need? And is it worth it? In my metalworking studio my rule of thumb for buying new equipment is whether I need it 3 times. That isn’t exactly applicable here, but helps me think about it.
But first I need to rummage around online to see what I can find. I’ll try some of my tried and true suppliers, like Ultimachine, Matterhackers and Filastruder (which are not paying me to mention them) and do some general searches, too. Things change so fast there’s no telling what’s out there.
Anyway, a guy can dream….