Today, we saw two announcements for new 3D printing materials coming to market. 2014 has seen a huge rush of new filaments coming forward, as well as users who are adopting their unique attributes to take their 3D printing projects to the next level.
First, Colorfabb has announced that BrassFill will join BronzeFill and CopperFill in their metal imbued filaments line. These filaments start out with a dull gritty surface finish when printed, but after being polished show what makes them really special. BrassFill reports to polish to a gold-like appearance that should be perfect for the costume jewelry designers out there.
Colorfabb isn’t the only manufacturer who is working on bringing metal-laced filaments to the market. Proto-Pasta recently announced their own line of metal filaments with Magnetic Iron and Steel as the first two offerings.
Stay tuned for upcoming articles as we explain how to work with these new metal filaments, and how to finish them to bring out their unique characteristics.
Also officially announced today is Fenner Drives newest addition to the NinjaFlex line, SemiFlex. SemiFlex takes the stretchy/squeezy attributes of NinjaFlex that we all love and brings it down a notch. For some use cases, NinjaFlex was just too soft and malleable. SemiFlex fixes this, while also providing a flexible filament that more easily reproduces fine details in your models. SemiFlex is on sale now, but is limited to four colors for its initial launch.
To learn more about working with flexible filaments, check out my “Fun With Flexibles” article in Make Volume 42. As soon as I get my hands on SemiFlex, I will run it through the same tests to see how it stacks up to the competition.
0 thoughts on “It’s A New Filament Friday! New Flexibles and Metals”
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Thank you for not re-publishing the headless/limbless female torso Colorfabb is using in it’s promotional materials. I am very interested in Colorfabb’s Brassfill filament (How could I not be!) but I simply cannot bring myself to purchase from a company that uses sexist tropes in their marketing materials.
This is something that has concerned me for some time and if you check my twitter stream you’ll see that I have been regularly tweeting out: “Dear 3D printing experimenters: Please don’t demonstrate your machine/software by printing headless & limbless female torsos. Just stop” for several years now.
And before I get a host of “but the Venus de Milo blah blah classical form blah” responses to this: know that citing two thousand years of “the male gaze” to support objectification is the very definition of an invalid argument.
Keeping it family friendly!
Seriously? Please never step foot into any kind of art museum.
See above Re: invalid argument.
I personally don’t find it offensive. I also don’t think that particular piece does anything to show off the quality of the printer, so therefore it is just gratuitous nudity. I tend to avoid it and find things that showcase the printer.
Oh I have no problem with nudity. But I do find the repeated printing of female forms WITH NO HEAD OR LIMBS in male dominated locations like hacker spaces to be super problematic. I’ve worked in IT for 25 years and I seen countless women leave the industry due to the constant sexist behavior of co-workers and I see similar behaviors in maker and hacker spaces and it’s bullshit.
although the ‘pink panther’ torso is kinda well known as a test shape…it’s not near as common as the ‘Lena’ playboy image and I think the utah teapot is a better example anyway..
I understand that you believe it is an “invalid argument”, however, that is your opinion. The thousands of years of years you mention include nude forms of both sexes. If you want to make some kind of difference you may want to choose more carefully where to place your rage. Being upset with a filament company for using a classical sculpture image while showing a new bronze style filament seems like a misplaced effort to “make change.”
I am a Maker and RepRap hobbyist. I buy filament and publish many of my 3D printed projects on Thingiverse and my own blog. I am somewhat known in the Maker community and have had articles published in Make Magazine. This is the perfect place and way for me to point out sexism in our community.
Vonslatt:dude really get a life!
Those of us who have lives, are very interested in having women involved in them