Topic: Virtual Foundry Metal filament
One of the neatest finds at the Milwaukee Maker Faire was Virtual Foundry and their copper filament.
This stuff has incredibly high metal content - the highest of any 3d printing filament on the market today. It can be either printed and then polished, or it can be fired to evaporate the PLA content and fuse the metal.
The samples were not free, but did include a mini buffing kit and a chunk of polishing rouge to polish a print. the stuff they had on display was amazing looking.
so, finally getting around to testing this stuff out since I am home sick.
started with my usual calibration cube, but just barely tall enough to measure..
shown with a standard ABS cube (blue) for comparison...
the ABS cube on the scale...
and the half height copper filament cube...
more than double the weight!
It prints quite nicely at the recommended settings
Hotend: 205C
Bed: 50-55C
The biggest thing they suggest is dropping print speeds to about half of what you would normally use to print PLA.
I set my normal print speed to 30mm/sec and it is printing very well so far
It took me a while to decide what to print with this stuff, but I finally decided to print out a chess piece - the King.
Because of the limited quantity, I scaled it down to 3/4 size, just to make sure I had enough to complete the print
More later after the print finishes, and I try out the polishing...
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