hey there, i'm looking for diffrent types of metallic filaments and the base metal percentage in any of the alloys used in these filaments. i wonder if you can help me find out these filaments ingredients/components. sorry about the broken english )

The absolute best way to get more information about this filament is to contact the manufacturer - Virtual Foundry.

This method the pattern is more or less the metal and i epect yhe casting is pourous or hollow or likely some of each.

Tin

From their lead of product support and development who does most of the answering, shrinkage is reported at 1% or less.

From the inventor: "This is Brad Woods, I invented Filamet. The percentage we list is by mass, not volume. The loss of volume is compensated for by a phase our polymer goes through during heating. If you make a print, fire it and cut it in half you can see what's up. Quite simply our polymers "foam up" at a stage after it becomes liquid. This foam and escaping gasses force metal against the walls of the investment creating thick outside walls, and fill the cavity with a geometric form that resembles Styrofoam. Unlike styrofoam the cell walls are very thick, adding strength to the structure."

Shrinkage is not mentioned, but I am sure they could give you an estimated % if you asked.

More info can be found on their website: http://www.thevirtualfoundry.com/

they even have a small forum there to ask questions.

Oh, and it seems to be a recommendation to use high infill percentages for best results (especially if you will be firing the piece) - I used 10% on the chess piece and broke it - twice...   it does glue back together using the gel type CA glue just fine however.

And the CF products have been mentioned and reviewed on this forum .
Many of us have dealt with Printedsolid out of Newark DE.

Heartless do they publish the shrinkage for the fired product ? also what do they charge for firing. Or do they publish firing instructions ? seem like one would need to coat the piece with investment , fire to burn off the plastic and melt the metal .

and Colorfab's filaments can not be fired to produce 99%+ pure metal pieces... Filamet can be.

Bamboo
Wood
Copper
Bronze
Brass
Steel
Cork
Carbon Fiber

All the metal ones are able to be polished up like you've shown above and give pretty nice finishes from what I've seen on their facebook page. Heres where you can find all the "special" plastics http://colorfabb.com/specials

Yeah, I couldnt decide what to do either, and thingiverse is being a huge pain so I dug through what I already had and settled on the chess piece. I wanted something big enough that it wouldn't be a pain to polish.

It is a bit on the delicate side - it broke when I first started printing the king, luckily it was only on the 1st 2 layers so not a lot wasted. Being an un-spooled sample, I just kind of looped it onto an empty Taulman spool i had lying around but didn't secure the end at all, so it would spin on the spool - i had to make sure there was plenty of slack fed down off the spool so it wouldn't break again. Properly spooled on a nice, easy rolling, bearing spool holder it shouldn't be a problem.

It just so happens that SD4 #2 has a hardened nozzle installed, so that is the one it got printed on, with a 0.4 and a 0.254 layer height (1st layer was 0.3175 as they recommend not smooshing it too much to the bed)

I think good clean bare glass would be sufficient for this stuff - I still had hairspray on mine and it stuck VERY well - had a hard time getting it off, even after the bed had cooled completely.

Ok, so I know everyone is waiting ever so patiently for pictures...

Well... KEEP WAITING!

j/k - here ya go...

started off with just a little sanding - 100 grit to start, then 150... oh, and I did not do the whole thing yet, just to show the difference....

then a bit of polishing using the supplied green rouge and mini buffing wheels on my rotary tool...

and for a little better view, laid it down at an angle....

this was only after maybe 10-15 minutes counting the sanding and polishing together - I am sure with a bit more work it will shine up even more... need to try to find my white rouge out in the garage... really bring that shine up.

As with any kind of "finishing" job, you get out of it what you put into it... more sanding with finer grits would probably polish up nicer than what I have at this point.