BronzeFill Tips and Tricks

DataSheets:

TIP! Depending on your set-up, 3d printer and slice software, you might see that bronzeFill needs a bit more flow compared to your normal PLA settings. Most plastics will show die swell when coming out of the nozzle tip, this is counteracted with specific slicer settings. Since bronzeFill doesn’t show a die swell such as PLA you might need to increase flow rate a bit, 4-8% was perfect for our UM2. UM original did not need any adjustments.

TIP! Sanding and polishing your parts will make the bronze particles shine. Start sanding with grit 120-180 and make sure all the printed lines vanish. You’ll notice that because bronzeFill is easy to sand down, careful you won’t loose too much detail. Then start working your way up by following with grit 240-320 and finishing off with grit 600 - or higher. Finally we used a clean soft cloth and some copper polish to really get all of the shine out of the bronze particles.

BRONZEFILL

This material is based on our unique PLA/PHA recipe which means that it will print very similar to our other PLA/PHA materials. We’re sure most will be able to dial in settings in no time, but we still thought a write-up on print settings is interesting to share

BUILD PLATFORM

This filament will print great on both heated and non heated build platforms. For cold build platforms we generaly use blue painters tape which you can buy at any decent hardware store. We’ve noticed that bronzeFill has prety much no warping what so ever, it’s much better then regular PLA.

For heated build platforms we use a temperature of 55-60 C which will keep the print sticking to the platform. It can be printed straight on glass or with a bit of gluestick applied to it. We’ve also printed it succesfully on kapton tape with the same temperature settings.

SLICER SETTINGS

The next few tables show the most relevant slicer settings for Cura en Makerware. If you prefer to use a different slicer software you should be able to find similar settings and create your own profiles.

Profiles

ultimaker_original_02_bronzefill

The infamous torture test by Make, printed on the Ultimaker Original. Slight stringing which might be solved with a adjusted retraction settings.

ultimaker_2_02_bronzefill

makerbot-replicator2_colorFabb_bronzeFill-medium

An excellent result of the Torture test printed on the Makerbot Replicator 2.

POST PROCESSING

Normally we don’t like to do post processing of any of our prints, they should look awesome straight of the printer. For bronzeFill we’re happy to make an exception, since it will elevate your models to another level when polished. Here we’ll document the various methods of post processing the 3d prints. We’re a little out of our depths here so we’ve been seeking help from the active community of makers.

Various grit sand paper.

1. Sanding

First what you want to do is sand your model with a fairly rough grit of sand paper, something like 220-240 should work nicely. BronzeFill is much easier to sand down then regular PLA, so depending on your model this shouldn’t take too long. By increasing the grit of the sand paper the model will get smoother everytime, exposing the bronze particles at the surface, but it will still look matte and dull.

We used steel wool after sanding down the layers.

2. Steel wool

steel wool to polish the surface which will start exposing the bronze particles even more. We’ve tried this method with a fairly fine grade of steel wool and were impressed how shiny it already got!

Making it all shiny and nice!

3. Making it Shiny!

Now that the layers are sand down and the bronze particles are already shining a bit on top of the surface it’s ready for the next step. Now, this is where it becomes really interesting since there are so many methods of making bronze shiny. We used a copper polish which gave nice results. It was applied with a dry towel making small circular movements and applying light pressure, then we used another side of the towel to get rid of all the polishing paste.