ColorFabb LW-PLA
I recently bought some ColorFabb LW-PLA. It is a really interesting filament that expands with heat into a sort of foam. You can dial back your flow settings and make very lightweight parts. The printer needs to be tuned in to the filament first which can be a bit fiddly, so I thought I would share my settings as a start point for others.
After making some tests at different temperature I found that I got max expansion at about 240 degrees on the MINI. I then dialed back the flow until the wall thickness was the same as regular PLA @ 0.43. So the parts should only weigh 43% of a part printed in regular PLA!.
The settings that worked for me so far are the ColorFabb PLA/PHA settings with 240 on all layers and a extrusion multiplier of 0.43. The cooling fan is turned off for the first 2 layers and limited to 60% for the remaining layers.
The parts are quite stringy with this material, which is sort of unavoidable. The temp is quite high for PLA and bigger retractions will most likely cause blockages because of the foaming qualities of the filament. That said, it is easy to pick off the strings and zits. I have heard that it is a good idea to reduce retractions in your settings as well, but so far I have had no problems with stock settings.
RE: ColorFabb LW-PLA
Jack, thank you for sharing!
PRUSA - Please pay attention to this lightweight filament that is becoming increasingly popular.
I request that you release a professionally tuned PRUSA profile for the ColorFabb LW-PLA filament.
PLEASE! 🙂 Actually I was a bit disappointed and surprised to find out there is no such profile to select as of now.
And why not sell this filament in the PRUSA webshop!
I just got some spools directly from the ColorFabb webshop and will use it to build RC planes as designed by
Eclipson.
RE: ColorFabb LW-PLA
@traction-man
I just bought the model C from Eclipson and ordered some LW-PLA from colorfabb.
When I try to slice an STL parts in prusa slicer I do not get the expected result, some compartments are enclosed,...
The download from Eclipson also includes gcodes, have you tried those on the prusa printer?
RE: ColorFabb LW-PLA
@koenraad
Yes, I have only used the G-codes from Eclipson.
Works well but does not do the 49-point calibration. Make sure the plate is really clean before printing, monitor first layer (live Z) and good luck!
RE:
Hi!
It took me a long time to experiment but I have a proven configuration for the LW-PLA Color Fabb. If anyone is looking, they have found it 😉
RE: ColorFabb LW-PLA
Hi!
It took me a long time to experiment but I have a proven configuration for the LW-PLA Color Fabb. If anyone is looking, they have found it 😉
From layer 3-4 onwards, the speed can be increased by up to 125% (no more!).