New AM Materials Round Up, April 1, 2022

Several new AM materials were announced in the past week.

We often receive notes from manufacturers that have developed new and unique materials, but most times the news value is relatively low and these do not warrant a story on their own. However, we thought we might bundle together several material announcements into one post, this one, for your review.

Cleaning Filament

Everyone 3D prints to make objects, but did you know it’s now possible to clean your 3D printer with a new filament? The new “TideReam” filament from Bock3D does just that. The concept is straightforward: just insert the filament into your desktop FFF 3D printer, and then start a pre-sliced job to print the test object (which just happens to be a small washing machine). The TideReam material flows through your entire extrusion system, picking up stray bits and removing corrosion as it passes.

Just don’t use the print afterwards; it will be quite dirty.

Custom Multicolor Filament

Rainbow Filaments announced a new customizable multicolor filament. Multicolor filaments have long been available, but they tend to be random combinations of colors, likely made from leftover production scraps. Now Rainbow Filaments has a new concept where you can specify the exact combination of colors you want.

The process is a bit unwieldy, however. You must go to the company’s website and enter a sequence of codes representing the Pantone color followed by the length in millimeters. Due to technical limitations, the maximum segment length you can specify is only 47mm, so to make up a full 1kg spool you may be typing in codes for a while.

Evil Bricking Filament Available

I’m not sure this is a good thing, but Materials4Print just announced a “gag” filament they call “SolidBrick”. The product name suggests it is a composite rock-filled filament, but that’s not what it is. Instead, it’s designed to literally “brick” your 3D printer: as the material continues to heat up it permanently solidifies in your 3D printer’s filament path! The idea is to give a sample of this truly evil filament to your enemies or competitors, which will sooner or later cause big troubles on their equipment. I don’t think I will be getting any of this material, do you?

Gravy Resin!

Liquid 3D Resins announced a very unusual resin for 3D printing: HC-Gravy 1.1.

This slightly brownish material, shown at top, is intended for MSLA 3D printers, and it can produce good quality rigid objects. But what is so special about it? The chemical scientists at Liquid 3D Resins recognized that almost all 3D printer resins have pretty horrifying odors, and all are toxic in liquid state.

The new HC-Gravy 1.1 material solves one of those problems: it smells like, well, gravy!

I didn’t believe this was true until I was sent a sample and tried it myself. After opening the sealed resin bottle and pouring into my printer vat, I was amazed: it actually smells exactly like delicious chicken gravy! This made my print job far more enjoyable, as you might imagine.

The one problem with HC-Gravy 1.1 as I see it is that it is so incredibly aromatic you might be tempted to put some on your food. I wouldn’t recommend that, no, not at all.