Not sure if we should still be expecting this Q2 update of materials since there have been no progress updates or requests for feedback but I wanting to throw these two point out there because I haven’t heard them discussed yet.
1. Current system conflates general terms, chemical names, trade names, and brand names for materials.
Couple of Examples:
- Colofabb XT (brand name) PETG (chemical name)
- Delrin (brand name) Acatal (trade name) POM (chemical name)
- Ninjaflex (brand name) TPE (chemical name)
2. A real material classification with the ability to search for properties of the materials would be ideal.
Examples:
Flexibility, safe for food contact, can be sterilized, high temp resistance, conductivity, ESD safe, low friction, UV resistance, solvent resistance, etc…
I make functional prototypes so one of the main reasons I have a large catalogue of materials is so I can match materials used in final production as closely as possible. Would love a system that helps my customers instead of confuses them.
How long will “rubber like plastics” only display one proprietary material from one manufacturer?
Nothing against the Markforge, but is it so popular that its proprietary materials need their own category also? Is there some partnership with 3d hubs that gives these specific machines unique classification/promotion?
Hi @mindfull
This is something we’re currently working on, I appreciate this has been said before but this week we met to discuss how it will look like from a UX perspective with our team of designers. I’m sure you can understand that categorising every material in our database whilst manually adding all of the material data from the manufacturers has taken us quite a while, and is nearly almost done.
In regard to Markforged, it’s a new technology in which we felt the benefits of their process was so unique we gave it it’s own category.
I think you may hold the record for most materials available at one hub, I imagine this is one of the reasons your rating is so high!
Have you used any of these materials: 3D Printing Filaments by TreeD: functional materials and more. ? Interested to hear about the printability of stone/clay/brick composites.
Thanks,
George
@Gfisherwils
Thank you for the response.
It’s a relief to hear that progress is being made but I’m still shocked that the system has been left in its current state this long. It’s very discouraging.
Glad you had a chance to look at my hub/materials and hope you noticed two things:
1. Scrolling through materials on the hub page is terrible
2. Most my materials are unique entries but many are duplicates because of the naming issues I described above. Since I must rely on the search for anyone to find my materials I’m forced to list every name variation for each material so that I’m not left out of search results.
I’m aware of TreeD filament. I plan on testing their Polypropylene “P-Lene” filament in the near future. Their architectural materials look impressive but I don’t have much use for them as they are more for visual appearance than anything else. I printed a bunch of figurines in “laybrick” (which was a pioneer of these types of materials) for a client in the past with awesome results.
In general, most filament with fillers are easy to print if you use the right nozzle/resolution. Prints usually have significantly less warp/shrinkage and good dimensional accuracy if the filament is consistent.
I have experience with many materials and I’m always testing new stuff. I usually end up pushing most of the materials I print to the limits of their capabilities in terms of printability/resolution/scale/performance. You guys can always contact me if you need info/feedback on materials, equipment or anything. I would be happy to hear from you.
-Jesse
Mindfull@mindfullsolutions.com
Hi Jesse,
To be completely transparent, the reason for the length of time is that we are migrating everything from the site to a new system. This change will allow us to create and deploy changes faster, and make the site far more stable.
I can see why you list so many materials now, hopefully the new material database will solve this issue. Once we have something solid to share, we will for feedback.
TreeD looked interesting to me as I want to experiment with more exotic filaments, do you have any suggestions on easy to print exotic filaments? Thanks for the offer, I’ll be potentially be buying my first home 3D printer soon, thinking monoprice maker select v2.
Thanks,
George
