At the beginning of 2014, colorFabb launched a bit of a rebranding. Shiny new spools, new packaging, and a new website. The new spools are really cool. The form is the same. They still use the same large bore size and large winding diameter as on their prior spool, but they are now transparent where they were previously black. What does this mean to you other than looking cool? [caption id="attachment_3099" align="aligncenter" width="300"]
Smm Ultramarine Blue on the shiny new transparent spool.[/caption] [caption id="attachment_2085" align="aligncenter" width="229"]
3 mm Ultramarine Blue on the old spool[/caption] There are a few advantages that I can think of. From a quality perspective, the colorfabb team can visually inspect a much larger amount of the filament. They can potentially see quality escapes (nobody is perfect) such as winding defects or contamination. Likewise, you can do the same thing when you receive the material. [caption id="attachment_3100" align="aligncenter" width="300"]
Magnified view showing how much filament you can see with the new clear spool.[/caption] The transparent material is also quite different from anything else on the market. If you keep your filament in a big dessicated tote like I do, the clear spool makes it easy to quickly identify the colorfabb spools and pick them out.
Now, let's talk about the box. For those of you that have been supporting printedsolid from our start, I'm sure you remember the original package that was used for our pilot order. Spool inside a cardboard box. Plastic shrinkwrap around the outside of the box. This was a nice package, but tended to give a bunch of box fiber on the filament. Not ideal, but not really the end of the world if you are using a filament cleaner, which is just a good idea anyways. This has since been improved. The new packaging has the spool shrinkwrapped, placed in an outer box, which is then shrinkwrapped again. This protect the spool from dust. Cardboard is also a dessicating material, so you do get some benefit from that as well, although the colorFabb team does not believe that PLA/PHA, XT, or woodfill are significantly affected by moisture. Our testing has supported this, but it's never a bad idea to keep your plastic as dry as you can prior to extruding. [caption id="attachment_3102" align="aligncenter" width="300"]
New colorFabb packaging[/caption] We will be gradually updating all of our media to reflect the new spools and packaging. In the short term, you may be seeing the new or old packaging for any of your orders. Here is a cool video from TimmyTechTv on youtube unboxing an order of filament on the new spools as well as a sample pack.
Check out his other videos here. [youtube height="HEIGHT" width="WIDTH"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1Woa2NHp-4&list=UU0x5SU5ekB6LTZjLN7szyEg[/youtube]
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Smm Ultramarine Blue on the shiny new transparent spool.[/caption] [caption id="attachment_2085" align="aligncenter" width="229"]
3 mm Ultramarine Blue on the old spool[/caption] There are a few advantages that I can think of. From a quality perspective, the colorfabb team can visually inspect a much larger amount of the filament. They can potentially see quality escapes (nobody is perfect) such as winding defects or contamination. Likewise, you can do the same thing when you receive the material. [caption id="attachment_3100" align="aligncenter" width="300"]
Magnified view showing how much filament you can see with the new clear spool.[/caption] The transparent material is also quite different from anything else on the market. If you keep your filament in a big dessicated tote like I do, the clear spool makes it easy to quickly identify the colorfabb spools and pick them out. Now, let's talk about the box. For those of you that have been supporting printedsolid from our start, I'm sure you remember the original package that was used for our pilot order. Spool inside a cardboard box. Plastic shrinkwrap around the outside of the box. This was a nice package, but tended to give a bunch of box fiber on the filament. Not ideal, but not really the end of the world if you are using a filament cleaner, which is just a good idea anyways. This has since been improved. The new packaging has the spool shrinkwrapped, placed in an outer box, which is then shrinkwrapped again. This protect the spool from dust. Cardboard is also a dessicating material, so you do get some benefit from that as well, although the colorFabb team does not believe that PLA/PHA, XT, or woodfill are significantly affected by moisture. Our testing has supported this, but it's never a bad idea to keep your plastic as dry as you can prior to extruding. [caption id="attachment_3102" align="aligncenter" width="300"]
New colorFabb packaging[/caption] We will be gradually updating all of our media to reflect the new spools and packaging. In the short term, you may be seeing the new or old packaging for any of your orders. Here is a cool video from TimmyTechTv on youtube unboxing an order of filament on the new spools as well as a sample pack. Check out his other videos here. [youtube height="HEIGHT" width="WIDTH"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1Woa2NHp-4&list=UU0x5SU5ekB6LTZjLN7szyEg[/youtube]