Wood Grain 3d Printer Filament

Sanding a wood 3d print is very similar to sanding a normal piece of wood.

Wood grain 3d printer filament.

Similar to painting when it comes to wood stain what s good for wood is most certainly good for wooden 3d prints. These are filaments that mix wood pieces together with a more conventional 3d print filament such as pla filament so the wood can be manipulated like more flexible filaments despite its inherent rigidity. Yet with wood filament you can even start with coloring during printing. The folks at aleph objects makers of lulzbot printers were kind enough to provide me with a spool of colorfabb woodfill to be clear a wood filament is not a filament made out of wood.

The early experiments however showed that sawdust wasn t the best solution for either wood 3d printing nor wood filaments. This is great for emulating realistic wood grain in your models. Typically the filament consists of around 30 wood particles but the exact number may vary depending on the brand. The first filaments were pla based filaments with integrated sawdust.

Wood filament on the other hand will readily absorb stain as did the carpet after spilling a nearly full container. If you don t do this the filament s wood particles will burn creating a sticky black mess in the printer head. Download files and build them with your 3d printer laser cutter or cnc. Wood filament remains largely porous even after 3d printing.

The mix is usually about 70 polymer to 30 wood fibers and you can buy spools of it just like any other filament on the market. When the 3d printing process is finished you can start the final touches. Wood 3d printing was born around 2012. The presence of these particles gives the 3d printed parts the aesthetics of real wood.

These days wood filament is still pla based but the wood is instead integrated in the form of wooden fibers. Thingiverse is a universe of things. As mentioned earlier changing the print temperature will produce subtle color changes. Ever tried 3d printing wood.

We used an einstein bust as a test piece because it has a number of contours that we wanted to highlight. Like many people use wood filler to smooth and blend their pla 3d prints you can use wood filler putties to fill the seams between two wood filled parts that you glue together. Moreover painting directly over the 3d printed model will ensure that the wood grain remains visible. However since the whole point of wood filled filament is to have the texture color and look of wood the filler putty might take away from that because it won t be.