SBS filament available: Filamentarno! Prints can be made smooth and transparent by D-Limonene

[funBart]

Someone pointed me to some transparent filament available, some months ago, made in Russia. It turned out to be “stirene-butadien-stirene copolimer”: SBS. It’s about the same material tires and shoes are made from.
The manufacturer is “Filamentarno“, Moscow based, and owned by a nice couple, Ruslan and Tatjana, both 3D printer enthusiasts.

It’s semi-flexible and is available in transparent and solid colors. The main advantage is that it can be dissolved by D-Limonene. That’s made of Orange apple skins.
For what I know the only other filament able to dissolve to smooth the surface of a 3D print is ABS, it will be dissolved by Aceton or Chloroform.
D-Limonene has the same effect on SBS: it makes it smooth and transparent.
Other filaments as PLA and HIPS can be chemical changed by caustic soda (PLA) and D-limonene (HIPS), but not dissolved AFIK.

After I had got some samples I got very enthusiastic, as this kind of filament is a great addition to already available kind of filaments. It took us 4 months to get the SBS filament exported from Russia, but eventually we succeed ;-). The shipping costs are enormous though.

I would like to make this great filament more known in the rest of the world and would like to get some feedback about it. I assume some main manufacturer/seller of filaments will have more possibilities to make it cheaper, but until that I’m proud to make it available “in the West”.

I printed one of Birks great shades with it:

The available colors and samples are here. If you like to try / buy this and live outside the EU, please mail me, so I can get you an accurate estimate of shipping costs.

Some other highlights of Filamentarno SBS:

• Food and Toygrade (in Russia)
• No warp: easy to print
• Constant filament diameter
• Semi flexible
• It gets Rubery on 80 degrees (Glass transition temperature)
• No smell during printing
• Beautiful Glass like colors
• Smoothing and transparency by D-Limonene
• Good layer bonding

Basically the print settings are like PLA: 215 degrees for the extruder, 60 for the bed (mainly to get the print stick to the bed, as I use Hairspray and a Glass bed.). 1.75mm filament diameter and 0.6mm suck and prime. For normal 0.4mm prints: the PW to 0.4mm and 0.2mm LH. The draw speed can be set to 60 or 80mm/s
It can be printed by the original hotend of the CraftBot, although it’s slightly flexible.

I have also printed with Slic3R: vase mode. I used a 0.8mm Nozzle and 0.2mm Layer height. The print speed at 15mm/s The flow tweak to 110% and the Path width at 1.3mm, to get a nice thick single wall. Most of the bottles I printed turned out to be water tight
I sprayed D-Limonene on the print until a it was covered with a thin film of it. I started drying it after a minute with an hair dryer on max power. That’s necessary, as when you don’t do that the D-limonene will keep dissolving. Certainly with thin walls your object will change in pudding.

Some pictures by Filamentarno self:

Some pictures by me:

Bart, www.CraftBot.nl

[MetaCAD]

or try this

http://www.mes3dfilaments.co.uk/product/form-futura-bendlaycrystal-flex

[Gauthier]

Wonderful ! I’m interested to add this fantastic filaments on www.filaments.directory.

Can we discuss by email. Here is mine : hello[at]filaments.directory

Thanks

Cheers

[ferkan]

Looks really insane!

[karlzhao314]

Looks very nice. I have to ask, though: Does the D-limonene treatment only work for thin parts with one or two perimeters and no infill? To me it would seem that way since there’s no way to effectively make infill transparent simply by dissolving the outside shell.

If that’s the case, I think the same could be done with PETG and Smooth-on XTC-3D. Not trying to tear down this SBS in any way, just throwing another option for those who don’t live in the EU.

[funBart]

@ 3Dfilaments. Please. Don’t make us laugh by spamming! We are über-spammers! We will spam you soooo much everywhere you go! We tell everyone that your filament even prints on an Ultimaker!

[funBart]

@karlzhao314: How dare you compare that imperialist capitalistic inferior filament with our superior socialistic filament! We are now printing a bed in Siberia with your name on it! And, whouhaha! it will be made by PLA! That will teach you!

[3dpGeek]

Can you send me your email, I am interested in buying some samples.

[funBart]

samples

Hi, the email is info@craftbot.nl

You can look at some colors as well on the site:

https://www.craftbot.nl/product-categorie/sbs-glass-2/

If you are not EU based, you can choose some colors and email me, as shipping outside the EU won’t probably work yet in the webshop.

comparing with other filaments

As for other comments and comparing to other brand filaments. It’s no use to defend or compare for me. It’s simply a new kind of

filament, based on SBS.

Other mechanical and chemical specifications will make a filament better or less good suitable for specific use. It’s good to have as much as possible solutions at hand. It’s the same with all available slicers: although a lot beginners will say that ** is a good slicer and ## a bad slicer: that isn’t the case. For a specific job one slicer is better suitable than another.

transparency

As for making it transparent: indeed it depends of the wall thickness and the amount of trapped air between extrusions.

As for all transparency it depends of the optic characteristics of the surface. Needless to say that a smooth surface is more transparent than a rough surface. In case of 3D printing one has to make the surface flat afterwards. It can be done by applying a layer of epoxy and (like Smooth-on XTC-3D I think) by that filling the gaps between perimeters and making the surface flat.

Or it can be done by dissolving the skin a little (like D-limonene on SBS) and by that smoothing the surface and getting the better optics.

In the latter the object remains the same chemical and mechanical characteristics. When applying a coating on an object that characteristics will change. But also for this: it’s not good or bad: it depends what you want to achieve.

deep colors

As a first finding: when making a SBS solid object smooth with D-limonene it will be shiny, but the color gets also a certain ‘deepness’ because of the first loops are a little transparent. I don’t have enough experience with other smoothing methods to know if that’s the same

[3dpGeek]

I sent you an email.

[ImagineThat3D]

This is great stuff. I’m in the United States and would like to get my hands on this materials for a few things. I holding the events in Salt Lake City, Utah and this would make a great filament workshop. I also work for Imagine That 3D and would like to look it to supplying this material. Can you email me at zhagen@imaginethat-3d.com so we can talk further

[Victor_Teresche]

This is my favorit filament so far (I’m in Russian). But I use solvent for the smoothing (we do that solvent named “sol’vent”. And it’s really chaep but it takes time to smooth the print). And it can be painted quite easely using liquid rubber like Plasti Dip.

[funBart]

Hello Victor, I’m curious what that solvent is. As I use D-Limonene, but that’s dissolving pretty fast. After one minute I have to start to dry it (with an hairdryer), so the dissolving stops.

Is there some chemical name on the solvent you use?

Bart

[Victor_Teresche]

I can’t google any analog outside of Russia but it should exist. Sometimes it is called NEFRAS-A130/150 or just “Oil solvent”. As I know it is used as a reducer for the rubber coatings like Plasti Dip. It’s a byproduct of oil refinery so doesn’t have stable chemical formula and it’s REALLY cheap (~1.5 USD/liter).

The manufacturer also claims that you can achive the same effect using Xylene - Wikipedia but I never try it.

P.S. Filamentarno do have several filaments:

S-Soft SBS (solid color)

T-Soft SBS (semi-transparent color, glass-like looks after D-Limonene/Solvent treatment)

M-Soft SBS (metallic-like look)

SBS-Pro (more durable and strong, ABS-replacement but much easier to print)

CERAMO (ceramic-like looks but it isn’t SBS, havn’t try it yet, but can print cups using it. It’s food-approved and starts to soften at 102C)

http://filamentarno.ru/img/PRO/Ceramo_1.png

CERAMO-TEX also never try it but quite interesting. It’s durable and strong but you can get spoonge-like affect event if you print using 100% fill. So it should be quite lite. It will have air bobbles inside the print so it don’t sink. Manufacturer says it’s good for air models (quads and planes) and boats.

http://filamentarno.ru/img/PRO/Ceramo-Tex_1.png

As you can understand I quite like this manufacturer and their filaments.

[Roberts_Kristin]

Vo nihera sebe modnjavyi angliskij.

[Roberts_Kristin]

£70.00 inc. VAT / 1kg

[funBart]

Nope, 47 English pounds per kilo incl VAT. But as the GBP is fluctuating more than the Rubel, it’s changing somewhat…

[Victor_Teresche]

20 EUR / 750 g + shipping (Filamentarno SBS)

[funBart]

Computer says no… I would whish it was that low. But shipping out of Russia is so expensive at the moment.

[Roberts_Kristin]

I bought for 28 EUR/kg (incl. Shipping+custom+Vat)
I think this is 2 times cheaper.
What your filament is better than another manufacturer from Tomsk ?