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Subscription #2 - August 2019 Thanks for subscribing to Endless Pastabilities! Check out what's new this month... As you all know, our workshops were born out of a desire to connect with our community, and to let our fans be involved in the process. We’ve had so much fun learning...
PLA is often maligned for its poor temperature resistance and tendency to creep (deflect slowly over time). However, it's also super stiff by nature, and with a little carbon fiber it's way stiffer! That stiffness makes PLA particularly great for violin bodies, where a high stiffness to...
For our first subscription filaments we recommended the use of the MasterSpool to hold the filament in our posting Effective Loose Coil Handling for a Positive Experience. This was primarily due to the core size we use on our spools. It may not be well known,...
Maker Box, founded 2016, has often featured Proto-pasta Filaments (see past boxes here) and features Dark Gray Carbon Fiber HTPLA this month! Not familiar with Maker Box? Founded in 2016 by two college students looking for ways to try new filaments, Maker Box is a service...
You may have noticed our new Prop 65 labels on our product. Sorry if they are alarming. Fear not! Continue reading for perspective on the actual associated risk and reason for labeling. Materials with ingredients on California's Prop 65 list include physical labeling in compliance with California law. Composition-based labeling...
What the ERRF? You heard it here folks! Proto-pasta joins ERRF 2019 (Get Tickets Here) as a Platinum sponsor and plans to make filament on site at this premier community-based 3D printing festival coming to Bel Air, Maryland USA this October. As one chapter in the maker movement closes with Maker Media ceasing...
Loose coils can easily become tangled, but don't be discouraged. The key to a positive coil sample experience is control of the ends. Just like letting go of the loose end on a spool, letting go of the ends on a coil can quickly turn the...
Reducing waste has been important to Proto-pasta from the start. When kickstarting the brand in 2014, we started by proposing 250g spool-less coils to minimize packaging. Difficult to use, the community requested more material and on a spool. We quickly added plastic spools to our rewards...
Proto-pasta introduced Stardust glitter filament in 2016 thus venturing into a new world of dynamic, sparkly filaments. Getting started in sparkly brought several challenges including understanding how the various sparkles and pigments interact with each other, sourcing them, building a masterbatch library, and finally deciding on recipes. BTW choosing...
HTPLA-CF opens new possibilities in 3D printed violin design and construction! It's a bold claim, but I'll stand by it. We don't quite have the data for me to claim that HTPLA-CF is magically eliminating creep for all time, but annealed HTPLA-CF is leaps and bounds past...
At Proto-pasta we spend a lot of time understanding how our materials interact with different slicers and printers and by doing this we hope to help you achieve the best printing experience possible with the unique filaments we offer. We recently analyzed the Proto-pasta High...
First time using Proto-Pasta Carbon Fiber HTPLA? Or maybe you've already discovered this excellent material and want to improve your printer's performance? It can be challenging, but with these tuning techniques and a little patience, you will be able to print stronger, more accurate, and precise...
Many times when printing extruder assembly parts for a 3D printer, like the R3 extruder upgrade for the Prusa MK3, PETG or ABS are specified as the material to use due to the heat exposure. However, Carbon Fiber HTPLA works great in these cases because of the carbon...
Replacing traditionally machined parts with 3D printed ones sounds like a far-fetched idea, but is it? Subtractive technologies like CNC milling have long been taken seriously in creating functional parts for consumer hobbyists to large-scale industrial manufacturers but additive manufacturing's cred and capabilities are catching up. With advanced materials available for...
Are there any materials more iconic than Carbon Fiber? Protoplant first introduced Carbon Fiber PLA 3D printer filament to market more than 5 years ago, kickstarting the Proto-pasta brand. What started as a search for functional superiority led to the discovery of what still may be the...
When suggesting Carbon Fiber as a 3D printing material, nozzle wear is often the first concern. While it's important to be aware of nozzle wear, don't let it stop you from enjoying the benefits of heat-treated Carbon Fiber HTPLA. In the following article, we'll show you how to...
Why does a carbon fiber 3D print look so good? That color, texture, and sheen is hard to beat, but getting good results when 3D printing isn't always straight-forward. Our Prusa MK3 3D printer and HTPLA reliability blog is a great starting point for insight into...
Carbon Fiber HTPLA can make very accurate parts particularly when heat treating, demonstrating less distortion of form and dimension change after heat treating compared to other HTPLAs. This characteristic is particularly useful when seeking to create application-specific parts where exceptional accuracy, high stiffness, or use up to 160 C...
The Prusa MK3 and Proto-pasta HTPLA are an innovative combination, but getting a good result when 3D printing isn't always straight-forward. In this article, we'll share some practices and settings we found to improve reliability when printing with Proto-pasta HTPLA, including our sparkly glitters and metallics, on your Prusa MK3!...
Waste creation is a real problem and both proposed solutions and dialogue are important, but reducing waste also requires a holistic approach. As a filament manufacturer passionate about reducing waste, we kickstarted the Proto-pasta brand more than 4 years ago, delivering a system with a...
Does your printer stop extruding on the first layer? Or does it clog later in a print? Is your print quality inconsistent with missing cross-sections? Or does your printer fail on small, intricate cross-sections especially when printing slow? If your extruder gear ever grinds or slips on your filament, you’ll...
This month we celebrate 3 years since kickstarting the Proto-pasta brand. At that time, we approached 3D Printing as engineers with a laser focus on material performance and quality, but little consideration for aesthetic and user experience. This month, I introduce to you 3 new materials with more...
Proto-pasta founders, Dustin and Aaron Cram, lead the 3D Printing Industry by introducing Carbon Fiber and High Temp PLAs nearly 3 years ago. Today, Proto-pasta Carbon Fiber is still a fan favorite for it's quality and iconic matte black finish, but what if you could get that Carbon...
With the constant introduction of new manufacturers, printers, hardware, filaments, and users, the 3D printing experience can vary from "awesome" to "awful". My experience leans towards awesome, but there are days when a printer just wants to extrude a ball of micro-filament or nothing at...
At ProtoPlant, we've gotten really good at compounding and extruding metal composites into filament. We've been able to reduce our cost on Iron PLA, and we wanted to share the love so we dropped the price from $48 to $35. Celebrate Rusty Metal March with...
More than 2 years ago, ProtoPlant launched Proto-pasta brand 3D Printer filament through kickstarter, introducing the World's First Carbon Fiber for 3D Printing along side High Temperature PLA. Since then, we've reformulated High Temperature PLA (HTPLA) for higher performance and improved ease of use. Last...
So we wanted to do a special twist on the "12 Days of Christmas" for y'all who love to make "things", especially those that like to include your families in the process. Growing up in a 3D household, my 3 year old daughter, Teagan, is...
ProtoPlant successfully kickstarted Proto-pasta brand filament by bringing 3 new 3D Printing materials to market, including World’s First Carbon Fiber PLA. Fulfilling the 500 backer rewards was 6 months of tedious work, during which we continued operating our traditional engineering services business to pay the...
3D Printing Holiday Gift Guide – What 3D Printers, Filament & Accessories to buy this Christmas! Best 3D Printers (least to most expensive) Easy-to-use & assembled – M3D & Printrbot Play – Printing is more affordable than ever! Missed the M3D Kickstarter? Now you can buy...
Meet new employee Matt! He recently joined the Proto-pasta team and brings production experience and plenty of enthusiasm. A hands-on, self-learner, he is new to 3D Printing but is already very comfortable with the technology. In joining the Maker Community, he has found his people!!!...
Addressing the issue of nozzle wear using composite filaments has been a priority for us and it looks like we have found a good way to extend nozzle life! Using brass nozzles plated with a super-hard "electroless" nickel coating has increased the life of our FlashForge...
Rust. Patina. Artifact. Great words to describe beautiful weathered finishes you'd expect from old, metal objects, but how is that related to 3D Printing? For a truly unique experience in 3D Printing, Proto-pasta Iron PLA can be rusted to create a modern artifact and here's...
Meet our new 500 g spool...an industry-leading design created by ProtoPlant specifically for 3D Printing filament. It's good all the way to the core! What's cool about this spool? It has a bigger core, which means happier filament (no more tight spirals when you reach the end of the...
As I was polishing prints made with our Stainless Steel PLA for the last blog post on wheel polishing, I began to wonder if the same could be done with our Magnetic Iron PLA. After all, it also has powderized metal in it, why hadn't...
For our first post in a series on finishing techniques, we'll be be talking about my personal favorite way to finish prints done with Stainless Steel PLA: using polishing compound and a polishing wheel. What You'll Need: A print made with Proto-pasta Stainless Steel PLA...
UPDATE: Dustin has a new method of rusting your prints which is not only FASTER, it also avoids your print's infill filling with salt water. After a few more days of drying, my owl began to grown salt crystals on the...
