Four years in a row, we've turned a tree into filament! This is a tedious process where we transform pine needles into a fine, dry powder. We then add them to our plastic pellets to make this special filament. Learn more about the process in our Youtube live stream below.

This year, we put a new spin on our pine tradition by adding it to our matte fiber base instead of our translucent base like in previous years (find our 2017 Pine here). The result is a creamy, opaque base with natural, dark brown fleck. The material creation was more a team effort than ever. We commemorated this with the team of makers signing the first run of spools.

Like our other plant fiber-based HTPLAs, Matte Fiber Pine is both heat treatable for higher temperature resistance and moisture absorbing. The result is a wood-like material for crafting keepsakes. In terms of printing, you may need to adapt your system to these attributes (more below).

Special considerations when printing HTPLA - Depending on your hardware, HTPLA can heat treat inside your hotend, creating a bulb that restricts extrusion. This bulb can be mechanically removed or overcome with higher-than-standard nozzle temperatures. Consider our blog for more on avoiding jamming.

Special considerations when printing Matte Fiber - Matte fiber readily absorbs moisture, affecting printing. Dry material prints best, but keeping material dry is challenging. With wet material, you can reduce flow % to reduce over-extrusion. Keeping printing speed up and temperature down also helps reduce stringing and oozing, though strings can be easy to remove after printing. Still can't get a good result? Dry the material at less 80 deg C (175 deg F) until the result improves.

Special considerations when heat treating HTPLA - Heat treating can increase the usefulness of HTPLA from about 60 deg C to 160 deg C (140 deg F to 320 deg F). This transformation only requires a few minutes in a warm oven, but can include deformation will include shrinkage. Scale parts before printing to compensate for shrinkage. To test the process, print a small cube, measure x/y and z dimensions. Bake at 120 deg C (250 deg C) for 30 minutes, let cool, and measure again. Compare dimensions to calculate shrinkage and/or growth.

You may notice a pleasant pine scent when filament is warm like during printing or heat treating!

Enjoy, Alex and the Makers at Proto-pasta