colorFabb Drops Brass Filament

3D printer filament leader colorFabb abruptly dropped their brassFill product.

brassFill was one of the first widely used composite 3D printer filaments, being a mix of PLA-like polymers and fine brass powder. Printing an object in this material resulted in an object that held several metal-like properties. It would be heavy, and could be polished much like a true brass object.

At the time of brassFill’s introduction, there was a considerable amount of material exploration taking place, and quite a bit of that happened at colorFabb, who are known for their innovations in the space.

brassFill was introduced shortly after the appearance of two other metal composite filaments by colorFabb in 2014, copperFill and bronzeFill.

Those two metal composite filaments will survive, but brassFill will not. colorFabb explains:

“Although we have seen excellent prints made with brassFill it was always a more more demanding material to print with and not for the faint of heart.

Due to the increased pricing compared with the other metal filled filaments it was priced higher and combined with the fact the filament was at times quite a challenge it never became as popular as the other special filaments.”

The market speaks loudly with its money. colorFabb adds:

“Earlier this summer we were faced with the choice to either invest in new stock or to discontinue brassFill. Since popularity has been declining we made the hard decision to convert the remaining raw material that we had and call it quits after that. Although we are sure that brassFill has quite a few fans, we see this as a necessary move.”

The company continues to sell existing stock, although at this point they have only some 2.85mm spools remaining. If you want some of this material, best head to colorFabb asap.

Afterwards you’ll have to obtain your brass 3D printer filament elsewhere. There do seem to be a couple of options:

• Hobby King’s Metal Composite

• Form Futura’s MetalFil

• Lankeda’s METAL filament at Spool3D (But it seems that Lankeda no longer produces this material, either)

It may be that the end of the line is visible for brass 3D printer filament for all the reasons mentioned by colorFabb.

The good news is that there are other, less expensive, easier-to-print metal 3D printer filaments that one could consider as an alternative.

Via colorFabb