🧵 First print with Varioshore TPU foaming flexible material. Love this stuff. Going to see how glue adheres to it. Printing another at the moment with less infill/one wall instead of 2. Will post more progress once I test the glue. #colorfabb #printedwithcolorfabb

🧵 Printing the second ear test, 1 wall, 2% infill using lines instead of grid.But glue test went really well.Glued a scrap piece of fur, fleece & foam using hot glue and it adhered without a problem. Since the skin feels like “foamies” it’s a bit pourus which is great #colorfabb

A few things to keep in mind. TPU works best with direct drive printers. The brand of the printer does not matter just make sure you have direct drive. This avoids tangles and potential clogs. Bowden printers can technically do so but you need to print extremely slow

and already tested that with my vypers which was ok but took forever to get a small part done. Use Cura's stock TPU settings as a baseline and alter from there. I went ahead and bumped up the temp to 250 and cut down my fan speed to 60% so the material foams up more.

You can glue directly onto this material without a problem, you can sand it and paint it. I am trying to print all the pieces needed without supports or as little as possible, so be smart about how you slice your file. Gluing the parts together with contact cement.

Since I am keeping the infill extremely low the parts weigh very little. I plan to use this for some more intricate ears to start with and larger pieces that may be too heavy to carve in foam. The possibilities are crazy with this material.

Do keep in mind this filament is expensive, it will not replace PLA + printed bases or foam casted ones. If you are planning to do large volumes you will need to see if the cost is too prohibiting. Remember it has to be shipped from Europe so factor in the shipping price.

You can buy it here in a few colors:

🧵 Comparison between the two prints. 2 walls works better for me along with a grid infill over lines. Will continue testing but overall in love with this material #colorfabb #printedwithcolorfabb

Whoa. Do you do this with a regular 3d printer? I think remember someone saying that the printer should just be used for TPU prints but I could be wrong.

Wait…you can print with foam-like material too?! What kind of printer do you have? I only started 3-D printing and had no clue you could print stuff like this

it's all about the filament, this is a very specific type of tpu which foams when you print it at higher temps.