Introducing our new Grey Plastic Material

Posted By Arthur Cassaignau on Oct 14, 2015 |

Colored 3D prints are the coolest, but they’re often not the most resistant over time. We’re launching a new grey plastic to take care of that. Thanks to some science and a lot of tests, we’re now able to offer you a 3D printed plastic that is grey throughout the material.

Nylon 3D printing through SLS technologies is an important part of our everyday activity here at Sculpteo. Once the printing process is achieved, part of the magic is to finish the part by sandblasting, polishing and dying it if needed. Our new grey plastic is removing one of these steps from the picture. Dying is not necessary anymore since the plastic is grey throughout the material. Instead of using a white Nylon powder and dying it after the print has been done, we’re now directly using a grey powder in the 3D printer, resulting in grey 3D prints resistant to aging, friction and light.

Cool dragons 3D printed in grey plastic

There is a big difference between a material colored in its core and a material that is partially dyed to achieve a colored finish on surface. While the second one is very useful to offer the largest possible choice of colors (and bring joy to your 3D prints), the first one is the obvious choice if you’re looking for a material material with a long lasting color. Having the color throughout the material means that the pigments are directly contained in the material. Touching, exposing the 3D print to sunlight or even polishing it won’t affect the color. Say hello to our new grey plastic.

Our new grey plastic isn’t scared about aging…can we all say the same?

The material used for this new grey is the same we use for our regular white plastic material (that we can dye). We’re using a plastic called polyamide (PA 12) engineered for SLS additive manufacturing. We’ll be adding a datasheet for the material in the coming days, but you can already check the one we have for white plastic or read different testimonials about how our clients used our regular plastic as an inspiration.

Our Sculpteo robot 3D printed with our new grey plastic material

A short word about the lead-time. Depending on when you pass the order, we’ll be able to deliver this new grey plastic in 4 to 8 days. Like our other plastic 3D prints, we’ll be able to polish your part. This will add one day on the overall turnaround time.