MetalFil Ancient Bronze is filled with approximately +/-60% bronze powder. The high bronze content in MetalFil Ancient Bronze makes 3D printed objects nearly indistinguishable from genuine bronze casted objects. MetalFil Ancient Bronze can be post-processed by polishing or with various patina/rust effects.

MetalFil Ancient Bronze is a PLA (polylactic acid) composite filament.

Unique features

• Very high bronze-filling of +/- 60% (gravimetrically)
• Real bronze look, heavyweight, and “cold” bronze metal feel
• Approximately 300% heavier than PLA (density of 3.5 g/cc)
• Compatible with full metal, PEEK, and PFTE hotends
• Compatible with direct drive and Bowden style extruders
• Compatible with ≥ 0.6mm hardened nozzles with retraction settings enabled
• Easy to post-process
• MetalFil can be brushed, sanded, polished, waxed, coated and patina post-processed

Applications

• Aesthetics, design, and art
• Figurines and miniatures

General printing guidelines *

*) Above displayed settings are meant as guidance to find your optimal print settings. These ranges in settings should work for most printers, but please do feel free to experiment outside these ranges if you think it is suitable for your printer. There is a lot of different type of printers, hot-ends and printer offset that it is extremely difficult to give an overall one-size-fits-all setting.

*) If blobs/lumps form around the nozzle then your print temperature is too high.

Post processing MetalFil – Ancient Bronze

Brushing and/or sand grinding

Once printed MetalFil – Ancient Bronze objects can very easily be brushed with a brass brush or sanded with a fine-grid sandpaper. By brushing and/or sand grinding your printed object you will brush/shine up the high concentration of bronze powders.

Build-in white polish feature

After being brushed and/or sanded MetalFil – Ancient Bronze will reveal its white polish feature. A very thin white layer/haze on your object will now allow you to easily polish your 3D print into a beautiful bronze object.

Professional polishing with a rotary tumbler

Post-processing a MetalFil – Ancient Bronze 3D printed object with a rotary tumbler will make your FDM 3D printed object indistinguishable from genuine bronze casted objects.

Patina post-processing

You can create several patina effects on MetalFil – Ancient Bronze printed objects in just one day time. With an ammonia and soda treatment you can for instance easily create a beautiful ancient blue weathering effect on your bronze object.

Waxing and coating

After every above-mentioned post-processing measure, you can always wax or coat your printed object to get an incredible shine effect. Waxing can be done with products such as beeswax and for coating one can think about products such as XTC-3D.

Filament length

Abrasiveness

Please be aware that MetalFil filaments contain a very high concentration of metal powders, which have an abrasive nature. In general, these metal powders will accelerate the nozzle-wear of brass nozzles, much faster than unfilled filaments. We recommend using nozzles from stainless steel or other hardened alloys.

Nozzle cleaning

When printing with filled/composite filaments it is recommended to clean your nozzle immediately after printing by feeding 15-20cm PLA filament through your nozzle. This will make sure that any potential fillers are flown out of your nozzle. It is even better to use glow in the dark PLA as the extremely hard phosphorous particles are much more likely to scrape out residual waste from your nozzle.

Product export information

Compliance *

This filament is compliant with the below-listed directives and regulations.

• RoHS directive 2011/65/EC
• REACH directive 1907/2006/EC

*) This declaration of conformity to directives and regulations is prepared according to our present standard of knowledge and may be amended if new cognitions are available and applies only for the above-described products.