Testing the vibrant Emvio Pink PLA with a non-wasteful test print

George from over at Emvio Engineering was kind enough to give me a few samples of his new Emvio Engineering filament range.

The samples are only about 50g in weight, and being bowden means you lose a fair bit on the route from the extruder and the hotened so with the remainder you really have to be sensible if you’re going to make something that is functional and also useful for calibration.

I’d given this some thought and also done quite a lot of searching, I didn’t wanna create maker coins, as they were mostly clutter and given my interests in low maintenance plants I decided that maybe some kind of expanding modular succulent planer setup might be a nice way to go.

I found this funky geometric modular planter on thingiverse, but stock it was still gonna be too big for the sample reels, however scaled down to 75% Simplify 3D gave it the thumbs up.

Not only would these provide me with a constantly growing, living collection of planters but the shape itself is also quite taxing for a 3d printer. With some supports used only from the bed for the very base (we’ll explain why more when it comes to construction), the design has some very sharp straight angles, loads of retraction, mad bridging and some really flat straight sides. There’s nowhere to hide with this model.

I used S3D to slice, with a standard of 205 degrees, 0.2mm per layer, 40 mm/s, 3 walls, minimal infill and standard cooling / speed profiles for any other PLA.

This was printed on the modified BCN3D Sigma, and to be honest this brand of filament is one of the best I’ve used with this printer. The viscosity is very good, the colours are very vibrant, the surfaces very smooth (perfect for bowden) and has a kind of pasty consistency when hot that is more stable than many others.

The final print was excellent, with bridging very neat and flat edges near perfect.