When it comes to achieving the highest quality print possible on your desktop 3D printer, things are often not quite as simple as setting the extrusion temperature to a preset number and letting your device handle the rest. Although filament producers do their utmost to provide their customers with an appropriate range of extrusion temperatures, every 3D printer and surrounding environment is different, and thus, the ideal print settings vary from person to person. That’s a major reason why Gauthier de Valensart launched Filaments.directory, a material database and user-friendly community equipped with everything you need to know about the 3D printing filament market.
Shortly after releasing their first trend report, which covered over 2,000 products, Filaments.directory was selected for the FABulous “Open Call” contest, which netted them four months in the FABulous Acceleration Program, infrastructure assistance, mentoring, and up to €30,000 in funding. Now, de Valensart has announced the addition of a 3D printing setting sharing feature, which will allow the global 3D printing community to discover and share the optimal settings for their specific 3D printer and filament combinations.
“I need every 3D printing owner to put their best settings on Filaments.directory. The goal is to lower the time losses, enhance success rate, and lower the technical barrier to enter the 3D printing world. This will be a huge enhancement for everyone within the 3D printing community,” said de Valensart.
To help get this new feature off to a successful start, Filaments.directory has announced a one month “Filament Settings” contest at this week’s TCT Show in Birmingham, UK. Essentially, the contest will call upon users to enter their print settings for a chance to win some amazing prizes. The rules of the Filament Settings contest are quite simple. Each valid submission of print settings equals one chance to win, which means that the more settings that are entered, the more of a chance there is to win the prizes. The available prizes, which have a total value of over €4,000, include two Wanhao Duplicator I3 PLUS printers, eight boxes of 4kg Colorfabb CO-POLYESTER, 20 spools of Extrudr BDP, and five boxes of 4kg Innofil PRO1.
The available prizes for the Filament Settings contest.
Not only will participants have the opportunity to win a 3D printer or some top-notch filament, they will also be contributing to a promising user-driven 3D printing community. According to Filaments.directory, the more quality settings that are uploaded, the more efficient and reliable the 3D printing experience will become. All of the print settings that are entered will be consolidated into big data and used to create the best profiles for every 3D printer and filament combination.
Filaments.directory will launch the Filament Settings contest on October 8, and it will run for four weeks before the winners are randomly selected. Discuss further in the Filaments.directory Settings Contest forum over at 3DPB.com.
