MakerGear Forum

I have had a spool of eSUN bronze filament sitting around for about a month now, not having the time to go experiment with it until now. I haven't seen anybody else mention it on this forum, so I'll give my opinions here.

I first encountered bronze filament at last year's Maker Faire in New York. It was the ColorFabb bronzefill, and the remarkable thing about it was how heavy it was. It did not feel much like plastic, although it didn't exactly feel like metal, either. It had a dark brown color with a slight metallic look to it. I've seen blog posts claiming that you can polish it up with steel wool and Brasso, which presumably gets rid of the dull brownish color and gives it more bronze color.

The eSun has a nice metallic look to it on the spool, and that metallic look comes out well in prints (see the pictures). But it has the feel and heft of PLA plastic. There is nothing particularly metallic about it other than the color itself. I made an attempt to see what could be done with a bit of steel wool and Brasso, but I concluded that it basically has the characteristics of PLA and doesn't respond much to either the steel wool or the Brasso. On the other hand, it's already shiny and so it doesn't really need any polishing.

The bronze PLA printed well for me at 0.2mm layer height. At 0.1mm, it got a bit stringy. This is almost certainly due to my not being particularly rigorous about dialing in the right numbers. Often stringing is the result of having too much material coming out of the nozzle, which will happen if the diameter of the filament is larger than what's entered into the slicer parameters. I measured the filament and, sure enough, the diameter is a rather largish 2.00mm. In spite of its being oversized, though, it appears to be consistent, and I did not experience any jams.

I found the filament to be rather more brittle than other PLAs. You can see that the object I was printing needs support, but when I went to pull off the support structures, the piece cracked in half. I didn't see any particular evidence of a tendency to delaminate; it's just weaker along the layer lines than most PLA filaments I've worked with. I upped the temperature by 10 degrees (from 205 to 215 C, on a MakerGear v4 hot-end) for my second print, but it cracked in the same way in the same place.

Overall, I'd say that the eSUN bronze filament is a nice addition to the range of available colors, and you can get nice metallic-looking prints without doing a lot of (or any) finishing work. Just don't expect it to look like something that's been cast.

Looks good! Does sanding dull the finish?

here tim. i made this thread awhile back. i had no issues with the stuff being large or inconsistent dia though. i didnt have a whole spool of it though. these metallic filaments must be hard to extrude consistently. i had trouble with a spool of copper from reprapper which they had to replace. i have heard other people say they had issues with the colorfabb stuff as well. the esun bronse i dont see a layer adhesion issue. this ollie seems super strong but its rather thick as well. i can squeeze it pretty hard without any cracking. your right though it is very lightweight unlike the colorfabb. overall im not crazy about the esun color as it is just printed. it should have been marketed as brass not bronze. it does look awesome though after you put a little glaze on it. as soon as you do that it give it a nice aged bronze or 1/2 tarnished brass look. if i put this ollie i did on a shelf in my house and showed someone they would not be able to tell it wasnt old brass unless they picked it up. i did try and buff mine but i used a small buffer and some compound. it did not give it a mirrored appearance but it did take the high spots and melt the layer lines away so the piece looks less uniform and makes the high spot brighter than the rest so it kinda looks handled. it also have it a little shine. you can see that in the last pic. over all i really like the stuff. it prints great and does seem strong to me. if i remember right i printed the ollie at .08 layer height.


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Jim,

Thanks for the link back to your post. I know I read that when you posted it, and had totally forgotten about it. Intservo wasn't selling spools of it at that time (I also forgot in my post above to mention that I got the filament from William at Intservo. I think it almost goes without saying now; we get all the eSUN filament through him. But since I'm posting this on the "filament" forum group, it's sort of expected to mention where the filament comes from).

Jules---I have not tried sanding the stuff yet. I have a half-size spool, but it's plenty to play around with, unlike Jim, who used up his entire sample on one print.

Tim,

Looks great! Could you please post your settings (not just temp. and layer height, but also retract/coast/etc.)? Any time somebody gets something that nice, please post the settings so we can have a good starting point to try to reproduce the quality....