You'll have trouble telling real sculptures apart

Jan 24, 2015 11:15 GMT  ·  By

PLA filament is quite versatile, due to its ability to become malleable upon heating, and the way it retains shape when cooled. Also, it is biodegradable, produced from corn starch, tapioca roots, chips, or sugarcane.

Shenzhen eSUN Industrial Co., a Chinese filament manufacturer, wanted to greet the Chinese New year properly, so it came up with an idea: bronze-colored filament.

Which is to say, a PLA filament with the same color as the bronze you find in many of the busts put out for viewing in parks or in the front yards of colleges.

The bronze-colored PLA filament is made for artists and other designers who want sculptures to have an antique, metallic effect. The filament has good strength and elasticity and the print temperature is of 190 to 210℃.

Shipments of the eSun’s Bronze PLA filament will begin next month, February 2015, probably for $49.99 / €45, since that's what the gold-colored filament ships for so a color change to a different metal shouldn't cause too much of a gap.

3D Prints made with it should suffer minimal warping and shrinkage, as the filament extrudes at a fairly low nozzle temperature. There might be a need for more frequent nozzle cleaning because of it, but you could bypass that problem by employing some of the transparent cleaning filament that eSUN offers.