I’m trying different PLA filaments to branch out from the usual PLA and wanted to post my impressions of the Hojor crystal PLA. I picked the one that is a clear to blue color gradient.
I printed two of my fish:
- The darker one (top) has layer 0.2, gyroid infill at 15%, 2 wall loops, printed at normal speed.
- The lighter one (bottom) was printed with layer 0.28, no infill and 3 wall loops, printed at half speed (silent mode).
What the lighter one looked like on the plate.
The look of the filament is very close to what I would describe as sea glass (glass that has been sandblasted by wave action over years). It’s translucent, not transparent, and even feels similar to sea glass. I personally really like it. I think it could work very well for some models.
Even though the ad copy mentioned ‘clear’ and ‘transparent’ 100 times, this is definitely not the case. It’s translucent and not transparent, unless printed 1 layer thick.
It’s not as ‘gummy’ as basic PLA and removing supports can be tricky. In the one I printed at normal speed, the supports came off very easily. Just wiggled them and pulled them off. Most of the support block came of in one piece. For the fish printed at slow speed, removing supports was almost impossible. They were very much more attached to the print and they cracked and shattered while removing them, forcing me to break off tiny pieces at a time. This was the first time I did NOT enjoy removing supports from a print. It took a very long time, the final result was terrible and overall it was not a pleasant process. So if you print with this filament, go for normal speed. If you HAVE to print slowly, avoid supports like the plague.
Photos against backlight.
Overall I really like it. I’m going to see if I can come up with a design that can show it off better and that isn’t a crystal shape or a dragon. I think there are enough of those in the world already. 
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I found that the see through effect of filaments often relies on having the matching speed, temp and layer height.
And that preferably in the main direction the light will travel through.
If you print the fish flat instead of standing up it would look quite different on the light frame.
Try some small, hollow cubes or a gyroid shape to see how the layers and their thickness affect the light.
There was a competition some time ago to print the clearest PETG block possible.
Some looked like cast resin…
But the lengths to go through to make it happen…
Vase mode is hard enough to get right to only be left with some layer lines but otherwise a clear print.
More than a single wall, added infill and supports? Good luck…
I still like those filaments as they offer a lot of fun things to print where light plays a role.
A lithophane printed with them just gets a special character…
This is what I came up with. Still very much like the filament, although it really is terribly ‘crunchy’.
https://makerworld.com/en/models/583955#profileId-505133
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Good idea. I’ll see what I can get.
As an aside, color transition is every 100g. Seems very far for the smaller models. That’s really only 10 transitions for an entire spool… It doesn’t seem much.
I think one has to consider not just the features of a filament but also the possible use for it.
Take some rainbow filaments - they change so often that a large model can look like an artist who tried painting in the dark.
Other have the fading on rather short stretches, making a soft blending over 20 or so layer very impossible on large models.
Back in the day filament painting was a thing for a while.
People used permanent markers to give their white or other coloured filament some extra.
I had a mount for 5 pens ROFL
Once you knew how much length it takes for a colour to get to the nozzle you get quite creative.
I always wondered why this died out rather than some company providing proper filament pens with matching tips…
But I guess printers getting faster and fancier had something to do with…
Interesting. I didn’t know about coloring of PLA.
And yeah honestly as much as I like this one, I think the range of uses is rather limited. It’s interesting but, other than maybe art pieces, I’m hard-pressed to think of what uses might benefit from this type of filament. Especially given how sparse color changes are and how hard and sharp it is when it’s printed.
