We’ve used wood filament before, and we hazily remember a Cura plugin that changed temperatures to create wood grain. But unlike [Patrick Gibney], we never thought of printing a faux wood log coaster that looks like it has rings. Check out the video below to see how it works.
The filament is not really wood, of course, but a polymer — usually PLA — mixed with wood particles. Changing the temperature does a nice job of darkening the wood. However, it also changes the properties of the carrier polymer, and that’s not always a good thing.
[Patrick] is manually adjusting the temperature and only using the wood filament for a layer or two, which is smart — there’s no reason to have wood-grained patterns inside your print. There have been scripts for this technique, although some are too outdated to work with modern slicers.
While we aren’t a fan of printing the dark areas at nearly 300C, it seems to work, and the rough appearance helps in this particular case.
Another option is to print using sawdust. There are plenty of exotic filament options out there. Wood is only the tip of the… tree?
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