One filament, two colours side by side in the same strand. 3DJake's Magic PLA gave me my biggest Instagram moment ever, a time-lapse with more than 8.3 million views, and the prints look like they've been painted.
What makes it "magic"
In early 2022 3DJake kindly sent me two spools: Deep Space (purple and blue) and Metallic Emerald (green and blue). Look closely and you'll see the strand is literally split lengthwise into two colours. It's not a rainbow filament that changes along its length. It's a silk PLA where both colours are always there, so the result shifts depending on the angle you look from.
Going viral by accident
The very first thing I printed was a woman's bust, filmed with a GoPro taking a frame every 10 seconds. It looked like an OctoLapse, but it wasn't. I posted it on Instagram and it blew up: over 8.3 million views when I made this video, numbers I'd never seen before. I think it was partly the filament, partly the model and partly the way it was shot. Either way, it made me feel like a celebrity for a while.
What I learned printing with it
In vase mode the two colours blend more evenly. On regular prints with lots of infill, or on large prints, you can sometimes see straight lines where the colours shift, because half the filament is one colour and half is the other. It still looks great. The bust used less than 200 g of filament because I printed it with Cura's lightning infill, which I now use for all my large display pieces.
A lizard model I found on 3DJake's page shifts from green to blue as you turn it. A Metallic Emerald box blends beautifully and closes perfectly. A Deep Space vase shows a line in one spot, but it looks good as the colour moves from blue to purple. Ivan's twin vase, printed with 0.8 mm extrusion on a 0.4 mm nozzle, came out with a beautiful pattern. The finish looks sanded and painted, not 3D printed, and it's ready to show straight off the printer. That's what I love most in a filament.
Is it worth it?
Definitely. If you're a maker, it's a must-try. I haven't found this kind of finish in any other filament. 3DJake is based in Austria, so it's a European filament, and when I checked, prices were competitive, with free shipping.