Spooky MakerBot PLA filament glows in the dark

With Halloween quickly approaching, the MakerBot crew is adding a little glow to All Hallows’ Eve festivities with its new glow-in-the-dark PLA filament for the Atmel-powered MakerBot Replicator 2 Desktop 3D Printer.

Like all MakerBot Filament, Glow-in-the-Dark PLA Filament is manufactured and in-house tested, with the company mixing in a special dye mixture that glows a ghostly green in the dark.

“You don’t need sunlight to power up your Glow-in-the-Dark PLA Filament, any light source will do the trick in just two to three minutes,” MakerBot’s Ben Millstein explained in a recent blog post. “The brighter the light source, the more powerfully it will glow. We’ve found that charging MakerBot glow-in-the-dark PLA filament with a UV LED flashlight packs a potent punch.”

In addition to the glow-in-the-dark PLA filament, MakerBot has also debuted a new line of warm gray and cool gray filament. According to Millstein, the nuanced colors are ideal for professionals who use the Atmel-powered MakerBot Replicator 2 Desktop 3D Printer to prototype, iterate, and innovate in the workplace.

“We’re particularly excited for architects, who can use these shades of gray to propose a structure’s look without drilling down into specific material choices,” said Millstein. “[Our] example model, a gothic cloister [see picture above], shows the presence of two materials and how they might look together, without having to specify what those materials will be.”