An exciting new material for desktop filament fabricators is now available at Filaments.ca from Kai Parthy, the inventor of the original Laywoo-D3 and Laybrick filaments; a sponge/porous 3d printer filament called Layfomm.

When objects printed with Layfomm are dipped in water for two to three days, they become soft and flexible. This is due to a unique material property called Viscoelasticity, which is very rare and never seen in 3D-printing. Something that’s viscoelastic, like a memory foam pillow, will become misshapen when pressure is applied and, then, slowly return to its original state.

Producing a viscoelastic object could have the following applications:

• storing small amounts of mechanical energy
• to damp vibrations (which means the material is a spring plus a damper in once!)
• shoe insoles
• viscoelastic foams
• artificial soft-tissue
• retardation of mechanical movements (trigg era fast movement and change the movement into a slower motion)