1 Topic by fadilee

  • fadilee
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Topic: 3D printing in colour?

Hi, I saw the other day a page of how someone made 3 extruders 3D printer to print in 3 colour ABS filaments. The mechanical idea is not hard to grasp but how are the colours controlled? I mean, how would he communicate to the printer for example that layer 50 to layer 67 are green, but everything after that is blue and everything before that is yellow?!

I am not talking about the mechanical aspect of how the extruders are switched: I am talking how to communicate the color to the printer? Let's say I want to 3D print a frog that's green with white eyes and black pupils. How would the printer know when to use what colour? Can I say colour the 3D model in SolidWorks and transfer this data to the STL file so that the printer can extract the colour data from the STL file and slices the model accordingly?

Any helpful feedback is much appreciated. Please share your thoughts. smile

2 Reply by Claghorn

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Re: 3D printing in colour?

I asked about that before:

http://www.soliforum.com/topic/4445/how … -extruder/

I've been wondering if you could make an extruder that took natural filament and injected colorant just before printing so you could mix different colorants on demand to control the filament color that was actually extruded. Sort of "ink jet" colorant :-).

Claghorn's Website

3 Reply by michael.t.albers

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Re: 3D printing in colour?

you can.  unfortunately, stratasys has a patent on it, so be very carefull.

4 Reply by fadilee

  • fadilee
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Re: 3D printing in colour?

Thank you for the replies.

Can you please clarify what patent they have on? They have a patent on 3D printing with colour? Sorry, I am new to this.

5 Reply by IronMan

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Re: 3D printing in colour?

fadilee wrote:

Thank you for the replies.

Can you please clarify what patent they have on? They have a patent on 3D printing with colour? Sorry, I am new to this.

Patent Pending at this point...there may be others granted or pending as well:

http://www.google.com/patents/WO2012152 … CHYQ6AEwCQ

SD2 - Stock - Enclosure - Heated Bed - Glass Plate - Auto Fire Extinguisher
Ord Bot Hadron - RAMPS 1.4 - Bulldog XL - E3D v6 - 10" x 10" PCB Heated Build w/SSR - Glass Plate
Thanks for All of Your Help!

6 Reply by michael.t.albers

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Re: 3D printing in colour?

Thanks for the source IronMan.

7 Reply by fadilee

  • fadilee
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Re: 3D printing in colour?

Thank you.

IronMan wrote:
fadilee wrote:

Thank you for the replies.

Can you please clarify what patent they have on? They have a patent on 3D printing with colour? Sorry, I am new to this.

Patent Pending at this point...there may be others granted or pending as well:

http://www.google.com/patents/WO2012152 … CHYQ6AEwCQ