Would you describe this as “Full-Colour”? I certainly wouldn’t and have written a blog about the fast-and-loose use of the term in the #3DPrinting world. Read More > Nailing my colours to the mast? What is full colour 3D Printing? - TCT Magazine
To me, a full-colour 3D print means that the outer surface has been rendered in CMYK dots like a 2D colour inkjet page.
I agree @Paul_Gross , I think while the industrial world strives towards this with Connex etc it is unethical for desktop machines to claim “full colour”
If our open-source machines can actually implement CMYK colour, then that would be unparallelled.
The closest industrial method for CMYK 3D printing is a machine that sets gypsum (plaster) 3D models, adding water-based pigments to the gypsum. It looks OK, but plaster is not a very useful material to me.
A thermoplastic with colour pigments applied to the outside surface would look awesome. Imagine Aria the dragon with her skin (scales?) rendered in photographic detail!
If that happened, then open-source printers would have moved ahead of the state-of-the-art for commercial 3d printing.
I think in terms of industrial methods we’re seeing movement in the past year or so on improvements from the gypsum-based stuff.
Stratasys’ Connex machines now can print pixel-by-pixel colours (not just in shells) so long as you have the correct colour profile loaded into photoshop.
3D Systems launched their new full colour plastic, which is a little more vibrant than the gypsum.
Then coming down the line we have HP, some of the colour parts were on display at AMUG and though they were just rainbow colours they claim that the tech can do pixel-by-pixel.
In terms of the desktop, to me the most interesting colour development is Spectrom, an add on for open-source printers that dyes a plain filament as it prints.
The podcast we put out last week covers a lot of these topics.
I’m from the printing/publishing industry and Full Color printing as was mentioned involves any process that can print an unlimited array of colors usually comprised of CMYK components. Anything less, regardless of how many available colors is called “Spot Color” printing.
Thanks Rob, Spot Colour noted for future reference!
Along the lines of Spot Color printing, I was thinking it should be called 2-color printing (dual head) or 8-color (?) printing in the case of the kickstarter project to feed multiple filaments into one nozzle.
To me, full color printing would be printing out a minion or tug boat fully colored…not one color or stripes of different colors. The only printer I think that is capable of that right now is a paper based 3D printer.
I’ve seen this described way too much, it’s sad really. For FDM I see only two viable methods for real color printing, a colored filament mixing system, and some sort of filament dyeing system. In both cases the mixing must be able to produce the desired color for any single point of an object. This layered rainbow crap, no matter how many colors, is no more “color 3d printing” than prints done from a single colored filament.
@e_shep Filament mixing wont work unless you want to waste a LOT of material. A separate printer head printing in color on the surface of the 3d print is the only practical way I see to get photo-realistic surfaces.Like an inkjet head airbrushing a tiny amount of dye, and following the 3d print head closely.
@Doug_Rector1
I agree.
The gypsum/plaster 3d printers do it this way, but this is very easy for plaster because it absorbs the water soluble pigments that are sprayed from above.
But thermoplastics won’t absorb pigment like plaster does. The pigment will just sit on the surface.
Also the colour pigments cannot be sprayed downwards onto the plastic layer that was just extruded, because that would interfere with the next layer bonding to it. Plus,the side of the plastic would not have much visible pigment.
The pigments need to be sprayed sideways, along the vector that matches the surface-normal of the exterior surface of the object.
That’s tricky, but possible, with software to compute the surface-normal vector, and a specially designed print head that applies pigment dots after the plastic extruder prints each layer.
@Doug_Rector1 , no, not efficient but it could work. I still think the more practical method would be to dye the material as it’s extruded. Printing on the surface as @Paul_Gross pointed out has some big hurdles.