IIRC - True color CMYKW printing is possible without toolchanger, but patents are holding the industry back in this area.
Print with dozens of colors: Our new open-source ColorMix for PrusaSlicer
61–70 of 79 posts
Re: Print with dozens of colors: Our new open-source ColorMix for PrusaSlicer
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’ve always liked the idea of multi-color. But one of the big mental stumbling blocks for me was needing so many colors. I’m not the kind of person who does a lot of 3-D printing and can justify having a wall of different filaments just to put a different colored label on top of a part. When I first saw this pop-up in the community it was clear this was a fix. No it’s not as good as owning a roll of some specific col…
Xerox had (maybe still has?) some printers with 5 or 6 color toner capacity. CMYK plus you could order special color toner in stock or fully custom mixes (minimum order sizes apply for full custom) but it was great for companies who had logos which could not be exactly represented by CMYK half toning as the spot color toner could be their exact logo color. I’m sure the same kind of thing would be possible using Prusa…
I worked on a predecessor to that at Xerox at the start of the 1990s. The first was the Xerox 4850 which was the size of 3-4 clothes washers, cost several hundred thousand dollars, and printed at 50 pages per minute in black plus one color (Xerox called it Highlight Color), but no CMY. It was exactly for the logo use case you mention. A big customer was AT&T for printing phone bills with their blue logo on it. It let them replace many millions of pages of letterhead not sold by Xerox with blank paper sold by Xerox. Xerox loved paper phone bills.
Re: Print with dozens of colors: Our new open-source ColorMix for PrusaSlicer
#63Hmm, I am not in the 3D printer space anymore, but I am surprised they went with alternating layer per layer, as that severely limits resolution. It's probably the simplest way to achieve reproducible results, but I can think of a few other ways: * the simplest is just mixing filaments, like one mixes paint. The article doesn't spell out the reason it doesn't work, I am curious as to why. * together with alternating…
the simplest is just mixing filaments, like one mixes paint.
That is actually the hardest way to do it, because that's not at all how 3d printing works. 3d printers take strands of plastic (aka "filament"), soften them up to being melty but not melted, and then "extrude" them, like cake frosting onto a surface. As with cake frosting, in order to mix colors, you have to do so before the extrusion step, so you would have to make your own (filament), and the machinery to do so is not cheap.
The thing about first order thinking is that it is very rarely useful, because the actual experts in the field have almost certainly thought of all the things that first order thinkers come up with, and deemed those ideas unworkable for various reasons.
Re: Print with dozens of colors: Our new open-source ColorMix for PrusaSlicer
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Photo reproduction should be the target here... There's an app called Hueforge that produces models that color mix to reproduce photos: https://shop.thehueforge.com/ It's been around for years. There are databases of filaments with their TD values and color measurements to use. The blog really sells Prusa's attempts to do this with their own PLA, but there's a long history of color mixing in the community with exte…
That looks/feels a lot like the Cerilica Truism approach (arbitrary mixing). Will have to keep it in mind for when I get a printer which does nozzle/toolhead switching.
You can use it with any printer if you're willing to swap the filaments manually.
The print file will have pauses inserted at the layer swaps. You manually swap the filaments when it pauses. There are only a few layers and colors so it's not too hard.
Re: Print with dozens of colors: Our new open-source ColorMix for PrusaSlicer
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It’s a great confluence of events if you’re in the Prusa ecosystem or just don’t want a Bambu or U1. I'm excited for INDX too, but like you said it's not a Prusa exclusive system. I think this is great news for people who like to play entirely within the Prusa ecosystem, but I also think it's good to let people know that there are a lot of options outside of that ecosystem. The Snapmaker U1 is looking good at $899…
If I wasn’t already in the Prusa ecosystem the U1 is what I’d want. I was jealous of it until INDX was announced.
The INDX upgrade for the Core One costs more than the entire Snapmaker U1 printer. I think of them as targeting different price points.
I guess I've been in 3D printing long enough to not consider myself in anyone's ecosystem. I'm jumped between printers and had multiple printers at home for years and never felt tied to any one ecosystem.
Re: Print with dozens of colors: Our new open-source ColorMix for PrusaSlicer
#66> showed how virtual mixed-color filaments could be created by alternating thin layers of differently colored materials.... The principle is well-known from traditional 2D printing. It uses Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow (CMY) inks in a method called Halftoning, which allows a printer to produce continuous tones by varying the size and spacing of small ink dots. Because of the nature of FDM printing, we don’t use a combination of dots, but we alternate the colors by layer.
... That doesn't sound like something that should have been difficult to achieve? Has it really not worked this way before in 3d printing?
Re: Print with dozens of colors: Our new open-source ColorMix for PrusaSlicer
#67Hmm, I am not in the 3D printer space anymore, but I am surprised they went with alternating layer per layer, as that severely limits resolution. It's probably the simplest way to achieve reproducible results, but I can think of a few other ways: * the simplest is just mixing filaments, like one mixes paint. The article doesn't spell out the reason it doesn't work, I am curious as to why. * together with alternating…
the simplest is just mixing filaments, like one mixes paint. That is actually the hardest way to do it, because that's not at all how 3d printing works. 3d printers take strands of plastic (aka "filament"), soften them up to being melty but not melted, and then "extrude" them, like cake frosting onto a surface. As with cake frosting, in order to mix colors, you have to do so before the extrusion step, so you would ha…
> The thing about first order thinking is that it is very rarely useful, because the actual experts in the field have almost certainly thought of all the things that first order thinkers come up with, and deemed those ideas unworkable for various reasons.
Sure, but a useful article would focus on explaining the consideration and rejection of those obvious ideas, and what actually had to be done to implement something similar — rather than focusing on the even-more-obvious background material (how 2d printers have worked for decades) motivating the obvious ideas.
Re: Print with dozens of colors: Our new open-source ColorMix for PrusaSlicer
#68> Your Privacy Matters - Prusa Research value your privacy Please accept 28 Advertisement cookies with 1+ year expiration to play one YouTube video...
If privacy matters to you, you should at least be using a JavaScript blocker/whitelister such as NoScript. With this, the entire page is readable and there is no popup; no first-party cookies are added as far as I can tell (and I have Firefox configured to block all cross-site cookies, which doesn't break this page); and the YouTube video is replaced with YouTube's "Error 153" placeholder with a direct link to the video.
(For reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERgnSetWkEA)
Re: Print with dozens of colors: Our new open-source ColorMix for PrusaSlicer
#69Hmm, I am not in the 3D printer space anymore, but I am surprised they went with alternating layer per layer, as that severely limits resolution. It's probably the simplest way to achieve reproducible results, but I can think of a few other ways: * the simplest is just mixing filaments, like one mixes paint. The article doesn't spell out the reason it doesn't work, I am curious as to why. * together with alternating…
the simplest is just mixing filaments, like one mixes paint. That is actually the hardest way to do it, because that's not at all how 3d printing works. 3d printers take strands of plastic (aka "filament"), soften them up to being melty but not melted, and then "extrude" them, like cake frosting onto a surface. As with cake frosting, in order to mix colors, you have to do so before the extrusion step, so you would ha…
I wonder if you would get good enough results by just extruding two separate filaments simultaneously. Sure, they won't fully mix, but with thin enough layers, you'd benefit from the same visual processing that makes alternating layers look like a solid color...
Re: Print with dozens of colors: Our new open-source ColorMix for PrusaSlicer
#70> Your Privacy Matters - Prusa Research value your privacy Please accept 28 Advertisement cookies with 1+ year expiration to play one YouTube video...
If privacy matters to you, you should at least be using a JavaScript blocker/whitelister such as NoScript. With this, the entire page is readable and there is no popup; no first-party cookies are added as far as I can tell (and I have Firefox configured to block all cross-site cookies, which doesn't break this page); and the YouTube video is replaced with YouTube's "Error 153" placeholder with a direct link to the vi…
> If privacy matters to you ...
Ffs, stop with the gatekeeping please. Yes, privacy matters to me. Nah, not doing all that. Instead, I reported them to uoou.gov.cz/en for this gross violation of GDPR.