I know this is way to far for this feature to be even considered I am just floating this idea to track some interest from others. I came across "Mimaki USA" who have developed Multicolor 3D printing successfully . Their 3D printer achieves 10M colors to be printed on the model. I guess there is an additional head to paint the surface after each layer is printed. I am not sure where to start this from may be some one can drive this feature ?
VORON Design
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Multi Color 3D Print without additional filament
- Thread starter shahabaz
- Start date
You are talking about the printer that was recently featured on a 3D Printing Nerd video, right? It's basically a 3d printer with a inkjet head on it. Obviously the ink has a formulation that allows it to mix with the printed resin (it's not a FDM printer as far as I understand it), so it is way beyond the capabilities of hobbyist-level machinery at this moment. Maybe it'll be possible in the future? I don't know.
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More seriously, the tech you're talking about is not even thermoplastics, it's using UV-curable resin like the DLP/SLA printer except this one is probably closer to an MJP (3DSystems), MJF (HP) or PolyJet (Stratasys) system. This is soooo much more complicated than our FDM printers you can't even imagine
Yeah I got here after watching 3D Printing Nerd's video. You are right, it is pretty difficult for FDM to achieve that level of color.
This is really good but achieving 10M colors with sharpie technique seems to be impossible. Do you think it can be improved further?This is as close as you'll get to a multicolor print without swapping filament
More seriously, the tech you're talking about is not even thermoplastics, it's using UV-curable resin like the DLP/SLA printer except this one is probably closer to an MJP (3DSystems), MJF (HP) or PolyJet (Stratasys) system. This is soooo much more complicated than our FDM printers you can't even imagine
I mean the 10M value is a theoretical one, they're mixing base colors together to get more variations and the 10M value is basically linked to the dosing precisions of each color. I very much doubt that you could actually measure 10'000'000 different colors on their prints.
But your question in interesting, like would it be possible to make all of this more precise...
Without thinking too much about it I see two things to adress first :
1. Replace the sharpies with a precise ink-dispensing device sing a CMYK configuration (to start with)
2. Replace Ø1.75mmm filament with a smaller one, and make a custom hotent design with a very low melt volume to make it so that you don't need to purge too much to get quick variations of color.
The main issue would be how to keep the ink dispensing in sync with what get's out of the printer. I feel purging would still be necessary.
Another way to do it would be to design a filament that can be dyed easily and quickly and dye it after each layer.
You'd need an IDEX-style printer with one toolhead being an ink or dye-dispensing device akin to an inkjet printer, while the other one is a traditional FFF toolhed/extruder.
Process would be print one layer, park hotend, bring dye dispenser to locally apply all the colors necessary on the print, park the dye dispenser and apply the next layer of plastic with the hotend.
