Color printing - MakerBot Industries

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Color printing

julvr 20 Sep 2011 00:27

This is my second question:

Theoretically, how hard would it be to make this thing a color printer — that is add some dye to the plastic just before it is ejected through the print head? I don't know much about the properties of plastic, so I don't know how easy it would be, but the mechanics sound possible… and it would be a really cool option to have!

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julvr, 20 Sep 2011 00:27

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Re: Color printing

Paul De Bra 20 Sep 2011 11:40

Given how much plastic needs to be extruded when changing from black to white before the bot actually extrudes white I don't think this is feasible.

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Paul De Bra, 20 Sep 2011 11:40

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Re: Color printing

julvr 20 Sep 2011 14:46

I could see a lot of other complications arising from this as well. So back to the multiple printer head issue :) What if you made the printer heads really small…

John

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julvr, 20 Sep 2011 14:46

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Re: Color printing

sgeos 09 Oct 2011 10:26

What about a mixer? Have multiple feeds into the (stationary) mixer, the mixer pulls filament from the feed it needs and sends it to the (positioned) extruder. I suspect the pipeline nuances would be non-trivial, but with a design like this you could theoretically extrude an unlimited number of colors using only one extruder.

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sgeos, 09 Oct 2011 10:26

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Re: Color printing

Bluemetal 09 Oct 2011 14:57

Mixing molten ABS or PLA with an static mixer is a non- trivial problem. The chamber size would be significant and give that you trying to create something similar to a CSTR ( cContinuously Stirred Tank Reactor) the color output will be defined by a bell curve and therefore rather hard to predict and control (colors will bleed onto one another and the hysteresis ( pulling filament from the reactor chamber) will not be immediate so you will have trails of colors affecting the next mix. Not impossible but a few years out at least.

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Bluemetal, 09 Oct 2011 14:57

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Re: Color printing

sgeos 10 Oct 2011 00:51

I think the first step in this direction would be to feed a couple of colors of plastic (say black and white) into a static mixer. Then try to switch between those discrete colors get them to come out of the extruder with an acceptable amount of bleeding. From there, there is a branch between sending 3+ discrete colors to the extruder or printing in "greyscale".

A certain amount of bleeding is acceptable. Depending on what you are making, you could switch colors when you are printing the fill material so the bleeding is not visible.

What is used to color ABS and PLA? Instead of feeding different lines of plastic into a mixer, would it make sense to feed natural plastic and optical dopants instead?

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sgeos, 10 Oct 2011 00:51

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Re: Color printing

rusty_shack 09 Oct 2011 13:38

Someone beat you to it! Look up "Filament Colorizer" on thingiverse - it uses sharpies to dye the filament as it goes into the extruder. You can change color by changing sharpie (you could probably automate that).

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rusty_shack, 09 Oct 2011 13:38

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Re: Color printing

sgeos 10 Oct 2011 01:09

I wonder if it would not make sense to just inject ink into the plastic as you are extruding. The ZPrinter 650 essentially does this with a power / binder system. (I believe it is a $60,000 printer.)

Search for "ZPrinter 650" on YouTube. (Guests and low-karma users are not allowed to publish links on this site. That means me.) The video you want is: PQ_FRAfd7co

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sgeos, 10 Oct 2011 01:09

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