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Print with dozens of colors: Our new open-source ColorMix for PrusaSlicer

223 points by rented_mule

by schobi

2 subcomments

I'm already annoyed by the marketing to call it fullspectrum - this seems to promise more than demonstrated. Maybe call it "CMYK printing"? I was hoping to see them printing a photograph (either on a horizontal or on a vertical surface, unlikely to work well on a ball). I was also missing a continuous gradient - so far, only colored patches?
I'm hoping for the next innovation with mixed extrusion to reduce print times. We are lacking an automatic extrusion amount and nozzle size mixing within a "layer". Not just fine layers everywhere with mixed colors on the inside.
Goal: print the infill and inner perimeter from a larger nozzle and thick layer height. Use the fine nozzle and fancy layer-mixing only on the outside where needed. It is not going to be strict layers any more - I understand, this makes it difficult certainly. Then the Prusa printers could shine that exchange fully loaded and pre heated print heads quickly.
Until then, I'll happily wait for 2 days to get a spool of orange filament delivered.. Instead of waiting for a 20hour print job

by isoprophlex

2 subcomments

Is this the future now? Actually interesting content that's barely readable because an LLM turned it into linkedin broetry?

by Priv4cyM4773r5

3 subcomments

> Your Privacy Matters - Prusa Research value your privacy
Please accept 28 Advertisement cookies with 1+ year expiration to play one YouTube video...

by MayeulC

4 subcomments

Hmm, 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 layers, colors could be alternated in the same layer. Some purging may be necessary, but I think you could either: accept some mixing (compute its impact to compensate) / take into account the volume in the nozzle (extrusion "latency") / discard the unwanted part in the infill (at the cost of less smooth edges)
Of course, the hard work with any approach, including their current work, is calibration, as the article highlights. I wonder if off-the-shelf monitor calibration sensors could help with measuring the filament you have at hand.

by WillAdams

4 subcomments

It would be nice if additional colours would be supported, à la Hexachrome by Pantone (this was a 6-colour ink system which covered more than half of the PANTONE spot ink colour space and made quite vivid photo reproduction possible).
Even better would be a mechanism like to Cerilica's Truism which would allow one to use arbitrary filaments and preview how they will blend when printed.

by dclaw

1 subcomments

This is exactly what I was hoping for to knock Bambu down a few notches.... Definitely makes Prusa an even better contender in the space.

by sailfast

2 subcomments

This looks awesome! Exciting to see what happens in this space.

by lovlar

0 subcomment

Does anyone know what file format they are storing the color information in?
Seems like the volumetric extension of 3mf files could support it. That would make cross slicer file mgmt easier.

by coopreme

0 subcomment

INDX anticipation intensifies!

by zahlman

0 subcomment

> 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?

by ReptileMan

0 subcomment

IIRC - True color CMYKW printing is possible without toolchanger, but patents are holding the industry back in this area.

by throawayonthe

1 subcomments

it's very cool stuff but sorte by definition not 'full-spectrum' :p

by Aurornis

1 subcomments

There's a growing community around the OrcaSlicer - Full Spectrum fork that started all of this, which is attributed in the article. It's a cool technique and I expect all of the mainstream slicers will have it soon. You could already do this technique with OrcaSlicer with Prusa printers or cheaper options like the Snapmaker U1
The "Prusa ColorMix Cones" model is not what I'd recommend. I don't know why they made it like that for 3 and 4 colors other than to do something different than what the community was already doing. For 4 colors the PeggyPallette mini they used as inspiration is a much better model: https://makerworld.com/en/models/2519356-peggypalette-mini-3... You specifically want the dome shape to visualize how the layers blend at different angles. The fixed angle of the cones in the Prusa model misses the point and I don't know why they did that other than to be different.
The article goes on at length about their filament mixing model which sounds cool until you see the part that they only tested with Prusament PLA. Again, I think the open source community was already doing a good job with this.
There are several filament databases other than the one they're linking to that have TD values, which sprang out of the HueForge community. There are cheap tools from small makers to measure TD and color, too. One database: https://3dfilamentprofiles.com/
I'm glad they gave attribution to some of the sources of all of these ideas, but to be completely honest it's getting a little tiring to see everything the open source communities do get wrapped up, prefixed with a Prusa- brand prefix, and resold to us. Make sure you look beyond the Prusa official everything to get a sense of what the community is doing with all of this. I know I'm going to get downvoted for saying anything that isn't 100% pro-Prusa, but this is one topic where the open source community is quite a bit ahead and it's worth looking at what's out there.