Experiment: Multi-Coloured 3D Printing

Anyone playing around with desktop 3D printing has probably played around with feeding different colours through the extruder at some stage, or even using dual heads which are becoming more prevalent. I’ve certainly snipped off the filament during  a print and fed a different colour through, although there is no real control doing this. The top images are a little experiment I’ve tried with the ‘Up! Plus 2‘ where I print a 5mm high ring (image 1), re-calibrate the nozzle height (image 2), then print the same part again, only without any raft/support (image 3).  This worked well, until the software said that I could only set the nozzle height within a very small range, so couldn’t go any higher than these 2 colours (total 10mm height).

I’ve then seen the pause feature – feeling like a complete noob (considering I’ve been using this Up! software for years and never tried it!) this next experiment used a 15mm high tube, which I set to pause at 5mm and 10mm, allowing me to withdraw the filament and change colours. Perfect. Yes it’s pretty limited in that a colour can only change in the vertical axis across the entire print, but if you orient your print correctly this might just be enough. Until some of those full colour 3D printers become affordable this will just have to do. Once my Solidoodle Press arrives (looking like January now – see my post about the delays here) I’ll be curious to see whether it has this same function.

– Posted by James Novak