Mixed Colour Printing

[Hr202 0]

Hi i am very new to 3D printing,   "Mixed Colour" printing with a single extruder, twin feed mixing head (I hope you understand me). Does anyone know how to set the settings to allow for this mixed colour printing?... I am using Cura V3.1....Thanks

[ahoeben 1,886]

AFAIK, there is no way that Cura will let you extrude using two extruder motors at the same time, at least not out of the box. You would have to edit the gcode, either manually or using a post processing script.

[Hr202 0]

Thank you very much for your reply, Is there a program that will do allow this feature to be used?

[ahoeben 1,886]

I don't know of a slicer that does, but I only really know about Cura. Perhaps the Prusa edition of Slic3r?

 

Since you are new to 3D printing, I would advice you to first get comfortable with printing with a single material/color, then find out all the issues of printing with two colors in a single print (without mixing!). Once you know how all that works, you can start with the experimental stuff (ie: mixing).

[kmanstudios 1,120]

12 minutes ago, ahoeben said:

I don't know of a slicer that does, but I only really know about Cura. Perhaps the Prusa edition of Slic3r?

 

Since you are new to 3D printing, I would advice you to first get comfortable with printing with a single material/color, then find out all the issues of printing with two colors in a single print (without mixing!). Once you know how all that works, you can start with the experimental stuff (ie: mixing).

Taking this to heart, I would also ask you to define what you mean by mixed colour printing. That has a broad range of options in my head and it would also depend on what printer you are using and whether it can do 1.75mm filament or not.

 

But @ahoeben is right about learning the basics solid first.

[Hr202 0]

Ahoeben...Thanks for your reply   I think this is a wise suggestion

Kmanstudios ... The am I allowed to say which printer it is? but anyway It does take 1.75 filament but the hot end is a 2 x 1.75 filament in, but only 1 nozzle out See Pictures

 

Apparently,  Repetier host allows for this type of printing. I have managed to get the printer to print some successful items (I think) in single colour (calibration Cube), but because you need both filament inserted, I was just trying to get the program to mix 2 different colours so I can learn how this is to happen...Hope I am making sense.

[ahoeben 1,886]

I am not contesting you can print one color at a time with that setup, but printing mixed colors like in the pictures on the right needs support of both the slicer and the firmware. I know Cura does not support it, and *I* don't know of a firmware that does, but it is very likely that some printers have added support to do this to their firmware.

[kmanstudios 1,120]

I understand now. Thanks

But  just as clarification, mixing pigmented substances is subtractive colouring. You are taking away from white. So, if you were to mix the red and green in your example, it would be brown and not yellow. Different set of primaries in the subtractive colouring model: Red, Yellow, Blue.

 

Light is additive colouring and as you mix primaries, you go towards white, so you have the RGB primaries as you are used to in computers.

 

The reason I asked for clarification was that there is a cool product from Mosaic Manufacturing. That can splice colors together in serial fashion. I do not know about mixing them though.