Friday, February 25, 2011

Adding color between layers

The SD300 doesn't currently offer green material, so someone recently asked how I made the green marble I pictured in previous post in November. I had been experimenting with applying color during the build, a technique I recently repeated to produce three variously-colored marbles during a single build.


I stopped the SD300 about half way through building a batch of marbles, and applied colored markers to the interior of the models where the next layer was about to be welded on.


The ink was applied after the machine and finished applying Anti-Glue, but immediately before it ironed the next sheet. This timing ensures the machine won't come into contact with the ink, thereby protecting the cutting knife and Anti-Glue pens from contamination. My SDPause utility stops the machine at the right time.


Even though they've only been tinted only between two layers, the finished parts vibrantly exude color due to the translucent behavior of the material. That's all just a lighting effect: ink didn't (and couldn't) bleed between layers.

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