> 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?
I find it fascinating that in less than a decade "bro" somehow turned into a very specific meathead or stoner stereotype, to now include everyone from Sam Altman to your local girlboss marketer.
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
> 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.
The INDX has extremely low waste when you switch from one tool head to another. Just a little tiny nugget.
It also supports different sized nozzles in the different heads, like the Prusa XL.
So I suspect having far more people with access to that will help push better uses for that. PrusaSlicer 3 is coming soon with lots of improvements (according to them) but we don’t know what yet. I’m hoping that’s one of em.
Calling it "marketing" is a bit over the top.
I understand what you're saying and your disappointment, but I think the issue is really a matter of unrealistic expectations.
The article is by Prusa Research and it's about a recent, novel 3D printing technique.
This is very much an area of active research and also development (not to be confused with R&D).
The "FullSpectrum" thing is the name given to the project in which the developer, ratdoux, who is presumably an individual, demonstrated the technique.
There's no Orcas in it, either.
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.
They’re not limiting you, the community work this is based on doesn’t either. Yeah they’re going to sell sets for easy use but it’s just color mixing. If you know the filament colors, which is what the filament database is for, you’ve got all the info you need.
And you’re only limited in quantity by how many filaments you can load at once. A full INDX setup on a Core One is 8. I thought you could daisy chain Bambu AMS units on their printers, which would let you get your 16 maybe? I’m not very familiar with their offerings.
The newer Bambu printers (H2D and X2D) allow up to 25 colors. One nozzle connected directly to the spool holder, then the other to four 4-spool AMS 2 Pror and 8 single spool high-temp AMS HT
And it looks like the software support needs work too - the obvious way to do it is being done able to import a jpeg or png to project or wrap onto the surface, a bit like texture maps in video games.
It's been around for years. There are databases of filaments with their TD values and color measurements to use. The blog really sells Prusa's attempts to do this with their own PLA, but there's a long history of color mixing in the community with extensive measurements of filaments that anyone interested should check out, too.
You can use it with any printer if you're willing to swap the filaments manually.
The print file will have pauses inserted at the layer swaps. You manually swap the filaments when it pauses. There are only a few layers and colors so it's not too hard.
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.
the simplest is just mixing filaments, like one mixes paint.
That is actually the hardest way to do it, because that's not at all how 3d printing works. 3d printers take strands of plastic (aka "filament"), soften them up to being melty but not melted, and then "extrude" them, like cake frosting onto a surface. As with cake frosting, in order to mix colors, you have to do so before the extrusion step, so you would have to make your own (filament), and the machinery to do so is not cheap.
The thing about first order thinking is that it is very rarely useful, because the actual experts in the field have almost certainly thought of all the things that first order thinkers come up with, and deemed those ideas unworkable for various reasons.
>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.
This requires you to control both filaments independently directly at the extruder. Dual direct drive for a single nozzle sounds like an engineering nightmare. The extruder head is going to be huge.
There is also the obvious problem of how to stirr the filament. Printing temperatures aren't hot enough to turn the plastic liquid, they just make it soft enough to drip out the nozzle. This means you can't just feed the filaments at continuos rates, you will have to use a PWM scheme where you extrude the first filament and then the second filament in extremely small discrete increments. That switching will give you the necessary agitation without building a throwaway nozzle that can't be cleaned after a clog.
All of this sounds like it would take at least a year for a well equipped research department to figure out. It's definitely not the simplest solution.
Minuteman on youtube has a four extruder single nozzle setup for speed printing. He occasionally uses multiple colors, and they basically don't mix in the nozzle. The cross section of an extrusion looks like a pie chart
You would need special nozzle geometry that encourages mixing, and likely much higher temperatures. And any such mixing geometry will trap some filament. Switching from dark to light colors might require purging with meters of light filament to get all traces of black filament out
> 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.
Plastic flow is laminar, where colour mixing requires turbulence. If you make a turbulent nozzle, it's basically impossible to print reliably with it (the pressure used to push filament out of the nozzle is mostly absorbed/redirect into turbulence).
From what I've seen in the blog post, this is underselling it a bit. They did improve on the color mixing model, and they're launching filaments to match to make it an end-to-end product.
No this isn't rocket science, and there's definitely a vibrant FOSS community actually pioneering this and that is probably the best place to be on the true frontier, but there is productization effort here. Considering people always advocate for Bambu for "making it easy to buy", Prusa also deserves credit when they try. They certainly get knocked when they don't.
As someone deeply embedded into the FOSS community myself, it's sometimes really annoying when we sabotage the better players. It only helps the worse ones.
PrusaSlicer is used as a base by some others, they’ll get this.
Version 3 is coming soon, they’ve promised good things. I’m curious what shows up.
They also open sourced their color mixing model so if people think it’s better they can switch. And they’re using and adding their stuff to the open print tag database they’ve already cooperated with others on.
This seems like all upside to the community to me.
> They did improve on the color mixing model, and they're launching filaments to match to make it an end-to-end product.
For what it's worth, CMY filament bundles have been available forever and they're well characterized for use with HueForge there are open databases with measured color and TD values. It's great that Prusa is launching their own bundle with their own measurements. I'm just trying to point out that this all exists and has existed for a long time, and there are multiple resources available for it.
> As someone deeply embedded into the FOSS community myself, it's sometimes really annoying when we sabotage the better players
Not trying to sabotage anyone, just trying to help the community with some more information.
The big thing for me is this plus the INDX from Bondtech. And at least for now they are the exclusive partner for that (you can still buy on your own and add to any machine).
INDX already has fast color changes and produces far FAR less waste than an AMS. And that’s what sold me.
Then the coloring mixing stuff started coming from the community. Now you don’t need to buy 30 colors of filament for many uses. Thats a serious upside. And it really benefits from multiple toolheads.
It’s a great confluence of events if you’re in the Prusa ecosystem or just don’t want a Bambu or U1.
> It’s a great confluence of events if you’re in the Prusa ecosystem or just don’t want a Bambu or U1.
I'm excited for INDX too, but like you said it's not a Prusa exclusive system. I think this is great news for people who like to play entirely within the Prusa ecosystem, but I also think it's good to let people know that there are a lot of options outside of that ecosystem.
The INDX upgrade for the Core One costs more than the entire Snapmaker U1 printer. I think of them as targeting different price points.
I guess I've been in 3D printing long enough to not consider myself in anyone's ecosystem. I'm jumped between printers and had multiple printers at home for years and never felt tied to any one ecosystem.
The AMS doesn’t cause the waste, it’s purging the old filament out of the tool head. The H2D and X2D can print two colors with an AMS without needing to purge and the H2C can do 7 without purging. You still need a prime tower when switching tool heads, but that is significantly less than a full purge. But I believe the INDX has the same restriction.
I do agree though that direct feeding each tool head offers the best experience vs the AMS approach.
I’m glad to see Prius’s catching up to Bambu on the color mixing front, Bambu has had CMYK filaments for a long time and has supported color mixing in their slicer for at least a month.
> You still need a prime tower when switching tool heads, but that is significantly less than a full purge. But I believe the INDX has the same restriction.
INDX no longer needs a tower. They say there is 13 milligrams of waste (which they call less than a grain of rice) on each filament change. So a print with 1,000 changes wastes 13 grams of filament. Details:
I'd kind of considered printing a rather small thing (seriously, 3x3x3 cm or so) in grey using this technique (using white and black filament). It told me it'd require 140 (== number of layers) filament changes and it'd take 5 hours. (In fairness, if I wanted to print 10 at once it'd probably take a similar time.)
So... honestly it's kinda silly IMO. If I wanted to mix colors in a hacky way I'd just... wait, hold my beer.
I’ve always liked the idea of multi-color. But one of the big mental stumbling blocks for me was needing so many colors. I’m not the kind of person who does a lot of 3-D printing and can justify having a wall of different filaments just to put a different colored label on top of a part.
When I first saw this pop-up in the community it was clear this was a fix. No it’s not as good as owning a roll of some specific color, but for a ton of use cases it’s absolutely good enough or maybe even perfect.
It made me want an INDX all over again, now thinking I should buy more heads. I knew they’d jump on, I’m glad it’s this early so it will be available by the time mine arrives.
I’m sure this is a huge boon for them, Snapmaker’s U1, and the new Bambu with more than 2 heads. HUGE value add just through software. Speed difference between those and MMU/AMS is now more important than ever if you want this.
I recently started playing around with my Palette 3 again
(on a MK3.5S). It’s an amazing piece of engineering that has a reputation for being frustrating to use. It’s now discontinued but Mosaic still sell spare parts and it’s designed to be stripped down and repaired. Despite the problems, it was built by good engineers - it uses one torx head for all screws (and comes with a driver). The next printer I get will probably be an INDX system though, the future is multitool.
I had written it off, because of how irritating Mosaic’s cloud slicer is. I’ve been pleasantly surprised how well it works with a fork of P2PP (vhspace/p2pp), a post processor for PrusaSlicer that is completely local. All it does is swap out the filament change commands with Palette splice instructions. I fixed a few gcode interpreter bugs that solved the issues I had with bed calibration and extrusion, and even splicing seems quite reliable. I’ve been using it for simple 2-color same-brand prints that would require a lot of manual changing, so not complex but it’s much nicer to use than an MMU2.
Xerox had (maybe still has?) some printers with 5 or 6 color toner capacity. CMYK plus you could order special color toner in stock or fully custom mixes (minimum order sizes apply for full custom) but it was great for companies who had logos which could not be exactly represented by CMYK half toning as the spot color toner could be their exact logo color.
I’m sure the same kind of thing would be possible using Prusa’s documented methods with a little extra work.
I worked on a predecessor to that at Xerox at the start of the 1990s. The first was the Xerox 4850 which was the size of 3-4 clothes washers, cost several hundred thousand dollars, and printed at 50 pages per minute in black plus one color (Xerox called it Highlight Color), but no CMY. It was exactly for the logo use case you mention. A big customer was AT&T for printing phone bills with their blue logo on it. It let them replace many millions of pages of letterhead not sold by Xerox with blank paper sold by Xerox. Xerox loved paper phone bills.
I can imagine filament vendors making bundles of filaments with interesting mixes of colors. CMYKW is an obvious one, but there must be other color combinations that will mix in interesting ways.
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.
What’s wrong with not using the community model for their internal tests? I’m sure they have a good reason. It can’t possibly be just NIH.
Yeah they’re focusing on their filaments but that’s their product. It would be weird if they didn’t start there. Plus they’re working with the open filament database that as established to go with the open source NFC tags they cooperated with other companies on. That seems sand too.
Ok they’ve only done PLA so far, is that such a big deal? This is an announcement not a release. They’re still working on all of it.
And it seemed to me like they did a great job giving the community credit in the post. They made it clear it all came from the community, including the entire idea, and they’re building on that and giving back.
> What’s wrong with not using the community model for their internal tests? I’m sure they have a good reason. It can’t possibly be just NIH
The problem with their models is that it's a cone shape. The angle is fixed.
The community models are domed so you can see the effect at different angles.
> Plus they’re working with the open filament database that as established to go with the open source NFC tags they cooperated with other companies on.
Right, but they're steering people back their sources when the community sites have more user-submitted coverage and it's what we've all been using successfully already.
I probably shouldn't have said anything given the topic and the audience. I know they gave some credit, but there's a long history in the 3D printing world of this stuff happening.
Yeah the dome gives you more angles. That may be the problem.
If you’re testing a color mixing algorithm and measuring the output a larger surface at a single angle is probably much easier to measure constantly with colorimeters. If you can’t predict one angle accurately how will you predict others?
> 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?
Is this the future now? Actually interesting content that's barely readable because an LLM turned it into linkedin broetry?
I had to quickly scroll down to see if it was just one part but no it’s all of it. Way too much useless fluff only an LLM would produce.
I find it fascinating that in less than a decade "bro" somehow turned into a very specific meathead or stoner stereotype, to now include everyone from Sam Altman to your local girlboss marketer.
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
> 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.
The INDX has extremely low waste when you switch from one tool head to another. Just a little tiny nugget.
It also supports different sized nozzles in the different heads, like the Prusa XL.
So I suspect having far more people with access to that will help push better uses for that. PrusaSlicer 3 is coming soon with lots of improvements (according to them) but we don’t know what yet. I’m hoping that’s one of em.
Calling it "marketing" is a bit over the top. I understand what you're saying and your disappointment, but I think the issue is really a matter of unrealistic expectations.
The article is by Prusa Research and it's about a recent, novel 3D printing technique. This is very much an area of active research and also development (not to be confused with R&D).
The "FullSpectrum" thing is the name given to the project in which the developer, ratdoux, who is presumably an individual, demonstrated the technique. There's no Orcas in it, either.
https://github.com/ratdoux/OrcaSlicer-FullSpectrum
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.
They’re not limiting you, the community work this is based on doesn’t either. Yeah they’re going to sell sets for easy use but it’s just color mixing. If you know the filament colors, which is what the filament database is for, you’ve got all the info you need.
And you’re only limited in quantity by how many filaments you can load at once. A full INDX setup on a Core One is 8. I thought you could daisy chain Bambu AMS units on their printers, which would let you get your 16 maybe? I’m not very familiar with their offerings.
The newer Bambu printers (H2D and X2D) allow up to 25 colors. One nozzle connected directly to the spool holder, then the other to four 4-spool AMS 2 Pror and 8 single spool high-temp AMS HT
Oh I didn’t know they had 8 spool models. Thanks for replying with the correct details.
I’d hate to see the cost of all that though.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZe5zvMEsp0
https://primed3d.com/
primed3d can do photos onto models. still limited by print resolution, but very cool concept.
Photo reproduction should be the target here...
And it looks like the software support needs work too - the obvious way to do it is being done able to import a jpeg or png to project or wrap onto the surface, a bit like texture maps in video games.
> Photo reproduction should be the target here...
There's an app called Hueforge that produces models that color mix to reproduce photos:
https://shop.thehueforge.com/
It's been around for years. There are databases of filaments with their TD values and color measurements to use. The blog really sells Prusa's attempts to do this with their own PLA, but there's a long history of color mixing in the community with extensive measurements of filaments that anyone interested should check out, too.
That looks/feels a lot like the Cerilica Truism approach (arbitrary mixing).
Will have to keep it in mind for when I get a printer which does nozzle/toolhead switching.
You can use it with any printer if you're willing to swap the filaments manually.
The print file will have pauses inserted at the layer swaps. You manually swap the filaments when it pauses. There are only a few layers and colors so it's not too hard.
I thought Prusa only has a five color print head switcher.
The XL? Yes, but they also have an eight colour nozzle changer.
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.
the simplest is just mixing filaments, like one mixes paint.
That is actually the hardest way to do it, because that's not at all how 3d printing works. 3d printers take strands of plastic (aka "filament"), soften them up to being melty but not melted, and then "extrude" them, like cake frosting onto a surface. As with cake frosting, in order to mix colors, you have to do so before the extrusion step, so you would have to make your own (filament), and the machinery to do so is not cheap.
The thing about first order thinking is that it is very rarely useful, because the actual experts in the field have almost certainly thought of all the things that first order thinkers come up with, and deemed those ideas unworkable for various reasons.
This is a software solution designed to work with existing multi colour printers, so you can’t “just mix” them as this would need additional hardware
>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.
This requires you to control both filaments independently directly at the extruder. Dual direct drive for a single nozzle sounds like an engineering nightmare. The extruder head is going to be huge.
There is also the obvious problem of how to stirr the filament. Printing temperatures aren't hot enough to turn the plastic liquid, they just make it soft enough to drip out the nozzle. This means you can't just feed the filaments at continuos rates, you will have to use a PWM scheme where you extrude the first filament and then the second filament in extremely small discrete increments. That switching will give you the necessary agitation without building a throwaway nozzle that can't be cleaned after a clog.
All of this sounds like it would take at least a year for a well equipped research department to figure out. It's definitely not the simplest solution.
EDIT: https://www.reddit.com/r/ender3v2/comments/ssuw3i/my_crazy_p...
Just the hot end of this extruder costs $70 alone. This is definitely not going to be cheap to do.
Minuteman on youtube has a four extruder single nozzle setup for speed printing. He occasionally uses multiple colors, and they basically don't mix in the nozzle. The cross section of an extrusion looks like a pie chart
You would need special nozzle geometry that encourages mixing, and likely much higher temperatures. And any such mixing geometry will trap some filament. Switching from dark to light colors might require purging with meters of light filament to get all traces of black filament out
Imagine trying to clean that out if it jams.
> 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.
Plastic flow is laminar, where colour mixing requires turbulence. If you make a turbulent nozzle, it's basically impossible to print reliably with it (the pressure used to push filament out of the nozzle is mostly absorbed/redirect into turbulence).
IIRC - True color CMYKW printing is possible without toolchanger, but patents are holding the industry back in this area.
> Your Privacy Matters - Prusa Research value your privacy
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You can read the entire article without that, it explains everything really well.
It’s not like many companies in the world where the video IS the article and they just assume no one reads.
The article looks LLM-ey, which was really off putting for otherwise interesting content.
At least they give you a choice
*are mandated by law to give you a choice
Thanks EUSSR!
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.
This was already available in an OrcaSlicer fork (the one they used as an inspiration) which works with Bambu and Prusa printers.
They're just putting the technique into their branded slicer which should make it easier to access for people who don't like using OrcaSlicer.
From what I've seen in the blog post, this is underselling it a bit. They did improve on the color mixing model, and they're launching filaments to match to make it an end-to-end product.
No this isn't rocket science, and there's definitely a vibrant FOSS community actually pioneering this and that is probably the best place to be on the true frontier, but there is productization effort here. Considering people always advocate for Bambu for "making it easy to buy", Prusa also deserves credit when they try. They certainly get knocked when they don't.
As someone deeply embedded into the FOSS community myself, it's sometimes really annoying when we sabotage the better players. It only helps the worse ones.
Well said. They’re also sharing everything!
PrusaSlicer is used as a base by some others, they’ll get this.
Version 3 is coming soon, they’ve promised good things. I’m curious what shows up.
They also open sourced their color mixing model so if people think it’s better they can switch. And they’re using and adding their stuff to the open print tag database they’ve already cooperated with others on.
This seems like all upside to the community to me.
> They did improve on the color mixing model, and they're launching filaments to match to make it an end-to-end product.
For what it's worth, CMY filament bundles have been available forever and they're well characterized for use with HueForge there are open databases with measured color and TD values. It's great that Prusa is launching their own bundle with their own measurements. I'm just trying to point out that this all exists and has existed for a long time, and there are multiple resources available for it.
> As someone deeply embedded into the FOSS community myself, it's sometimes really annoying when we sabotage the better players
Not trying to sabotage anyone, just trying to help the community with some more information.
The big thing for me is this plus the INDX from Bondtech. And at least for now they are the exclusive partner for that (you can still buy on your own and add to any machine).
INDX already has fast color changes and produces far FAR less waste than an AMS. And that’s what sold me.
Then the coloring mixing stuff started coming from the community. Now you don’t need to buy 30 colors of filament for many uses. Thats a serious upside. And it really benefits from multiple toolheads.
It’s a great confluence of events if you’re in the Prusa ecosystem or just don’t want a Bambu or U1.
> It’s a great confluence of events if you’re in the Prusa ecosystem or just don’t want a Bambu or U1.
I'm excited for INDX too, but like you said it's not a Prusa exclusive system. I think this is great news for people who like to play entirely within the Prusa ecosystem, but I also think it's good to let people know that there are a lot of options outside of that ecosystem.
The Snapmaker U1 is looking good at $899 shipped for a 4-color printer with no waste https://us.snapmaker.com/products/snapmaker-u1-3d-printer
If I wasn’t already in the Prusa ecosystem the U1 is what I’d want. I was jealous of it until INDX was announced.
The INDX upgrade for the Core One costs more than the entire Snapmaker U1 printer. I think of them as targeting different price points.
I guess I've been in 3D printing long enough to not consider myself in anyone's ecosystem. I'm jumped between printers and had multiple printers at home for years and never felt tied to any one ecosystem.
The AMS doesn’t cause the waste, it’s purging the old filament out of the tool head. The H2D and X2D can print two colors with an AMS without needing to purge and the H2C can do 7 without purging. You still need a prime tower when switching tool heads, but that is significantly less than a full purge. But I believe the INDX has the same restriction.
I do agree though that direct feeding each tool head offers the best experience vs the AMS approach.
I’m glad to see Prius’s catching up to Bambu on the color mixing front, Bambu has had CMYK filaments for a long time and has supported color mixing in their slicer for at least a month.
> You still need a prime tower when switching tool heads, but that is significantly less than a full purge. But I believe the INDX has the same restriction.
INDX no longer needs a tower. They say there is 13 milligrams of waste (which they call less than a grain of rice) on each filament change. So a print with 1,000 changes wastes 13 grams of filament. Details:
https://blog.prusa3d.com/prusa-core-one-indx-orders-now-open...
I'd kind of considered printing a rather small thing (seriously, 3x3x3 cm or so) in grey using this technique (using white and black filament). It told me it'd require 140 (== number of layers) filament changes and it'd take 5 hours. (In fairness, if I wanted to print 10 at once it'd probably take a similar time.)
So... honestly it's kinda silly IMO. If I wanted to mix colors in a hacky way I'd just... wait, hold my beer.
at home printing values, is filament waste really such a problem?
I understand OSS people don't like Bambu, but as pure end user, they are great and well put together.
I’d say the level of waste from filament switching is a disaster. But many people are used to it which I find crazy.
It can be multiple times the weight of the actual thing you’re printing. Exactly how bad depends on the model. Here’s an extreme version:
https://www.reddit.com/r/BambuLab/comments/1jluvde/35_g_mode...
It makes one of those little color blobs every single time it changes colors.
Waste is waste, if you end up using 2 to 4 times the filament (depending on the number of colour change) it's still something to account for.
This might seems like a lot but this is the reality of the system.
Well depends on what a problem for you is. But the purging on complex models can be more plastic then the model itself needs.
And it also takes time. The difference can be a few hours vs a day of print time. Plenty of videos online that show case examples.
This looks awesome! Exciting to see what happens in this space.
I’ve always liked the idea of multi-color. But one of the big mental stumbling blocks for me was needing so many colors. I’m not the kind of person who does a lot of 3-D printing and can justify having a wall of different filaments just to put a different colored label on top of a part.
When I first saw this pop-up in the community it was clear this was a fix. No it’s not as good as owning a roll of some specific color, but for a ton of use cases it’s absolutely good enough or maybe even perfect.
It made me want an INDX all over again, now thinking I should buy more heads. I knew they’d jump on, I’m glad it’s this early so it will be available by the time mine arrives.
I’m sure this is a huge boon for them, Snapmaker’s U1, and the new Bambu with more than 2 heads. HUGE value add just through software. Speed difference between those and MMU/AMS is now more important than ever if you want this.
I recently started playing around with my Palette 3 again (on a MK3.5S). It’s an amazing piece of engineering that has a reputation for being frustrating to use. It’s now discontinued but Mosaic still sell spare parts and it’s designed to be stripped down and repaired. Despite the problems, it was built by good engineers - it uses one torx head for all screws (and comes with a driver). The next printer I get will probably be an INDX system though, the future is multitool.
I had written it off, because of how irritating Mosaic’s cloud slicer is. I’ve been pleasantly surprised how well it works with a fork of P2PP (vhspace/p2pp), a post processor for PrusaSlicer that is completely local. All it does is swap out the filament change commands with Palette splice instructions. I fixed a few gcode interpreter bugs that solved the issues I had with bed calibration and extrusion, and even splicing seems quite reliable. I’ve been using it for simple 2-color same-brand prints that would require a lot of manual changing, so not complex but it’s much nicer to use than an MMU2.
I’m excited to try this out for sure.
Xerox had (maybe still has?) some printers with 5 or 6 color toner capacity. CMYK plus you could order special color toner in stock or fully custom mixes (minimum order sizes apply for full custom) but it was great for companies who had logos which could not be exactly represented by CMYK half toning as the spot color toner could be their exact logo color.
I’m sure the same kind of thing would be possible using Prusa’s documented methods with a little extra work.
I worked on a predecessor to that at Xerox at the start of the 1990s. The first was the Xerox 4850 which was the size of 3-4 clothes washers, cost several hundred thousand dollars, and printed at 50 pages per minute in black plus one color (Xerox called it Highlight Color), but no CMY. It was exactly for the logo use case you mention. A big customer was AT&T for printing phone bills with their blue logo on it. It let them replace many millions of pages of letterhead not sold by Xerox with blank paper sold by Xerox. Xerox loved paper phone bills.
I can imagine filament vendors making bundles of filaments with interesting mixes of colors. CMYKW is an obvious one, but there must be other color combinations that will mix in interesting ways.
They also mentioned that they hadn’t started testing sparkle filament, glowing filament, etc. yet.
I bet people somewhere find some very interesting special effects all this could bring with the right odd combinations.
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.
INDX anticipation intensifies!
it's very cool stuff but sorte by definition not 'full-spectrum' :p
That was the name of the original open source project that kicked this off for all printers.
It’s a reference to that.
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.
What’s wrong with not using the community model for their internal tests? I’m sure they have a good reason. It can’t possibly be just NIH.
Yeah they’re focusing on their filaments but that’s their product. It would be weird if they didn’t start there. Plus they’re working with the open filament database that as established to go with the open source NFC tags they cooperated with other companies on. That seems sand too.
Ok they’ve only done PLA so far, is that such a big deal? This is an announcement not a release. They’re still working on all of it.
And it seemed to me like they did a great job giving the community credit in the post. They made it clear it all came from the community, including the entire idea, and they’re building on that and giving back.
> What’s wrong with not using the community model for their internal tests? I’m sure they have a good reason. It can’t possibly be just NIH
The problem with their models is that it's a cone shape. The angle is fixed.
The community models are domed so you can see the effect at different angles.
> Plus they’re working with the open filament database that as established to go with the open source NFC tags they cooperated with other companies on.
Right, but they're steering people back their sources when the community sites have more user-submitted coverage and it's what we've all been using successfully already.
I probably shouldn't have said anything given the topic and the audience. I know they gave some credit, but there's a long history in the 3D printing world of this stuff happening.
Yeah the dome gives you more angles. That may be the problem. If you’re testing a color mixing algorithm and measuring the output a larger surface at a single angle is probably much easier to measure constantly with colorimeters. If you can’t predict one angle accurately how will you predict others?
That’s just a guess. I’m sure there’s a reason.