Hi! newbie here.
I’m following a tutorial book from “Blender 3D Printing Essentials” by G. Fisher. How do you 3d-print in multi-color?
I believe the current “standard” printer can only print in 1 color. Should I separate the artifact into multiple components based on its color?
Thanks!
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There are a few ways to achieve multi color prints with FDM technology. The average printer can only do one color at a time but if you pause the print at a layer that needs to be a different color you can swap out your filament, but for the object you have shown it doesn’t look like you will get the desired result using that method. There are people who have invested into getting multiple hot ends for their printer which means that they can have 2 filaments in the printer at the same time which may be what you are looking for. I know that E3D made this contraption that holds up to 4 different colors but I have yet to see a 4 hot end printer. If it were me having this printed I would separate the different colors into different objects to print in their respective colors and then glue them together once printed, but I am a person with a single hot end printer. 
Now seeing as I have only worked with single hot end printers I cannot say how multi extrusion printer work so try and find one of them on 3D Hubs and see what they say. I hope I could help. 
Enza3D
3
Hi there!
When it comes to multi-color printing, you have a couple options. The first (and most expensive) is going to be full-color sandstone or PolyJet printing. These print a lot like how a normal (2D) desktop printer works. A 2D layer of all different colors is laid down into a bed of powder, than more layers are printed, one on top of the other, until you have a 3D object. While this style of printing is really the only way you get true multi-color, it tends to be really expensive because the machines that can do it are very pricey!
Your next option is to try and find a printer that can extrude multiple colors at once, but that might be difficult with this model. It looks like you have 5 different colors (green, red, grey, yellow, black) and the most extruders I’ve seen on one printer had 4 nozzles. You could split the model in two and print so you have at most 4 colors per sliced section of the model. You’d just have to assemble it post-printing.
The final option you have to break the model into individual components based on the color of the component, as you mentioned above. This may be the most involved (from a modeling standpoint), but I think you’ll be much happier with the results from doing it this way than trying to print multiple colors of filaments at once. Multi-color extruding tends to leave little blobs of filament behind as the heads not being used ooze.
look up jose pursa i2/i3 - original reprap designer web i2 page - he got free download software in g code - where you can pause a print and change filament to new colour then continue the print, hope this helps good for single head logo designs etc
