Some time ago we made Marvin of the week with the Colorful Marvin.
https://www.3dhubs.com/talk/thread/colorful-marvin-awesome
Now we are making this way of printing available to everybody with the Diamond Hotend
The Diamond Hotend is capable of printing with 3 different colors or materials at the same time and can in theory print all colors you can make with Red, Green and Blue through the same nozzle.
The design of the Diamond nozzle ensures a minimum of waste and calibrations and it’s relatively easy to upgrade almost all 3d printers on the market to use this new hotend.
There are many ways of color printing with the Diamond Hotend and we are still finding new ways of making different color effects.
There is the color shift in the horizontal plane which can be made almost instantaneously or gradual.
https://youtu.be/eeKI7_M-sdE
Then there is the color mixing (RGB depending on what color filament you choose to use)
This technique works best with slightly transparent filaments.
https://youtu.be/saryph9t9L8
If you use the same technique but with non transparent filament and a layer height of 0,4mm you vil get a color shifting effect.
https://youtu.be/cr88NUZ6XnY
And then there is the layer overlapping technique where you overlap the color in each layer.
This technique also works best with slightly transparent filaments.
We used this technique on our key hanger.
Then there is the use of waste tower technique where you get sharp color changes.
The waste tower is only 1x3cm (1X1cm for each color) and is an arrear where the Diamond Hotend purges the rest color out of the nozzle with the next color.
This was the technique used to make the Colorful Marvin
https://youtu.be/c8j7GTUl_c8
This is the main techniques of 3D color printing with the Diamond Hotend that we have tried so far but there is also the possibilities of mixing different materials as long at they are in the same temperature range.
Our beta tester Michael Holm has printed with red and black PLA using PVA as a support material.
You can see more for his work on our FB user group:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/diamondhotend
There is probably many more cool printing techniques that we just haven’t thought of yet so we are really excited to see what our users will come up with.
We are in the firm belief that this new hotend will revolutionise 3D color printing and it has gotten great interest from both DIY people and 3D printer manufacturers.
The 1 of April we started a Kickstarter campaign and in just two days we got the project over 100% funded and we are now over 200% funded.
This is of course a huge success for us and it shows that there is a great interest in our Diamond Hotend.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/wr3d/the-diamond-hotend-single-nozzle-multi-color-3d-pr
