Last weekend we saw so many cool things at MakerFaire NYC! It was amazing all around, but of course, the 3D printing village was where our hearts and heads were at. So many cool things being made! But what was amazing and great to see were the color filaments, the color everything! So boom: this week on Filament Friday, we’re simply going through how we make color filament here at Filabot!
Colored filament is made by mixing in colored masterbatch pellets with regular base resin. We mix in the colorant by weight: 4% of every pound for PLA base and 2% for every pound of ABS base and mix as evenly as possible!
That’s one way you can directly make colorful filament but the mixing could vary and the results may be lackluster! It’s certainly one technique we use on occasion but luckily we have the Pineapple Mixer from IMS. We’ve made our own attachment to put on our systems and we’re very pleased with the results. It’s simple: the Pineapple blends the color pellets with the base resin pellets right before it comes out of the nozzle on our Filabot EX2 and creates more of an even flow of colorant and filament possibilities.
The more and more we think about the filament we make, the more and more we think about what’s possible and what makers are using all over the world. We definitely recommend the Pineapple if that’s something in your price range, but if not, experimenting, playing around and making your own wacky, colorful variants is a pretty fun time too!
What colors are you extruding? What are you printing?!? We’d love to hear from you!
Best,
The Filabot Team
1 comment
Paul Riedlinger
Which Pineapple mixer do you recommend? Seems there are two listed on the IMS website. Price seems pretty reasonable
Which Pineapple mixer do you recommend? Seems there are two listed on the IMS website. Price seems pretty reasonable