Color is, without a doubt, important in 3D printing. After being sent new filament colors from Toner Plastics, hosts Tom and Tracy Hazzard share their experience printing their newest tones. They have four new colors – Rose Tan, Black Raspberry, Red Delicious, and Teal. These colors are available in PLA and ABS, which you can find on their website. Tom and Tracy note some positive aspects to the 3D filament shop’s tones. These variations are something you, too, can be excited about!
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New Filament Colors from Toner Plastics
We are going to do something different, it’s not your typical Tech Tuesday subject, but we had new filament colors and new filament delivered to us as samples recently, and we want to share the information with you. We had some fun printing these coffee sleeves in new filament colors, so these new filament colors were sent to us from Toner Plastics. We have had them in our show a long time ago, and we talked about filaments. I think it was a year ago. We didn’t even ask for these new colors. They just sent them unsolicited, and we appreciate that. We got some new colors, and we tested it out. We printed a bunch of things with it.
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They have four new filament colors, one of them they call Rose Tan which has a cool color name. It is kind of like a cream and off white color to me. It’s a really rich creamy cream. If any of you have seen it on Instagram or Facebook, this is the color that we used to print the polar bears, in the picture of our daughter Lannea with her polar bear project. Polar bears aren’t pure white evidently, which is a fun fact that we learned in our research project. It actually comes out to be a really nice color for that. It was nice and creamy and off against the white of the cotton balls. It is a really pretty color and I haven’t seen a color like that out there. I really like it.
Rose Tan was the perfect shade for our daughters polar bear school project.
I think this is a much needed color, and one of my favorites of the new colors. The thing about white is that white is not always just white. There are so many flavors of white. The most common ones are the pure snow white and it’s a cool color and a cool temperature-wise. It’s a cold color with normal white.
But with this one, I really like how this cream color looks like. It’s warmer, and it’s an ivory-type color. If you were to print certain types of objects such as figurines that are meant to be more classical looking, they will look more real and less plastic like in a color like this. Sometimes when you print the PLA white, and because of the texture it tends to have a plaster look to it from a distance when you photograph, because it absorbs the light. It doesn’t look like shiny plastic. It looks matte plastic. And you get this sparkly little thing inside the house with the light. Sometimes, it can also have a sort of plaster-like appearance or ceramic appearance in some cases. But this one has a really much more natural look to it. One would certainly get to say, “Oh! What was that made in? That is really an interesting color. I see it is plastic.” These are the usual occurrences in your mind as you are looking at it.
I think it is not an obvious plastic looking color. The other place that I think it could be useful is as a substitute for flesh tone. The flesh tone colors out there are the ugliest colors, I have seen. They are like peach and it is not just a good color tone. It looks unnatural. With this one, it doesn’t looks like everybody’s flesh tone for sure. This doesn’t look unnatural. It has a really natural feel to it, so I think it would be a good substitute for that than those peaches and other things that they have out there. I am a fan of this color, and I need to get one. You definitely need to have some colors.
I have to go with Lannea’s favorite color. They call it Black Raspberry. It is a really good name, as it reminds me of this great Black Raspberry ice cream. This has a quality to it, because it’s not so chromatic that it looks unnaturally pure. It has a little bit of a great tone to the purple. It’s more like an Ona color, which is frozen. I can see why Lannea loves it because it is just perfect. It’s a great color and I think that it is really a good compliment to the bright purples that we have and the hot pinks. We don’t have anything in this realm. I think this new filament colors hit a gap in filament, especially in PLA color offerings today.
Coffee cup sleeve 3D printed in the Red Delicious filament color
My next favorite color is the red one that they produce. They call it Red Delicious, which I think is a derived name. It is also more brick red. The color is itself is unique. It is a unique red. Back a year ago, we were looking at doing some unique filament colors and we shared our color with them. These are similar and they are all in the same kind of targets of different colors that we are after. But they are not exactly the colors that you want in the red, as it is on its way to a Crimson kind of red. I think the issue was when we chose a red color; we chose a more burgundy-ish color which shows the crimson kind of think. We found a gap in that collegiate market which got a lot of burgundy. In all sports, there is burgundy all the time. There really wasn’t a burgundy filament. There wasn’t really a burgundy. That’s what we are going for. I think this is just a little great out. It’s a little brick-like that I have mentioned which is not really bad. I just think it doesn’t fit the gap that we saw in the market place. There is still that gap there. But what I do like is that it hits a different color for the holidays. For the holidays, everything was just like so Coca Cola red. This is a nicer subdued red for that purpose, and I think that could have a really nice look.
I agree, and I think that this is a really good filament that for doing things at the holidays this year coming up, and such. I also think that it is a nice compliment when you put it on that rose tan, because you are going to have this nice kind of things that you might want to put out on your patio, as it has a kind of feel of the tiles or things like that. You could have a kind of interesting thing going on with the colors. I think that would be what I would call a sophisticated color pairing. I think it is well done. We’ve been doing so many businesses things lately where Ross Halleck has been there and doing his wine tasting. He also talks about wine pairings. This was a sophisticated color combo, and I was elevating it with wine to a sophisticated wine pairing. Maybe it’s a stretch, but I like the color combination. I think they’re rich.
From left to right: Black Raspberry, Red Delicious, Teal.
I guess I am having bad 80’s flashbacks with this one. It reminds me of my first car, the Saturn. It has this kind of like Saturn Cayman colors. It’s not even that deep of a teal. It is a blue green teal kind of color. What it is, is that it’s another color that fits on the Elsa color scheme. No kid is going to be fooled that that looks like Elsa because it’s not blue enough. It needed to have more on the Tiffany blue side and it missed the mark there. I think this is going to be their lowest seller out of the other colors. It missed the mark and you can tell. It has a dirty green color to it and that is the problem right there. I just don’t see where that color fits in anywhere in terms of other market niches when we steady that. There really wasn’t a call for that kind of teal.
This is not the exact color that we wanted to do and that we have projected. But the reality is I am in favor of any new colors that fill the gap, so we can just close the loop with these Toner Plastics. They are available in PLA and ABS. You can find them at toner-plastics.com. I don’t know if these new colors are out there on Amazon though. I’m just saying that I know if you want to find a distributor, you will have to go check with Toner Plastics. I don’t even know if Toner Plastics sells them direct. I really don’t know. But they are certainly out there and they are producing it while providing us with a cell sheet of all the filament colors they carry, and these are all on there.
Variation in Colors
As we are talking about new filament colors, I want to give a shout out to our friends at FeelColor. Alessandro, as what we call him in the US, is now based in San Diego and he is bringing their line of colors in the US. We haven’t revealed them yet because they are not available in distribution yet. They have been working on their distribution arrangements and also the logistics in the shipping from Italy because of all of these issues in Italy. But, it bears mentioning because of their color palette. So I went to them 6 weeks ago in a local meet up and Alex was there showing the new colors. He bought the new color card out of all the colors they make. This was the most comprehensive color line. It has such a beautiful shade and steps of shades of colors. It is really fantastic. I am excited to get my hands on more colors.
I am so thrilled that Toner and FeelColor and other companies like that are coming out with more and more new filament colors. They are thinking that we have limited our creativity by that. The idea that we are going to be making more parts in printing multiple pieces even in not using two color machines, I think the idea to have the opportunity to do shades of colors and complimentary colors that are having sophisticated pairings is really going to open up the demonstration of how great 3D printing can be. Because right now, we are seeing the same darn purple, blue, pink, white, red, and black. That doesn’t serve us. I want to remind you that if you are trying to showcase your design work, if you are trying to showcase what your company can do, please stop using the same color because it gets lost in the shuffle of things that are shown on Instagram, Facebook, and other things that are shown online in Google Images, or with pop-ups. When everything pops up, they come in the same blues, whites, grays, and whatever. That is not doing you any marketing service. It also cheapens the effect. I don’t think that the presentation is really putting its best move forward.
The Importance of Color in 3D Printing
Color is indeed very important. If you are into engineering parts, then you could use white or gray and that’s fine. But in the design world, I think the variation is going to come in handy. I think that the place where these colors are going to have a big impact is where these new machines come out, like the metal thing maker. Some of these ones that have their own collection of content that is characters which have branded content, the color is going to be important. That is how you are going to make it unique to you and it will be really special for that. That is where it is going to tip the market to having more girls and young girls. That is where I see the Raspberry colors to be so critical and somebody really needs to do. Also, you really got to get the frozen ice blue right, because I am telling you that if that color is there, Lannea would be picking it every single time.
One of the things to mention is that these colors really got to be printed really well. The quality of the filament really did well. I am very happy with it from that perspective. We have tested some of the new filament colors and they have printed very well. I am curious because we get to see some little pairs coming off the design and gets your printed a coffee sleeve here. Are we getting that with the normal colors? I did like one of the translucent colors and I could also do a basic white. I think that’s the geometry that I created there also the close proximity of some of the pieces to each other, because the coffee sleeve is made of multiple independent parts that are threaded with each other so that its moving parts are collapsible. I think it is a geometry issue. It’s not the worst cleaning up either, because it’s pretty easy to clean up. But the reason why I am mentioning this is that sometimes we have found that it can be that the filament is not melting quite at the right temperature that causes these hairs. Sometimes it happens anyway, and it doesn’t matter what it is. What we always do is we rule it out. We go back to the material. Usually it’s a white basic color, and we print them with translucent all the time. They typically don’t have that problem.
What I want to do is that I want to reach out to the folks because they have been printing the ones in house that they are giving away when you go to request one of these coffee sleeves. I have also seen photographs that they have taken, and there was no evidence of those hairs. I doubt they are putting to get them delivered and cleaning them up. Maybe there setting is a little different. With this, I need to see what is done. I am going to take the pictures ofthese as they are printed, but I will clean them up a little bit when I put my coffee cup, just because I do that.
New Colors Out in the Market
Anyways, there are some new filament colors that are coming out to the market. We should get excited; get back to printing, and trying new things while showcasing our work in different ways. Now, it’s kind of letting me think on what can we print on these colors? It really sounds a lot of fun. I think the idea of combining that cream color and the red color in combination on the two color printer and doing something really nice for the holidays in some new ornament or something. It remind me of why it makes me think this rose tan is going to be really hotter, and this cream color is going to be hot. There is a gap in the market when we’re doing camouflage, when there was not a good kaki. It was like too dirty and you need to have beige and olive to make a camouflage work. This is going to be a great color to use in that camouflage combined, and with the right green and the right brown. They actually do have that and we used an olive green before that we thought was perfect for it, but we just didn’t have the right cream to set it off. This would be a good one to do with that. That would be great to use in that particular camouflage purpose.
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