Filament color selectors?
I was thinking I could use a particular shade of yellow. And I saw several online color selecting guides for filament.
Does anyone have a particular online selector tool they use/prefer that is reliable?
For example: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6752772
I'd prefer a yellow closer to the original model yellow. I painted this one. It would be awesome to know which filaments out there are approximately this color.
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RE:
There are several places that can create custom colors on demand: colorFabb they only do PLA though. If you send them a white balanced image they can try to match it to their current stock or give you a quote for the exact (actually approximate) color.
RE: Filament color selectors?
There are several places that can create custom colors on demand: colorFabb they only do PLA though. If you send them a white balanced image they can try to match it to their current stock or give you a quote for the exact (actually approximate) color.
A bit pricy but I will bookmark it.
Vehemently against AI. I've seen that film. It ends badly.
RE: Filament color selectors?
https://filamentcolors.xyz/ this one is useful, though each aite has its own limitations
See my GitHub and printables.com for some 3d stuff that you may like.
RE: Filament color selectors?
A side note from a photo buff. You may be aware of color gamut, which is the range of colors a monitor or other device can reproduce. There are lots of colors outside the gamut of a regular RGB monitor and I have run into this with photos of my wife's yarn projects. I used to think it was only super bright colors that were a problem, which they can be, but some ordinary-looking blue-greens and a few others can be impossible to display correctly. So, caveat emptor when it comes to judging colors on your monitor. Many phones have wide-gamut displays, but that only helps if the original image hasn't already been reduced to RGB values.
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I don't expect to get a perfect color match. But I would like to be closer in shade than not. I've seen several enterprising hobbyists out there who make mod parts for existing figures or models and sometimes they get the color matching spot on. Other times, not so much.
I wish there were something similar for model paint. Or even better, enter your model paint color and get filament out. Like, Tamiya Black 30%, Mr. Hobby Red 60%, Mr. Hobby Purple 10% (just as an example, not a real color mix). I don't think it's feasible to make such a calculator.
Vehemently against AI. I've seen that film. It ends badly.
RE: Filament color selectors?
It would be enough for the seller to include the RAL code with the color. Swatches can be found. Of course, only for single-color filament, the big "rainbow" and other colors cannot have any RAL code. But unfortunately, when I asked a local filament seller about this, I was told that manufacturers of cheap filaments (mainly from China) do not disclose the RAL code, and even individual batches of the same color differ quite a bit from each other.
RE: Filament color selectors?
Yes, only a few reputable manufacturers include the RAL code. AFAIK, Prusa doesn't do that. Fillamentum does, although not all their colors are RAL standards, at least you can check this in the specs. of every color of their catalog. Sure there're must be other brands that also include the RAL but not many of them, I guess.
BTW checking color accuracy with wide or SRG monitors won't be of much use if the monitor hasn't been previously calibrated with a spectro or colorimeter of decent quality ... and forget about color accuracy of phones.
RE: Filament color selectors?
I imagine RAL code's or whatever isn't provided because they don't want competing colors.
Vehemently against AI. I've seen that film. It ends badly.
It's almost certain to be because unless you are making huge batches truly accurate colour is hard to reproduce - tiny amounts of some pigments make disproportionate differences and the base colour of the plastic nurdles can also vary. You may be used to getting paint matched - often there is a minimum quantity, sometimes 10 litres, to make a reasonable match feasible - but if a filament only needs 5% of that colour then your minimum order becomes 200kg...
Cheerio,
RE: Filament color selectors?
Here I would like to disagree. Of course, manufacturers make excuses for what you describe, but.. In my professional life, I have dealt with plastic materials, among other things. Most injection molding machines had a coloring unit mounted on the plasticizing cylinder, where the amount of additional dye could be set. And I can assure you that the pieces removed from the mold always had the correct and stable shade. These units were always used when it came to a smaller number of moldings. If it was a production in quantities of tens of thousands of pieces or more, of course, the material with the appropriate shade was ordered from the supplier.
RE: Filament color selectors?
Another approach - I think this company added this after I pestered them for a printed "colour card" that would let me pick filaments that were at least close to what I wanted: https://eurekafilaments.ca/pages/swatch-box
Of course the issue with this is that you're only getting samples for that company. You'd need to get one from all your favourite suppliers to really find the right filament...
Prusa MK4 since Jan 2024, MK4S/MMU3 since Jan 2025, Printables: @MikeB_1505898
RE: Filament color selectors?
Possibly. A bit of Googling tells us that there are about 2500 RAL colours in total of which 216 are "Classic". Our house is painted in RAL 6021 (paint and powder-coat) and I wanted a matching PETG plastic; I took a chance on Prusa's Pistachio Green and was lucky; it's a very close match. But yes it would have been super useful if Prusa published the RAL codes. I don't see that really affects sales/competition, does it?
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Possibly. A bit of Googling tells us that there are about 2500 RAL colours in total of which 216 are "Classic". Our house is painted in RAL 6021 (paint and powder-coat) and I wanted a matching PETG plastic; I took a chance on Prusa's Pistachio Green and was lucky; it's a very close match. But yes it would have been super useful if Prusa published the RAL codes. I don't see that really affects sales/competition, does it?
It does if China mixes an exact match at less than half the price.
I have got four different swatches of just black. All four are different.
Vehemently against AI. I've seen that film. It ends badly.
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L*a*b* color numbers for me. You can now get an actual spectrophotometer on Amazon for 80 bucks! I haven't tried it with filament, but you should be able to print a small flat test coupon and measure it with little trouble.