Feature Request for Prusa Slicer - Gradient Colorchange
I am not sure if this is a thing already, but I have not been able to find it anywhere.
I am in the need of making a color gradient in a print. I am printing out some company logos and there is a color gradient required. I was thinking of printing the logo from the side, and have a color change along the Z-axis. So that it starts with all Green filament, and then changes into Blue filament. I am not sure how it would look, but I was thinking that it should be possible to start by adding lest say 5% of the layers in blue, and then more and more until only 5% is green, and them all blue.
This only make sense to do if you are using the MMU of course, otherwise you would need to change filament a thousand times. 🙂 Ideally I would need three colors, so that I could start in green, change into a light blue, into a dark blue.
Would it be possible to incorporate this into the slicer you think?
RE: Feature Request for Prusa Slicer - Gradient Colorchange
There is something called "set extruder sequence". It changes the colour after a fixed defined layer count or height. There is no option to change that value by colour or height (yet). Maybe you could request this on Github.
At the moment the best solution is to define the change heights by hand.
RE: Feature Request for Prusa Slicer - Gradient Colorchange
This might be of interest based on your description of what you're trying to do...
RE: Feature Request for Prusa Slicer - Gradient Colorchange
Sounds like I need to do some gcode post processing. Wil might end up creating some python program to do this, but it would be better if it was implemented into Slic3r.
Does anyone know where I can find GCODE's to do colorchange in MMU2?
RE: Feature Request for Prusa Slicer - Gradient Colorchange
I played with colourchange on the MMUv2 and the results were not very good...
when you don't want colour bleed, it seems impossible to get away from... as ably demonstrated by this picture of a member's 'Sheep' print
however when you try and force that effect, the results don't seem so effective. 
this hollow cylinder was printed with successively shorter lengths of filament without using a purge tower of any sort, and the bleed from one colour to the next is almost imperceptible
Before you ask for G code. I didn't work out how to force the MMU to run end to end colourchanges without a purge tower, I simply printed a single colour model, and fed pregressively shorter lengths of different colour filament into the extruder by hand. you can see some graduation in colour, but I don't think it's a particularly useful option.
regards Joan
the bottom picture is PLA Filament on a ' washed and dried' textured build plate, no other surface treatment
I try to make safe suggestions,You should understand the context and ensure you are happy that they are safe before attempting to apply my suggestions, what you do, is YOUR responsibility. Location Halifax UK
RE: Feature Request for Prusa Slicer - Gradient Colorchange
Ok.
What I want to do is start with 100% color, and then gradually switch more and more layers with a different color until we are at 0% with the original color. I am think this should happen over 80-100 mm i Z axis. But I would not be possible to just switch filament color manually, as that would make the color change to abrupt.
RE: Feature Request for Prusa Slicer - Gradient Colorchange
Hi B-K,
to achieve what you want, you will need some sort of Mixing hot end such as the Diamond Hot end
https://www.reprap.me/extruder/diamond-hotend
the Prusa Single Extruder is unlikely to be able to meet your needs.
regards Joan
I try to make safe suggestions,You should understand the context and ensure you are happy that they are safe before attempting to apply my suggestions, what you do, is YOUR responsibility. Location Halifax UK
RE: Feature Request for Prusa Slicer - Gradient Colorchange
No. I think you misunderstand what I want.
I just want it to switch between different colors. Here is an example (simplífied) of what I want the extruder to do:
- Extrude the first 100 layers in green
- extrude 1 layer in blue
- extrude 9 layers in green
- extrude 1 layer in blue
- extrude 8 layers in green
- extrude 2 layer in blue
- extrude 7 layers in green
- extrude 3 layer in blue
- extrude 6 layers in green
- extrude 4 layer in blue
- extrude 5 layers in green
- extrude 5 layer in blue
- extrude 4 layers in green
- extrude 5 layer in blue
- extrude 3 layers in green
- extrude 7 layer in blue
- extrude 2 layers in green
- extrude 8 layer in blue
- extrude 1 layers in green
- extrude 9 layer in blue
- extrude 1 layers in green
- extrude 10 layer in blue
That way to the human eye it will look like a gradient color change, but in reality it is just shifting colors pr layer. This is the same way all computer colors work. Then the layer height will determine the resolution.
Of course this should be calculated by the slicer, so that you could just select what area/length in the Z direction you what the gradient to happen over and from and to what extruder/color you want. It should be quite simple to do.
And in this case I see no reason to have a wipe tower. It could just wipe in the object itself, and even in the perimiter. No problem. I think it would just add to the effect.