Frank
Thank you for joining us.
This is episode 32 of Amateur 3D Podcast, a podcast by amateur printers for amateur printers where we share our thoughts and experience.
Our panelists this week are me, Franklin Christensen, and my friends, Andy Cottam, Kevin Buckner, and Chris Weber.
Have you guys had a good week?
Kevin
Yep.
Andy
Yeah, it’s been a good week.
Chris
Sure.
Hey, we’re on the cubed episode.
Andy
The cute?
Frank
Cubed?
Chris
Episode 32.
Andy
Oh, okay.
Chris
Holy moly.
I would catch it.
Okay.
Anyway…
Frank
Except for, there comes a point where you’re thinking in such high level math that sometimes lower level math takes a second to work back in.
Andy
Oh, okay.
Frank
And so my brain got distracted on figuring that out.
Taking care.
Chris
Taking Calculus will do that for you.
Frank
Well, I was helping my wife with some algebra this morning and showed her a method for how calculus works to achieve the same thing.
And she’s like, oh, that’s so much easier.
And it’s like, yes, but you have to understand the concept of what you’re working on now before you can do the more complex, but easier thing later.
Andy
Yeah.
Chris
Yep.
Frank
And that, that’s why we start with arithmetic instead of calculus and elementary school.
Kevin
That’s why you start with addition and subtraction before you go on to multiplication and division.
Frank
Oh, it’s all arithmetic though.
Kevin
Yeah.
I was just saying I was going to break it down even farther than you.
Frank
Well.
Yeah.
Chris
Yeah. Break it down.
Frank
You are the true scientist among us.
So it makes sense that you would be more granular wherever you can.
Kevin
Yeah.
Frank
So Kevin, have you worked on anything this week?
Kevin
Yes.
I haven’t done anything with the resin printer.
I still haven’t gotten those disposable shop towels yet.
But I did make the, the tube rack that I was talking about so that I had two of them printed up to assemble and the first one was not as good.
So the problem I had was that the tabs that I had printed on each of the rack pieces didn’t fit into the holes that I made in the side support pieces.
So the first one I did, I just clipped them off and glued it together.
And then I realized, because I also had trenches that I had printed into the side pieces to give support to the racks or to the rack pieces themselves.
The problem is that I didn’t have anything to keep them straight after I had cut the tabs off.
So the first one I put together was kind of crooked.
Frank
Okay.
Chris
That’s advanced.
Kevin
So then with the second one, so when I first tried to trim down the tabs, I first got out the rotary tool and that was taking forever.
So then I said, okay, this isn’t going to work.
So I got the exacto knife and it was not doing much better.
So then I got the dykes and I used those to clip the tabs off.
And then when I went to put the second one together, I had the dykes in my hand, one hand in the thing and the other and I was like, wait a minute, I could just use these to trim down the tabs.
And so I did that and then they fit in the holes just fine.
And so the second one was much better.
It turned out exactly the way I wanted it to.
So now I just need to go back to the drawing board and make the holes slightly bigger so that the tabs will fit into them without having to do any trimming.
So there was that.
And then I’ve also started printing the dice tower that I had printed on my resin printer.
I’ve scaled it up 130% because my brother-in-law likes to use the dice tower, but he’s got some dice that are just a little too big.
So this is taking it from like a 30 millimeter opening to a 40 millimeter opening, which should be big enough for his dice because they were only like one or two millimeters too big.
So that’s what I’m doing right now.
Andy
Nice.
Frank
Sounds fun.
Chris
Third time’s a charm, man.
Andy
Well, it wouldn’t be 3D printing if you weren’t iterating on your final design a few times.
Chris
So it’s kind of like writing, you know, you’ve got a rough draft, a medium draft and a final draft and sometimes you have a double final draft.
Frank
Well, and there have been several times where I wished it only took three iterations.
So…
Kevin
Yeah, like I was going to say with your first draft, second draft, third draft fight.
The book I published, that’s the ninth draft of it that I published.
Chris
So yeah, printing is just like writing.
Frank
In a lot of ways.
Well, it’s like anything, right?
Chris
Where you get what you really want.
Kevin
Yeah.
Andy
I don’t know if that matters a whole lot, but where you were printing something large, I know I always like to test interference fits.
I first do assemblies on the multiple parts on the computer to make sure you got the holes in the right place at least.
But then rebuild the little interference pieces and then just print them all at once so you can just test fit them by just printing just a little section of the darn thing and you can test fit different pieces or even a lot of times I’ll say, okay, I got a two millimeter by four millimeter tab.
So let’s make three separate sizes of that tab and then print them off, which is going to take five minutes to do and let you slide and play with them to see which one actually is the best fit for the size you use and then you could put that in the final design and at least on big items when you’re going to be wasting a lot of plastic to always do those interference prints too.
Kevin
Yeah, and that’s I think that’s going to do when I get around to redesigning the side, the holes in the side pieces is I’m just going to print what is necessary to do that test fit to make sure it works.
But then another problem that I had was when I set up the build plate the first time there was just a little bit of an elephant foot going on.
So it was after that that I watched a video about a guy who was talking about doing the folded over piece of paper to get the tension right when you’re adjusting your bed height and I had only done a flat piece of paper and so he said if you get it, if you get your nozzle the correct distance from the bed, you’re not going to have any elephants foot.
So that’s what I did the second time and I didn’t see any elephants foot with the first piece of the dice tower that I printed, so I think I’ve got it right now.
Andy
Any adhesion issues?
Kevin
Nope.
Andy
Well, I guess it is one big flat piece so you probably wouldn’t have any adhesion issues on something like that.
Chris
But again, follow our advice if you’re printing stuff that’s going to have less surface area on the plate, do a brim or a raft.
Andy
On those particular ones, I personally will go for squish, you know, but I’ll also chamfer just a little bit on the entire bottom side to compensate for the elephant’s foot.
So that kind of works and allows me to keep the good adhesion too from squishing it into the glass plate.
Kevin
So I’m also printing on a textured surface.
Yeah, you’ve got a totally different situation.
Frank
So all of this is why I actually find benefit in setting my plate to zero and then using the Z offset to choose how far that is because I can fine tune it without having to rebalance my build plate.
Chris
Yeah.
Z offset is a great tool.
Andy
Now, I don’t think I ever retune mine.
I just have it set.
Frank
Yeah, but you do periodically watch it and then dial in your build plate while it’s running, right?
So…
Andy
Yeah, but it’s rarely that I have to ever change anything.
Frank
Well, once it’s set, you don’t need to worry about it.
My point being, you’re using the same process with a manual intervention instead of a programmatic one.
Chris
I use the programmable one.
So when I level my bed, that’s what my machine calls zero, you know, yeah.
And then I just change that in the slicer.
Andy
I would be afraid because with that particular, when you bring it all the way into making contact with the bed, as you can only see the error in one direction as it pulls away.
If it pushes further into the bed, you can’t really see that.
And where I’ve got it to where you can see that sliver of light underneath the head, if that sliver disappears, I know I’m too close, if the sliver is too big, then you know I’m too far away.
Chris
Okay.
Frank
I feel like we got a little far afield.
Kevin
Yeah.
Andy
We all have our own way to do it.
Whatever works for everybody is really what it comes down to.
Frank
It’s the same old debate, right?
Andy
You’re all wrong and I’m right.
So, you know, I think we all subscribe to that same concept.
Frank
You’re welcome to your wrong opinion.
Chris
This is a little bit part of today’s topic because, you know, you’ll be changing plastics and dealing with the way different plastics react and adhere to your printer if you’re changing colors.
Yeah.
Kevin
Yeah.
Frank
Yeah.
Chris
I’ve come across that quite a bit because I’ve been using lots of different colors and just going with that or whatever cheap set I can find on the Amazon.
Frank
Oh, yeah?
Like, what have you been working on, Chris?
Chris
Not this week, but, you know, it’s been over the course of…
Kevin
What have you been working on this week?
Chris
Invitations again.
So, yes, I’ve been using GIMP and the wife has not been particularly happy or satisfied with any of the stuff I’ve come up with.
And she’s going into emergency mode where she’s like, well, I’ve got to get these things printed and sent.
And I’m like, I just gave you like three different ones you can use.
“I don’t like those.”
Well, that’s your problem anyway.
Andy
Are these just straight images you’re doing on paper for those particular ones?
Chris
Yeah.
Well, the thing is, they’re JPGs.
So I’m exporting them as JPGs so that she can throw them into Word and print them however she wants them.
And then if we really want, we can just text them to some people too.
So.
Chris
Okay.
Have you printed anything this week?
Chris
With the bubble jet printer.
Andy
Oh, okay.
Frank
So, Chris…
Chris
So my printer sat idle this week.
Frank
Chris, you were talking about using GIMP and all of that stuff and all it did was make me think, wouldn’t it be fun to get a setup with an arbor press and you 3D print what you’re putting on your documents, but it’s like an ink, a traditional media press where you’re just running off these invitations with a…
Chris
Kind of like a shirt screen or like the old fashioned original…
Frank
Newspaper press, yes.
Chris
Newspaper press, yeah.
Frank
I think it’d be fun.
And then you 3D print what you’re putting on there.
Andy
You know, when you first said that, the first thing that came to my mind that you were going with is doing custom embossing with a 3D printed pieces inside of an arbor press.
That way you can emboss the card.
Frank
You could do that too.
You could do that too, just all the way across.
I think that’d be fun.
Kevin
I think I’m just 3D printing invitations with like little 3D cards that you can clip apart and whatnot.
Andy
Hey, there you go.
Frank
I think that’s what Chris has been trying to do and just hasn’t been working according to his wife’s expectations.
Chris
Yeah, no, actually, I don’t have a whole lot of plastic at the moment.
You know, I’ve got little bits and pieces of a few different kinds, but Easter kind of, yeah, between Christmas and Easter, I don’t have a lot of different kinds of plastic left.
Andy
Really?
Frank
That’s fair.
Chris
Yeah.
Andy
That happens.
Use all the colorful stuff up there in that time.
Chris
Yep.
You have to be able to check and test what different colors plastic do with your printer.
Some of them you do have to change the Z offset for better adhesion.
Some of them you do have to change the printer width a little bit.
Some of them you have to change the temperature.
Some of them you have to change all of the above.
You know, so you have to kind of test, because like I got some red stuff and I’ve got some white stuff and they’re from the exact same company and they’re the exact same stuff, but they’re different colors.
So you think the settings would work the same for both of them and they don’t.
Kevin
That is odd.
Chris
Yeah.
Andy
It is.
Chris
It could just be that I’m buying the cheap stuff.
Frank
That could be.
Andy
I’ve heard of other people complaining about that similar problem too.
I’ve never really experienced it on my own, but I’ve heard from some of the other podcasts I listened to about 3D printing complaining about that too.
So I don’t think you’re experiencing anything weird or your experience is being weird because it’s the cheaper stuff.
I don’t think either of those apply.
I think it’s just the nature of buying filament.
Chris
That’s where, you know, Cura’s presets come in kind of handy is I can, I can, I can fine tune said color and type and then I save that in Cura’s preset.
And so whenever I go back to that color, I can just go click the preset and I say, okay, it was this brand red.
Gotcha.
Andy
That’s convenient.
Yeah.
That’s good.
Chris
So if you do use Cura, take advantage of that.
Frank
Yeah.
With my own filament, I have basically stuck with the same vendor because they seem to be pretty common across all the colors and all that.
So it has required minimal adjustment on my part whenever I change.
I still obviously, I’ll go through and print the benchy and all that stuff to be sure, but it’s been nice that way.
Andy
I hear you.
I stick with the same vendor too.
Most of the time, every once in a while, you’ll go to, oh, I need some of this and you’ll go look and it’s like, ah, it’s a stupid price right now.
Okay.
I guess I’m getting a real of weird stuff until the price comes back down to reasonable or whatnot.
Frank
Either that or the, because they have such tight tolerances, they don’t mess with stuff that is a little more experimental and they just don’t carry what you’re looking for.
So you have to look with another vendor and roll dice.
Chris
And yeah, and because of the various requests from the child and the wife, I end up buying a lot of those sets that are like four or five different colors in half, half kilogram reels instead of the full two kilogram reels.
So…
Frank
There you go.
Kevin
You get two kilogram reels.
Where do you find those?
Andy
I think he’s meaning one kilogram reels, but used to two pounds.
Kevin
Okay.
That makes sense.
Chris
All right.
Yeah.
One kilogram.
Andy
I’ve done that same exact error we’re talking about filaments.
So because the brain is operating on SAE and I’m trying to force metric into it.
So 2.2 kilogram reels, we’ll figure out what you’re talking about.
You’re okay.
Frank
So Andy, have you worked on anything this week?
I have.
I have.
Oh, you want, you want to hear about it?
Oh, okay.
Frank
Oh, I thought I’m doing a podcast where we talk to our own projects.
I guess I’m in the wrong place.
I can shut everything down and go away if you like.
Andy
I’m quite excited with some of my progress that I found.
I figured out with my phone case why my printer prints weird geometry when I’ve tried to increase its bed size.
And that’s because there’s two places I need to change the bed size in the source code.
And I did not know that.
And that…
Frank
That doesn’t make any sense to me.
That’s the embodiment of failure to globalize some settings.
Andy
Yeah.
I don’t know.
And it could be, I mean, it is Marlin 2.0 that I’m using.
I think I’ve got this straight version, but I might have something that somebody else has played with or something, but either way, I got it working and I’m ecstatic about that.
I was able to increase my bed size and have it work like normal.
I started off by making a 0.6 inch thick box around the entire build area that my phone case would take and with 0.2 layers or 0.2 millimeters thick.
So it was like just one single layer print job of the outside pattern of the phone.
And I was able to print that to zero it in to make sure the printer wasn’t crashing because I was going outside of the way it could work.
And that way too, after it’s done, I could go in and measure it to see if I’m getting any weird geometry like I was last time.
And I’m not.
And I didn’t.
And so I tried printing it.
And if you guys can look at this sucker, it is pretty, look how shiny that print job.
Frank
You did share a picture before too.
Chris
I thought that was the face of your phone for a second.
Holy crap.
Andy
Nope.
That’s the print job itself.
It just came out gorgeous,
Frank
That is pretty.
Kevin
That is beautiful.
Andy
But I also took your guys’s recommendations on this and was very careful with my layer lines.
This phone case that I printed, I like the vertical flip cases, but I like the ones that flip up, not the ones that flip down.
And so that’s why I was kind of so anal about making my own.
I’ve always taken the ones that flip down like you can buy off Amazon and whatnot, and then cutting out the camera hole so I can use the case upside down, essentially.
But the ones that flip vertically means the footprint of the case for a normal size phone is huge.
This was 360 millimeters, I think it was long.
And I’m trying to print that on a 300 by 300 millimeter bed.
So that’s why we’re, you know, pushing it to get outside of those build areas.
But the living hinge on this thing here, I took Frank’s recommendations and was very careful in the layer line direction.
In fact, I completely customized the layer line direction.
You guys can see that if you can see the layer lines, they’re vertical here.
And then when you look at the hinge, they’re going at 45 degrees.
And then the layer underneath this 45 degrees is 45 in the other direction.
Chris
Right.
Nice.
Andy
So three layers that made the hinge was a straight vertical and then 45 one way and 45 the other way.
So there’s still, so there’s no layers running along the hinge.
They’re all running across the hinge.
Frank
And to be fair, if I, I believe I remember Chris voicing that idea first.
Andy
Oh, was it him?
Of course it was Chris.
He’s the one that comes up with all the good ones.
Frank
Credit where it’s due, I’m pretty sure that was Chris’s idea first.
Andy
Yeah.
But so it does that 45 degree up until the very last layer, you can see that it goes back to being vertical again.
So that way I got the appearance that I like with the, you know, mix of the 45 degrees that Chris recommended here for strength.
And I also made the shell layer lines for the case quite thick to stop from tearing the living hinge.
Frank
That looks like a sewn seam the way that came out.
It looks like when you’re doing like with leather or cloth or something, you roll the piece in and then you sew the edge together.
So it looks sharp and clean.
That’s what it looks like.
Chris
Speaking of iteration learning.
Andy
Yeah.
No kidding.
This took quite, quite a bit.
While I was playing with my printer, I did play with a little bit of my bed crashes.
And I still got a lot of area left that I can print on the bed.
Excuse me.
So the way the head sits on my bed with my new carriage is further back, is closer to the gantry than the original design.
And so that, that mean I got a little bit more ways I could push the bed at its max before I start hitting the screws that hold onto my bed.
Frank
And that’s Y distance that you have a little more of them.
Andy
Yeah.
Yeah.
And, and where it crashes is just where one of the piece of aluminum extrusion or not all the extrusions, but the aluminum caps that holds the, the pulley for the belt that drives the Y is nice and sloped up a little bit nice and pretty like, and it’s crashing into that slope.
And so this will be the first time I’m going to do something like this, but I’m going to take a dremel to that and I’m going to cut a little bit of that out because I can get almost another full centimeter, another 10 millimeters.
If that slope was just, if I cut maybe three millimeters off of that aluminum, that aluminum piece.
Frank
And it doesn’t need to be super strong to hold the pulley because you’re not putting a ton of force on it.
So.
Andy
Yeah.
And the whole piece is like 25 millimeters tall and I’m taking about three millimeters off the top of that.
So I’m not affecting any of the, the way it was designed or whatnot, but that will stop my bed from crashing and I can pull it a little bit further, I could pull that extra 10 millimeters outside of that area for when I do want to do larger things like this.
So I’m going to wind…
Chris
adjustments without changing functionality.
Andy
Yeah.
Yeah.
And then I’ll be able to have it zeroed in proper and then anytime I want to print something really large, I only have to tell Cura that my bed is bigger than 300 by 300 and then readjust my zero offsets on the X and Y and those are the only two settings I’d have to do to go from, you know, a 300 by 300, which is the good print area to printing outside of that where I can get the 310 by, I might be able to get like 315 out of it.
So.
Frank
Cool.
Andy
But, but that’s it.
I got a phone case that finally worked and it came out beautiful and this is all made out of TPU and it’s nice and flexible and I’m very…
Chris
I’m a little disappointed.
We haven’t got to see your adventures and gluing TPU together.
Andy
Yeah.
I never, I haven’t even opened the bottle of the Tetra hydro cordi… stuff
Frank
I thought that you tested at least once.
Andy
Well, no, I haven’t used it since I’ve got you and I haven’t used it for any real projects at all.
Frank
Gotcha.
Andy
So…
Frank
fair.
Andy
But, but we’ll have to see it is nice to have it done in just one piece on the phone case than having it done in two, but…
Frank
As it was designed to do.
Chris
Agree.
Frank
That’s how you designed it.
Chris
If you can print something in one piece, please do it.
Andy
Yeah.
Frank
Well, it’s nice to have the final product reflect what you envisioned in the first place rather than having to find a way to make it work.
Andy
Yeah.
Chris
Yeah.
Andy
That’s very true.
Chris
Agreed.
Andy
But as far as 3D printing goes, that was, that was fairly it.
I’ve done a couple more jobs for my son’s play, they asked me to print a couple other things.
They asked the wife to have a couple other things and so we ran those off, but that was only two items.
Frank
Victims of your own success.
Andy
Yeah.
Chris
But do you, do you get the fancy multicolored wife hands when she’s been painting things like my wife does or?
Andy
The multicolored.
What?
Chris
The multicolored hands.
Andy
Oh. Hands?
From, like, touching paint or something?
Frank
As in she likes to finger paint as much as brush paint?
Chris
The amazing, the amazing, technicolored wife hands.
Andy
No, I actually, I haven’t noticed any of that, to be honest.
I’m sure it happens, but not that I’ve noticed.
As far as printing goes, that was pretty much it.
But when it comes to 3D modeling this last week, I got my scanner.
I got the mole scanner and have been playing with that.
I put about a half hour of play into it and um…
Frank
got the rudiments down then.
Andy
Kind of.
I got some of it down.
It’s, it’s not a just works kind of thing.
Frank
It’s not like a camera.
Andy
I bought the cheaper one without a turntable and me handling the scanner by hand.
It’s really easy for the scanner to get misaligned.
Frank
Okay.
Andy
And so that’s kind of the problem I’m fighting out.
I don’t want anybody to, to think that it’s a bad idea to get or whatnot.
I still don’t know how to use it.
So, you know, I, I’m sure it could operate, you know, you see in the commercials for it of people just using it really smoothly and easily by hand and it’s working fine.
And for me, it seems to get off track, but.
Chris
Well, it’s like the ads for 3D printers.
You see people printing all these nice, beautiful, huge objects when really there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of figuring out and, ah, my Z is off, my Z is off like at the very, very top of my build.
Andy
Yeah.
Frank
So…
Andy
So, I mean, there’s a lot of learning that needs to be done, but I have played with it a little bit.
I wound up ordering a turntable for it so that I could try a more automated kind of way of scanning items that seems to work a lot better for people.
Chris
I’d let you borrow my turntable, but I like using my records.
Andy
Yeah.
My wife wouldn’t let me touch hers for this either.
Plus, it may move way too fast.
Frank
But so set it on the 33 RPM instead of the 45.
So you talking about this just makes me think, why aren’t you 3D printing your way into a solution there, Andy?
Andy
Most of it was time constraints.
I don’t have a lot of time to play with the printer and I could have done that.
I’ve got everything to do it.
It would probably be maybe a two hour long project to do, but because I’ve got some geared down stepper motors that would drive things perfectly and stuff like that.
But when you can just buy a, a simple battery operated turntable off Amazon for like six bucks.
I’m just going to do that.
Frank
Yeah.
Chris
If you can buy your way out of it for less than 20 bucks, it is worth your time.
Yeah.
Andy
Yeah.
Yeah.
So I just went that route.
Frank
That sounds like something the minimalists would say.
Andy
Yeah.
I definitely could have, but I just don’t have a lot of time to sit down and design.
The stepper motor I’d use means I’d have to use a microcontroller to control it.
I’d have to code that.
And so there’d be a little bit more to it than just the printing itself and getting it done.
Frank
And that’s assuming you don’t want to go the direction of a hand crank.
Andy
Yeah.
Yeah.
That’s true.
But we’ll see how it goes.
I’m still playing with it.
I would love to be able to give you guys a wonderful update and how awesome it is.
But at this moment, I can’t really do that, but it still looks like it’s got that potential.
But it’s neat watching it create the point cloud.
I’ll give it that as with all the work and photogrammetry I’ve done and how much you struggle creating a decent point cloud, it is amazing how fast this works and how accurate it seems to be when it does function well.
So the software is really good at merging separate point clouds together so you can take multiple scans to make one item.
Chris
That’s awesome.
Andy
Yeah, I think I just need more time with it.
Chris
When we were first looking at it, I was looking at the resolution and the reliability it was rated for.
And I’m like, wow, that is exactly the same as this professional grade hexagon arm.
I was like, wow, we are getting into affordability for a lot of the high resolution stuff.
It’s kind of nice.
Andy
Yeah.
Yeah.
I still don’t know what I’m going to use it for.
I think if you are copying a component that is like a mechanical that’s geometrical, it’s definitely much better to measure and just recreate it from scratch than it is to try to scan something in that you want to replicate.
But things like figurines or something like that might be more fun to do with the scanner.
I don’t know its placement yet.
In my head, a great example would be, let’s say I got to replace a knob on the stove.
I would absolutely love to sit and scan really quickly where the knob goes with the shank and all that other kind of stuff, then bring that model into the CAD software and use that for interference fits with my 3D part that I’m creating.
Chris
I was actually just thinking the exact same thing except with my glasses lenses.
I want to print a new pair of glasses that will take the lenses from my last pair or something like that.
Andy
You know, that’s actually a really great example because the shape of your lenses cut, it’s something that would be really hard to measure exactly how they got that angle.
It would be almost easier to just do it off of a picture or like something like this modeling it.
That would turn out really well.
Frank
And that’s the real value of the scanner is being able to capture complex geometries.
Chris
Being able to work and program into it. yeah.
Frank
And then be enabled just because it would be so involved to measure and redesign.
Andy
Yeah, exactly.
So still experimenting, I’m definitely going to play with it a little bit this weekend here.
See if I can’t get it to work a little bit better.
My turntable should be showing up from Amazon sometimes today too.
So I’m hoping putting stuff on a turntable will get me by on the getting misaligned so easily part while I learn to operate it properly where this probably isn’t an issue.
I just haven’t played with it enough to know how to do it right.
Frank
Okay.
I do, I do have an idea that I want to insert in your brain and then we can go on from there.
Andy
Okay.
Frank
Mount the scanner on your drone.
Andy
That would be fun.
The working range of the scanner though is the problem.
If I’m doing like when I took and made a model of my property, photogrammetry with the drone is going to be where that’s going to be best at.
That kind of scale is not going to be done with the little hand scanner.
I think the hand scanner itself has to be between like a foot and a half and three feet away from the surface you’re scanning.
And so that’s the only area that it’s actually recording a point cloud in.
I think it works a little bit like the way the PlayStation does it’s looking at a room, I think.
I don’t know exactly how it works, but there is a small window of distance in it that it can measure.
Frank
And I know the PlayStation and even the, what’s the Google one?
I know.
Anyway, I know that they do something like that for sure so that you can set boundaries and not run into the couch or the coffee table or whatever.
Andy
Yeah.
We do like an IR flash and then they only record for a certain window of time for the reflection and the more that gets reflect tells you the distance and stuff.
So I suspect that’s how it works.
I don’t know for sure.
Chris
Sort of.
So it’s a lot like that laser scanner I was telling you except more and uses infrared instead of blue light.
So it’s got a certain reflection range and area because of where the sensor is set back versus where the IR lights are pointed.
Does that make sense?
Andy
Okay.
Yeah, it does.
Actually it does.
Chris
It’s like using your glasses.
You’ve got a certain focal point that you can use.
Andy
That explains why the scanners got the cameras like all in one line or something.
And all the scanners you see often have the two lenses apart from each other too.
Like it’s doing.
Chris
Yeah.
Frank
And that’s how they film with 3D for 3D.
We call it 3D.
But when you go to a movie and that sort of thing is presented in 3D, they get those perspectives by having, by recording from 3 perspectives.
And then your glasses will filter out specific light frequencies.
Chris
The polarized stuff, yeah.
Frank
Right.
So one eye sees from the left camera and the other eye sees from the right camera.
And if you take it, the camera or the lens is off, it looks all blurry because they’re all being presented at the same time.
Chris
Yep.
Andy
That makes sense.
So we’re doing some neat stuff and I’m going to play with it a little bit more.
And hopefully our next podcast, I’ll would have played with it for another half hour because I’ve got tons of time to do this stuff and I’ll have a little bit more detail.
Chris
Well, you bought it at the right time of year.
Andy
What’s that?
Chris
So you seem to have bought it at the right time of year.
Andy
Yeah.
No kidding.
Yeah, right when things get really busy.
But have you been working on, Frank?
Frank
Well, this week, I can’t remember what I started with.
I totally forgot.
But I finished up this week by working on some little containers for my toolbox.
Over the years, I’ve bought a bunch of little packets of, you know, small screws and nuts and bolts and that sort of thing.
And they were just cluttering up my toolbox.
So I printed off, these are 50 millimeters tall or 30 millimeters in diameter.
These little containers that are threaded, I couldn’t think of doing this a week ago.
Anyway, so the lid is threaded on and then it fits and organizes all of the small stuff on the side of my little toolbox.
Probably my favorite aspect of it all was I created, I’m calling them jars for lack of a better word.
I knurled the sides of the jars for the whole length.
So you can grip the lid and the jar itself to get it apart because they’re so small.
Chris
Yeah.
So I’ve seen very similar stuff where people have made something like that, but then they had a little thing on the end for an O-ring so that you’d have a watertight container for camping or whatever.
But it looks a lot like those.
Pretty cool.
Frank
I was actually pretty happy with it too.
It was a fun little project to figure out.
Andy
They came out looking really good.
The gnarling looks very proper on it.
When you go to use it, does it feel as good as it looks like it should?
Frank
Yeah.
And it’s not knurled like a, your normal knurled like nut or something like that that’s got where it comes to a point.
They’ve got the flat tops.
But even because my tolerances were so tight on the threads, I had to play with it a little while to wear it down a little.
And it was chewing up my hand with four of them, just overcoming the little bit of friction and backing off on it.
So in that respect, they are doing the job that it was designed to, even though it’s not a tighter geometry.
Andy
Nice.
Frank
Sharper.
Chris
Pretty gnarly, dude.
Frank
Yeah.
Gnarly.
Kevin
Knurly.
Frank
Gnarly.
Chris
Dude.
Kevin
Well, it’s knurled, not gnarled.
So it’s knurly.
Andy
There you go.
Well, that’s awesome.
Frank
I think we switched somewhere in the middle.
I kept saying gnarled and you guys were saying knurled and whatever.
Kevin
You were saying knurled and you were saying gnarled.
Andy
Which one’s right?
Kevin
Knurled.
Andy
Nurled.
Nurled.
That word no longer makes sense to me.
Kevin
It is weird, weird.
It’s an over said knurl, knurled.
Andy
Well, good deal.
Frank
One of those times when an engineer had a great idea and nobody understood what they were talking about, and that is why engineers use basic terminology to describe everything.
Andy
There you go.
Frank
Anyway, so we did have a topic today and it is
Chris
We covered it a little bit already.
Frank
A little bit.
Yes.
You referenced it.
It’s colors.
Pretty, pretty colors.
Chris
Me and my amazing Technicolor printer.
Frank
Wwell.
Kevin
That’s me.
Frank
I think that first the idea came from Kevin being able to customize his colors, whereas we’re the rest of us are kind of bound by whatever filament we’re using.
Chris
Although Kevin did discover that even though he can customize his colors, he has to stick with the same color on the resin printer.
Kkevin
Well, I don’t really have to stick with the same color.
I just have to be a little bit more in control of how much of a particular color of resin I put in the vat because I was able to have some pretty stark transitions without actually taking any resin out.
It was when I took resin out that I started having printing issues.
Frank
Okay.
Kevin
And what I did was I put just a little bit of the yellow in and then I mixed in some red and it mixed with the orange to make the orange and then it.
Frank
Right.
Mixed with the yellow to make the orange.
Chris
Yeah.
Kevin
Yeah.
Yeah.
And then when that was almost gone, I put in more red in that so it had a pretty good stark transition there.
Chris
Cool.
Anyway, I had a quick idea.
Remember how you were talking about adding glitter to your print and it didn’t work because all the glitter settled?
Kevin
Yeah.
Chris
Do you have space in your printing vat to put maybe like a four centimeters cubed pump in there with a little wire trailing out?
Kevin
No.
I might have space for like a little two millimeter inner diameter tube to go into it.
Frank
It could do something like Andy’s tank pump
Chris
where it’s outside.
Frank
Where the motor is outside.
Yeah.
Andy
What about a stirring device in a very thin small magnet?
Like what..
Kevin
Yeah.
But you can’t have a stirring device between the build plate and the FEP because then the model has to make contact with the FEP so that the light can cure it.
Andy
Good point.
Good point.
Chris
Yeah.
I was just wondering if there was any sort of extra space like maybe in the corner or something.
But yeah.
If you could put a stick of tube down the corner of it to rotate it like one on one end that pushes out and one on one end that sucks it in, that way you can kind of keep it flowing and rotated.
That would keep the glitter moving through.
I would think maybe it was a thought.
I’ll kind of complicate it just to add some glitter.
But that would be in the world to my kid though.
Frank
So on the subject of color though, seems to me that your transitions were most easy when you could move to a, looking at the color wheel, move to a color that was next to the one that was already in there.
Kevin
Yes.
Yes.
And that’s why I didn’t run into problems with the print quality until I needed to go from, no, I shouldn’t have even had problems going from red to blue.
I think it was just that I had already made, I had an idea for the shade of purple I wanted and there was already too much red in the vat for what I was going to do.
And so I said, okay, I need to get some of this red out so that I can put the purple in.
And that’s where I started running into issues.
Frank
Gotcha.
Chris
Yeah.
Frank
Instead of, well, and if you were going the opposite direction, it would be difficult to come back towards the blue too quickly.
Kevin
So yeah.
And so, but by then I was trying to go backwards.
And so I only had a few blue spots that next to the purple actually looked more gray than anything because it’s such a light shade of blue.
Frank
Well, that’s fun.
Chris
Here’s me picturing Kevin.
I put it in the vat until it dies.
Frank
Well, okay.
So color theory has been kind of interesting to me anyway.
Now most of what I have picked up and learned has been in drawing class where it touches against it, but because we’re dealing mostly with graphite or charcoal, it doesn’t really get a lot of attention.
But I’ve always found it interesting like with, if you’re looking at the color wheel, things like colors that are on opposite sides of the wheel will stand out against each other.
Kevin
Yes.
Frank
Wheras colors that are next to each other kind of blend more than I guess standing out.
kevin
Right.
Frank
But they’re also easier to transition between like we already said before.
So I guess at this point it was really more a matter of, for lack of a better word, you had too much momentum in the other direction before you tried to come back towards the blue.
Kevin
Yeah.
Frank
Huh.
Chris
Redshift.
Well.
That too.
Chris
His printer redshifted and he was finally able to grab it.
Frank
Um, yeah, when, when it goes slower, it’s moving away.
Um, okay.
So I, I, I am not formulating a good question for that.
Maybe we’ll come back on it.
Hey, Chris, you successfully printed with a binary colored filament and it was showing properly on the finished product where one color was the right color, where they were different colors on each side.
Chris
Yeah.
Frank
How did that work out for you?
Chris
So it seems to be a kind of a rare sort of thing because I’ve used the, I’ve used the bicolor filament.
So it’s, I’m going to call it a bicolor filament because that’s what it is.
It’s one color on one side of the filament, one color on the other.
And if you put it into your, uh, print, print head with one color on one side and one color on the other side, the hope is that it stays that way for the whole print.
That is not necessarily the case.
And so I’ve had more prints than not.
Actually, um, the filament rotates just a little bit…
Frank
Where you end up with a blend of the two I’m assuming.
Chris
Yeah.
So the, the, the, the, it’s still a bicolor and your print ends up looking bicolored, but it just kind of rotates a little bit up the print.
Okay.
That makes sense.
But I did, I did have one successful print where one side was one color and one side was the other color.
And that was on that little link, link shaped pen cup.
Frank
Okay.
And it makes sense to me as I think about it, that that would be more often the case where the colors shift and rotate just because they were spun onto the spool and the tensions settled that way.
So when they straighten out again, they would twist as they went down into the, uh, the hot end, right?
Chris
Yeah.
So they twist a little bit because it’s spooled up and, um, because my head, the, my printer head is the thing pulling the spool.
So that tension there, when it gets released a little bit because the, the spool turns a little bit or something will allow that to rotate a little bit in the print head as that happens.
Frank
Okay.
Andy
Okay.
Chris
Yeah.
Frank
So how serious is the shift?
Is it like you said there’s still…
Chris
It depends on how tall the print is cause like sometimes I had a couple of prints cause I, I think I’ve only like printed four or five things with this, with my colored filament and, um, on all but the one, uh, it, um, it rotated at least 45 degrees at least from the, from the bottom of the print to the top of the print.
Frank
Oh, and sorry, how tall was that print?
Chris
Uh, I would say three, three to four inches somewhere.
Frank
Oh, that’s not seriously bad that, that I think that that would be easy to present as a feature of the, the printing process as anything.
Andy
Yeah.
Chris
I mean, the prints, the prints didn’t look bad.
Frank
You talk about a shift and you’re talking about a shift and my brain thinks, you know, 45 degrees over five millimeters would be almost tragic in my mind.
But if it’s a gradual shift like that, then…
Chris
You almost don’t notice it.
Yeah.
Kevin
Yeah.
Frank
I mean, maybe still not desirable, but not like…
Andy
I wonder if there’s any device that you can build that would, um, you could run the filament through that would force it to rotate a particular direction while it watched the colors on the filament.
So it would keep them in the same orientation through the whole print.
Chris
Um…
Frank
I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a way to do that.
I would start worrying about tensions on the spool.
Andy
Right.
That’s true.
Well, if it’s only twist in, you know, 45 degrees for the course of the whole print, then that’s not a lot.
Frank
It probably wouldn’t be a ton.
Yeah.
Andy
Yeah.
But that way, if you wanted something really particular with the way the color changing went, you know, that you need to be able to get what you wanted, I don’t know how how, how much babysitting it would take to do it manually by hand, you know, other than sitting there through the whole print process, which would be ridiculous to do.
Chris
Yeah.
I think if anything, maybe you just want to get yourself one of those cheap little, uh, Wi-Fi cameras and take it next to your printer and then you can go do your thing and then just, you know, pop your phone open and check it occasionally as the print progresses.
Frank
Or just never print anything taller than never print anything taller.
Than a hundred millimeters tall and 50 wide.
Andy
There you go.
Frank
Sorry, Kevin, I did just realize that I just kind of moved on.
Did you have anything else you wanted to talk about with the color?
Kevin
Not particularly.
I did get some of this bicolored filament.
I was going to print this dice tower in, but they came on 200 gram spools and each piece of this, uh, tower is a, is about a hundred grams.
So I’d get like two pieces per thing and it’s, it’s made up of several pieces.
So instead, I think I’m just going to print the tower in black and then have the base with the fancy archway fencing around it be, uh, be in the fancy colors.
Frank
I could work too.
Andy
That sounds good.
Frank
What colors?
Just for my mental image.
Kevin
Uh, so I was going to use the, um, silk red and blue for it.
Frank
Ooh
Andy
Okay.
Chris
So I came across something that you can actually, that you are actually able to do, Kevin, none of us can, none of us, none of us can.
Um, so what it is, a guy used, used his FDM printer to print bigger stuff, but then he took a paintbrush and then, and, and colored resin and, uh, basically took out the, took out the lines and things on his FDM printed object, um, to…
Andy
With the colored resin…
Chris
with colored resin and then cured it in his curing station so that it was actually all smooth and colored and it was like he painted it, but it’s actually imbued in the resin.
So yeah.
Kevin
That’s cool.
Chris
Yeah.
Andy
So that would be cool.
Chris
Something you can try.
I’ll see if I can find the YouTube link it again and send it to you.
Frank
Hybrid FDM and that would be interesting to try.
Kevin
That was an idea I had for the end pieces also was, um, printing the rack pieces with the grids and everything on the FDM and then printing the end pieces for the tube rack on the resin printer.
Uh, I haven’t tried that yet, but I did have that idea.
That could be interesting to see how that works.
Andy
Yeah, it would be neat.
Frank
Conceivably when it’s all printed to spec, it should all fit together just fine.
Right.
Kevin
Right.
Frank
Or with a minimum of, uh, intervention on your part.
Kevin
right, “should” being the operative word.
Andy
Should.
Frank
Yeah.
Kevin
Frank’s favorite word.
Frank
Now you’re coming to understand why I hate the word so much.
I use it far too often
Kevin
right?
Andy
That would be really neat to, to be able to do though, like, especially if it was something as simple as just taking your FDM part and dipping it in resin and then throw it in the cure station.
And Wallah! there go your layer lines, that would be an awesome trick.
Kevin
Yeah.
Frank
Beats the hell out of smoothing, whether chemical or, uh, the one that you alluded to a while ago, the, uh, the paint-sand-paint.
Andy
Yeah.
But that’s what, that’s what I use for most of the, the stuff that needs to be a fancy color is paint-sand-paint and that does get rid of layer lines.
I’ll give it that, but it’s a lot of work.
Frank
Yeah.
I can see that.
Well, um, this has been a shorter conversation than usual, but does anybody have anything they want to add?
Andy
Yeah.
Sorry.
I don’t, I just don’t use colors.
I use, you know, mostly just black and white for just about everything.
Frank
So this is why I didn’t ask for your input, Andy.
I know that, I know that you’re a, uh, what’s the word for it?
A binary or no, a mono, you’re a monotonal printer…
Kevin
monochrome…
Frank
monochromatic printer.
There it is.
Andy
There you go.
Frank
And, uh…
Chris
it’s like the old, uh, dot matrixes and now somebody’s just given you a color bubble jet and you’re like, I can do this
Andy
or you still only use it to print black and white wherever you go.
Frank
Or any of our listeners who are old enough to have seen the transition from black and white to color TVs.
Andy
Yeah.
Chris
Oh yeah.
Frank
I know it was quite sensational when it first happened.
Chris
I’d know about you.
When I was a teenager.
I was able to hide a six inch TV in my, in my bedroom and it was black and white and I was still excited to have a TV.
I didn’t have to share with anybody else.
Frank
Well.
Andy
No kidding, right?
Frank
But you can hide a TV in your watch now.
It’s just a matter of how small do you want to watch the screen on?
Chris
Yeah.
Kevin
Yeah.
Andy
But that was colors.
That is something different.
I do got some, some nice color changing stuff.
The wife saw some of Chris’s prints and asked me why I never used that kind of stuff and I just pointed to the color and, and complained about it.
So maybe buy some and now I’ve got it.
I haven’t.
Still haven’t used it.
She, she says she wants to pick out one of the dragon like things that, you know, that you guys have been printing and have me print it in that, but she hasn’t picked one out yet.
So I haven’t really tried to use it, but I mean, I’m sure it’ll be fine.
It’s just PLA.
So I’m sure it’ll print just fine, but it’s just not a whole lot that I’ve ran through my printer.
Chris
It’s all about the application like, so I used, I decided to use the color change stuff on drink coasters because they’ll, the, you’ll see a definite, definite color shift out when you put a colder hot drink on it as opposed to…
Andy
That’s kind of cool.
Frank
That is more the thermal change, which we haven’t really touched on yet, right?
We’ve been talking about static colors, but, uh, so with the thermal change, which, uh, first, what are the colors that you’ve got?
Like do they start at plain white, do they start with some other color and then transition from there or?
Chris
So they’re basically a medium, mediumish color.
So I’ve got orange, red, blue and green.
Frank
Okay.
Chris
Or I did.
I’ve not, not only got red left, but, or pink.
Sorry.
It was pink, orange, blue and green.
Yeah.
So.
Frank
Pink is just a really, really light red.
Chris
Yeah.
So they’re kind of a mediumish color.
Now the, a green one shifts from yellow all the way to a darker green, depending on whether it’s warmer or colder.
So it’s warmer.
It’s yellow.
And then when it’s colder, it’s darker green.
And then when it’s, or it’s kind of like a medium green.
And that’s, and then the blue does white, blue, dark blue.
The orange does something kind of like that.
It goes from really light orange to orange to darker orange.
And then the, the pink again, whitish to pink, to really dark, darker pink, you know, but um…
Frank
Okay.
Andy
Does it seem to change pretty quick to the temperature change?
Chris
Um, it’s just like any other plastic you’ve had that did color changing stuff.
I, I, you know, like those controllers, like those Joy-Con, um, the, the Joy-Con grips that I printed, um, you know, you, you hold them for about a minute and then let go.
And you can see where your hands were, you know, you can see where you, where you’d grabbed it.
And then I’m assuming the longer you hold it, the more, I guess heat soaked it is.
So it’ll spread from there, depending on how intensely you’re playing.
Frank
Yeah, depending on how, how, how long you’ve been holding it and like you, like you would normal thermal, uh, like stuff you’d buy from the store that has color changing plastic.
Frank
Cool.
Chris
But it’s like, like I was saying on a previous episode, it’s hard to judge what it’s really going to look like as it go, or as, as you’re going to use it while you’re printing because the hot end is hot.
The, uh…
Frank
What?
No, slow down.
Chris
The bed is hot.
The bed is hot.
So when you’re, when you’re printing it, when you’re, while you’re printing it, the, the hot parts of it all look white or, you know, just off shades of white and then you don’t know what color it really looks like until it’s done printing and cooled down.
Andy
Going through the print, does the, does the filament seem to still be the same color from you know, off the cold reel to the cold print after it’s cooled down?
Is it still the same color or does it change when it’s gotten that hot?
Chris
So yeah, that’s the fun part is like all of the parts where the plastic is interacting with a hot, the hot part of it is changed color.
So everything on the bed through the whole print is the hot color of the color change stuff.
And then where, if you’ve got a taller print where it’s been cooling a little bit, it’s not quite the color because it’s still kind of warm, but it’s not as warm as, as the plastic that’s in contact with the bed or the stuff that’s just barely been printed out on the top couple of layers.
And there’s like an inch to two inches off of the print head where you can tell that the plastic’s been getting in contact with the head long enough that it’s all color changed up there and then back to, and then from there back to the reel, it’s all, it’s all the, the, the regular color.
Frank
Okay, that’s kind of cool.
Frank
So maybe I interpreted the question wrong, but I’m going to ask it again using my own headcanon.
After you pull the part off of the printer and it’s cooled off to room temperature, is it the same color as the plastic was on the spool or has the heat changed it chemically so that it’s a different color?
Chris
It’s slightly darker, just ever so slightly, but it’s really close.
So what you get on the spool is going to be really close to what the print ends up being.
Frank
Okay.
Andy
Have you guys, have you guys played with glow in the dark filament at all?
Frank
I have a little bit.
Chris
Yeah.
I had a hard time getting my, getting adhesion on my glow in the dark stuff.
I don’t, you know, I, it, it took me a little bit to get that…
Frank
Even to itself
Kevin
I haven’t tried glow in the dark yet.
Chris
So yeah, the glow in the dark stuff I had, it sticks to it, it would, it would print to itself just, just dandy.
It was all about getting it to stick to my bed and turns out I, I just needed to up my bed temperature just a little bit for just the glow in the dark stuff.
Still don’t need to buy no, yeah.
Frank
We don’t need your stinking hairspray.
Kevin
You had him so close a few weeks ago, Andy.
Andy
I know, I know.
Chris
We don’t need no Spray adhesion.
We don’t need no bed control.
Andy
You guys have seen some of the funky angles with no adhesion stuff that I’ve been able to pull off, you know, that 85 degrees stem off of the bed with no brims or, or, you know, anything like that.
It does work, man.
And it works brilliant.
Frank
Yeah.
But we’re stubborn.
Andy
Yeah.
That’s okay.
Frank
Almost, almost as stubborn as you, but we’re stubborn.
Andy
Totally fine.
Frank
And that’s the end of the topic.
Bottom line, no more.
Chris
Some stuff I do want to get and start to try printing with is some of that translucent.
Kevin
Oh, yeah, I’ve seen that.
That looks awesome.
Chris
You know, do you guys remember when you could see through all your electronics and like the, the late 90s, early 2000s…
Frank
The clear Game Boy cases and…
Andy
yeah,
Frank
Phones and that other fun stuff…
Chris
I’d like to revive some of that again.
Andy
I have used some transparent PETG to print out some light diffusers for some motorcycle blinkers on my dad’s Chinese motorbike that did turn out really good.
I mean, it’s transparent is kind of a funny word to use for what you, what the outcome is, but you know, it, it light does shine through it with not a whole lot of issue.
Frank
I’ve seen…
Andy
but yeah
Frank
I’ve seen a video or two of someone who printed.
I think it was clear PETG and it was glass.
It was like glass looking through it.
Andy
No kidding!
Frank
Yeah.
Chris
So what I’ve got here is I got some clearance lights down at the local hardware store.
And this, you see the, the, the white, those are LED lights and the normal light bulb.
And they are like all kinds of different colors.
And they’re really, really…
Andy
Chris is showing us, Chris is showing us a light bulb that looks very similar to the old incandescent bulbs that’s smaller and the LED driven on the inside.
Chris
Right.
Frank
Until you said they were LEDs I thought they were some kind of marbling on the glass… so…
Andy
So are those something you’ve printed or made or what’s your project with those.
Chris
So I bought this, right?
The idea is that because this bulb is actually glass, but these are LED lights, I’m going to remove the glass from these and 3D print a new diffuser or a new, a new bulb essentially glass part of it with, with PET with PETG and print it in slightly varied colors.
So…
Andy
That would be cool.
Chris
So
Andy
that would be really cool.
Chris
Yep.
Frank
Yeah.
Though with the clear, I mean, I guess it wouldn’t be that much of a stretch to just make your own light bulb covers from there, right?
If you could figure out how to repeatedly keep it clear.
I did get the impression from the video I saw that that is the major part of the challenge with printing with it because if you don’t do it just right, it’ll be foggy.
So it’s not translucent so much.
Chris
I was saying, I want them slightly foggy and then I want to be able to print them in like different, you know, light shades of different colors.
Frank
Okay.
Andy
Okay.
Frank
So it wouldn’t need to be perfectly clear then.
Chris
No.
Frank
Okay.
Andy
That gives you a little bit of room for error on that part.
Frank
I mean, most of the light bulbs that we have in our condo are not clear from the light.
They’re subdued a little bit.
Chris
Well, if you intentionally print with a little room for error on what you want it to be like, it’s kind of like how you can do textured ceilings to kind of cover up all of the mudding mistakes you made.
Andy
That’s my house too…
Frank
Which here’s the problem with that word because the client that you’re worked with pronunciated it muddy when her TV wasn’t making any noise and now you’re talking about a muddy color.
Chris
Muddied ceiling.
I’m just saying, if you intentionally, if you know that, if you don’t do it perfect, you’re going to have this sort of thing to it, print it intentionally that you’re going to have this sort of thing to it a little bit.
That way it looks like you did it on purpose.
Frank
That’s the important part.
Chris
Yes.
Kevin
Lean into it.
Frank
Does anybody have anything color specific that they want to get off their chest?
Andy
Not really.
I don’t think.
Kevin
Not really.
Andy
I got a lot of lack of color.
Frank
Well, we already covered this.
You’re monochromatic.
Personally you are monochromatic, so it makes sense that you would only have two or three colors.
I guess that would be.
Andy
That’s so sweet of you.
I love you too, Frank.
Frank
Bi-chromatic.
Tri-Chromatic?
Tri-Chromatic.
Chris
Because most of the stuff I print is by and for request, I end up getting a lot of color involved with my prints.
Andy
I do have a question for you, Chris.
Is it seemed to be worth buying those sets of colors instead of buying full sized rails of colors?
Chris
Well, the price difference is only a couple of dollars in most cases.
So what I would pay for a full two kilogram reel is only a couple of dollars more to get four colors of the same weight.
Or you can get a full color reel the same, a full size color reel, and it’s only a couple of dollars more than what I’d get for a black reel or a white reel.
It’s worth it.
It’s only a couple of dollars.
You don’t really notice that when you’re buying the plastic.
Andy
Okay.
That’s not too bad.
Just something I might need to open up to a little bit.
Printing all these stuff for my kids’ play has kind of led me to feel a little bit more free or about just printing stuff at random for the kids when they want it.
Having a little bit of color to throw into the mix might be worth it.
Kevin
Yeah.
Chris
Andy and the Technicolor Dream Printer.
Frank
There were a couple of things that came in mind for me, mostly dealing with color theory.
Black and white are not colors, they’re hues.
Kevin
True.
The color magenta can’t physically exist
Andy
does not exist.
Frank
It’s an imaginary color.
Chris
It’s a color your head makes up because of the contrast of the two pixels that are next to each other.
It’s really funny.
Frank
The way it works.
Kevin
That’s when you get into the scientific definition of color, not the regular everyday human definition of color.
Frank
Yeah.
And it’s all because…
Kevin
It’s what a color looks like at a single wavelength of light.
And since magenta only exists as two wavelengths of light that are coming off of the same thing that your brain interprets as a single color, that’s why they say magenta does not exist.
Chris
It’s a made-up color.
It is literally made up in your head every time you look at it.
Frank
So I didn’t really plan on going this deep, but we might as well, right?
So when you look at a color, your eye is…
or because your eye can only perceive the red, yellow, and blue.
Kevin
Red, green, and blue.
Frank
Yes.
Chris
That.
Frank
Green is the mixture of yellow and blue.
It’d be red, yellow, and blue, wouldn’t it?
Chris
The cones.
The cones and rods in your head.
Kevin
You’re thinking pigment.
You’re thinking pigment.
The primary colors of pigment are magenta, cyan, and yellow, and the primary colors of light are red, green, and blue.
And that’s…
So you’ve got red, green, and blue cones because they’re…
Frank
No wait.
Yellow is green and blue, not the other way around.
My memory is goofing with me.
Anyway.
So the point is…
Kevin
Yellow is green and red.
Anyway.
Andy
Red and green are really close to each other too, aren’t they?
As far as the frequencies they pick up.
So people who are colorblind have their red and green picking up the same frequencies range for the most part.
And that’s what makes them not be able to see red or green, or be able to differentiate between the two.
Kevin
They actually don’t have the cones necessary to see those colors.
Chris
Yeah, they’re missing those.
Frank
So green…
Green is the mixture of blue and yellow.
Kevin
In pigment, yes.
So our eyes have red, yellow, and blue cones in variable varieties.
Kevin
And blue.
Chris
Red, green, blue.
Frank
Anyway.
So green interprets what they’re seeing and averages to give you a color.
Yes.
And so when you get into magenta, which is the average of blue and red, your brain already has the green spectrum, yellow spectrum identified.
And those are important colors because 300,000 years ago, when man was running through the forest, it was important to be able to identify things that were not green.
Chris
Monkey brains needed good fruit.
Frank
So our brain recognizing that it wasn’t an actual grain, that, okay, we’re going to assign it this other color by averaging and recognizing that it’s an average instead of the actual color.
Chris
Not ripe fruit, but almost ripe fruit.
I’ll come back in a week.
Frank
And so long run, it was beneficial for us to be able to identify things that were green, but not green.
And ultimately resulted in magenta, which we see now is still the average of blue and red on the color wheel, but does not exist in nature.
Kevin
Right.
Frank
Yeah.
And like I said, black and white are not colors.
They’re hues.
Chris
So.
Frank
So.
Kevin
Right.
Frank
Yep.
Chris
That was fun.
Frank
Hey, I like arguing over semantics when I’m looking at a color wheel.
Yeah.
So if that is the end of that, I’m ready to wrap it up.
Chris
Yeah.
Andy
Sounds good.
Frank
All right.
Chris
Thank you for listening to the very, very, very, very, very, very end.
Frank
Yeah.
Like he said…
Kevin
all the way.
Frank
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The music in this episode was written by Kevin Buckner.
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And our panelists are me, Franklin Christensen, and my friends, Kevin Buckner, Chris Weber, and Andy Cotter.
Until next time, we’re going offline.
Kevin
Keep your FEP tight.
Chris
Sign off all ya suckers.
Andy
Color theory.
Who knew?