Creatorpult Design

Multi-color prints are something that, when used right, can really make a product pop!

It used to be unreasonably tedious to do multi-color prints. You would have to either change the material yourself every layer for every color change or you could homebrew something. Usually, at most people would change colors for just specific layers. As time went on, some printers became able to switch between 2 materials, thus letting you have 2 colors. It still takes much longer since the machine has to pull the filament back before it can put the new one in each layer, but being automatic was still a huge upgrade from doing it manually! Now we have our Bambu Labs printers, which have 4 colors available to us. Bambu Labs actually has a way to go up to 16 colors, but we're still working on getting all the value out of the 4 we have.

It does still take some time to switch material each layer, but we have some strategies for that too! Each layer, the printer has to switch to each color used on that layer once. It doesn't matter how much is used, each color used will add a set amount of time. To adapt to this, we'll make avoid having places where just a time, unnoticeable patch is a different color, since we'll still have to wait for the entire transition. We can also optimize by printing in bulk! Since we only switch to each color once per layer, so it doesn't need to switch any more often for 10 printed at once as it does for 1.

We love to work with color! It really makes the project more fun. If you have anything you'd be interested in having printed in multi-colors, reach out to us and let's make something fun!

3D printers have a cool capability of being able to print parts for themselves! It'd be like if your house could make a new room for you. Usually the upgrades aren't quite that drastic, though! This printer needed an enclosure, which helps it print more materials by keeping the temperature constant. We didn't have one for it at the time, so Chris went ahead and printed one. Those corners are all completely 3D printed and designed so that it would be able to fit and hold the enclosure walls that he was able to get. At the time, without this capability, we would've had no choice but to buy a very expensive 3rd party enclosure since this was before Bambu Labs made one for this printer.

Today, we're printing spools for some new material we got in! 3D printer material comes on these rolls, but it feels wasteful to use the material then have to just throw the spools away. So, some filament manufacturers started selling refills for a few dollars less. We had a lot of this blue material and no plans for it, so we're saving some money by printing our own spools so we can just buy the material! This way I also get to make the sides the way that I'd like and can make replacements any time that a part breaks rather than needing to buy a new one!

Our Fiber Laser is opening up a lot of new doors! This one's really new, only a few days actually, so we're still figuring it out. But fiber lasers can cut a whole slew of materials that laser cutters can't, including metals! Our can even engrave colors onto using a technology called MOPA, although we haven't figured that one out quite yet.

A fiber laser, as the name suggests, is different from a laser cutter because it has the laser travel through a powerful fiber-optic cable. Fiber lasers are able to work faster and more precisely than laser cutters because of this. The power that the laser has is so much stronger that it is a giant help in engraving hundreds of materials and cutting through quite a bit too!

As we learn more, you'll probably hear from me about our fiber laser again. But if you want to see a demo of an engraving onto one of these metal coins, come by today or tomorrow! We are giving out tours for our Grand Opening showing off our new fiber laser as well as all the other cool technology we work with!