Comment by Aurornis
16 hours ago
There's a growing community around the OrcaSlicer - Full Spectrum fork that started all of this, which is attributed in the article. It's a cool technique and I expect all of the mainstream slicers will have it soon. You could already do this technique with OrcaSlicer with Prusa printers or cheaper options like the Snapmaker U1
The "Prusa ColorMix Cones" model is not what I'd recommend. I don't know why they made it like that for 3 and 4 colors other than to do something different than what the community was already doing. For 4 colors the PeggyPallette mini they used as inspiration is a much better model: https://makerworld.com/en/models/2519356-peggypalette-mini-3... You specifically want the dome shape to visualize how the layers blend at different angles. The fixed angle of the cones in the Prusa model misses the point and I don't know why they did that other than to be different.
The article goes on at length about their filament mixing model which sounds cool until you see the part that they only tested with Prusament PLA. Again, I think the open source community was already doing a good job with this.
There are several filament databases other than the one they're linking to that have TD values, which sprang out of the HueForge community. There are cheap tools from small makers to measure TD and color, too. One database: https://3dfilamentprofiles.com/
I'm glad they gave attribution to some of the sources of all of these ideas, but to be completely honest it's getting a little tiring to see everything the open source communities do get wrapped up, prefixed with a Prusa- brand prefix, and resold to us. Make sure you look beyond the Prusa official everything to get a sense of what the community is doing with all of this. I know I'm going to get downvoted for saying anything that isn't 100% pro-Prusa, but this is one topic where the open source community is quite a bit ahead and it's worth looking at what's out there.
What’s wrong with not using the community model for their internal tests? I’m sure they have a good reason. It can’t possibly be just NIH.
Yeah they’re focusing on their filaments but that’s their product. It would be weird if they didn’t start there. Plus they’re working with the open filament database that as established to go with the open source NFC tags they cooperated with other companies on. That seems sand too.
Ok they’ve only done PLA so far, is that such a big deal? This is an announcement not a release. They’re still working on all of it.
And it seemed to me like they did a great job giving the community credit in the post. They made it clear it all came from the community, including the entire idea, and they’re building on that and giving back.
> What’s wrong with not using the community model for their internal tests? I’m sure they have a good reason. It can’t possibly be just NIH
The problem with their models is that it's a cone shape. The angle is fixed.
The community models are domed so you can see the effect at different angles.
> Plus they’re working with the open filament database that as established to go with the open source NFC tags they cooperated with other companies on.
Right, but they're steering people back their sources when the community sites have more user-submitted coverage and it's what we've all been using successfully already.
I probably shouldn't have said anything given the topic and the audience. I know they gave some credit, but there's a long history in the 3D printing world of this stuff happening.
Yeah the dome gives you more angles. That may be the problem. If you’re testing a color mixing algorithm and measuring the output a larger surface at a single angle is probably much easier to measure constantly with colorimeters. If you can’t predict one angle accurately how will you predict others?
That’s just a guess. I’m sure there’s a reason.