As we wrote earlier, the impetus behind exploring colorimeters began with a mystery color.
Some time ago, we had created a series of DVD cases to be used with a spinner to turn selecting a movie into a game. As we began to think about documenting the filament used in our projects so that they could be repeated, we realized that we did not know what filament had been used for the fourth DVD box.
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| DVD Cases - Unknown Filament |
Whatever brand and color it was, we no longer had it in our daily inventory of filaments. So, the quest was on to try and figure out what we had used.
Our first try, once we had a colorimeter, was to test the DVD box to capture the LAB color values and enter those into the FilamentColors.xys web site search engine. It came back that one of the closest matches in their database was for Anycubic Green.
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| DVD LAB Color Search FilamentColors.xyz |
Fortunately, Amazon is great about keeping a list of past purchases. So, we did a search back to 2018 to look for any green filaments purchased. I had purchased filament over 130 times since 2018. Of those purchases green filament was noted 10 times.
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| Green Filament Purchased from 2018-2026 |
I was able to locate and test the Anycubic Green as well as the Overture and R3D Matte Mint Green, which was considerably lighter than the DVD case. None of these were a match to the DVD case.
It was then that I realized that there was a storage bucket having older, nearly empty spools of filament that I planned to toss. There I found nearly empty spools of Phrozen Green and R3D High Speed PLA Pro mint green. I decided to test these along with a MatterHacker Lime Green and Polysonic Teal.
COLOREXPERT - COMPARISON TEST RESULTS
The colorimeter chosen for these comparisons was the VeyKolor MAX using the ColorExpert PC application. Before testing the newly discovered filaments, I thought it would be interesting to see if we could detect any color changes to the DVD box due to environmental exposure.
The Outside ot the Top of the DVD case was selected as the target and then samples were taken of the bottom and inside (Top and Bottom). The DIFFERENCE calculations ranged from .083 to 1.56 which means the color is reasonably stable and whatever fading, etc. there might be would not be easily discernable. Note the graph. (Click for larger image)
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| DVD Case Top-Inside Shows Slight Difference |
As we compared the sample from the MatterHacker Lime Green, we see a huge DIFFERENCE of 38.72. Both the spectral graph and the sample swatches show this was not filament used for the DVD.
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| Huge DIFFERENCE Vale for MatterHacker Lime Green |
While the Polysonic Teal comparison resulted in a bit closer match with a DIFFERENCE of 22.70, it still was far away from the original to be easily noticeable by anyone. Notice that ColorExpert tells us that the Teal is lighter, has more red and more blue than the target. This kind of information is helpful. The Spectral graph is also revealing.
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| Polysonic Teal Is DIFFERENT in ALL directions |
The Phrozen Green sample was a step closer to our target! The Spectral Graph shows the target and sample on a similar track only varying slightly in lightness. Color Export shows us that only in the LIGHTNESS category did the Phrozen Green fail to match a teat.
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| The Phrozen Green Differs in LIGHTNESS |
I had, earlier, tested the R3D Matte Mint Green and found it was much too light. However, the newly located R3D PLA Pro Mint Green turned out to be a perfect match to our DVD case. Mystery solved!!!
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| The Perfect Match! R3D High Speed PLA Pro Mint Green |
At last, we finally know that filament that we had used for the mystery DVD case! The match was absolutely perfect! The largest deviation from the DVD sample was just 0.64!
But, that is where the good news ended.
It turns out that the R3D PLA Pro is no longer available on Amazon. It's unclear if it will be restocked. There is a single spool of Mint Green available in their slightly slower rated PLA. Hopefully, they are the exact same color.
It's been fun trying to track down the filament we used for the DVFD case. But, it's also been instructive. Had we documented what we had used at the time of the first printing. we might have been able to buy more before the stock was depleted. And, it is imperative to help FilamentColors.xyz grow their database so that if one filament disappears from the marketplace the more likely we will find a match early.
In the meantime, using the ColorExpert software with the VeyKolor Max colorimeter has been a wonderful experience and we plan to sample every filament as early as possible for future reference. It's a great product.