Exploring Marswork PLA Silk

In the 13+ years I have been using and writing about 3D printing, I have rarely felt the need to use SILK PLA.  Most of our designs are utilitarian and industrial in nature that don't benefit all that much by adding bling. We'd had a few spools of Silk but used them very sparingly and never as our primary choice in colors.

But, we do create and print some objects for the holidays that definitely could be enhanced by all that Silk PLA brings to the table if, and only if, we could do so reliably with little additional effort.

Our first thought, of course, revolved around Christmas.  Everybody expects bling at Christmas! 

So, we picked up some Red, Green, Silver and Gold from Amazon to test. 

And, because we'd had such good luck with Marswork filaments, along with the added benefits of the Quick-Swap spool system,  the obvious choice for exploring Silk PLA had to be Marswork's line.

Upon receiving them we immediately printed some test colorimeter swatches with ironed top surfaces.

Wow!  They are STUNNING!  There is a reason for the "Silk" description!

First Marswork Silk PLA Samples

The only concessions needed to make in our print settings had to do with the bed type we like to use.  We use a Frostbite bed using the Coolplate Supertack settings for normal PLA.  And, we use Bambu Labs profiles for all Marswork PLA.  But, Bambu Labs' Silk PLA definitions gave us warnings about using Coolplate Supertack.  The work around was simply to use Generic Silk settings and a custom 50 degree setting for the Supertack plate in the filament's profile.  It printed perfectly with no warping at all.

Seeing the result, and especially the brightness of the gold, gave us an immediate idea for a first test print.  (There are actually three 'gold' offerings from Marswork in the Silk PLA line.)

One of the favorite items we have designed and printed over the years is a customized heart shaped candy box with a top, having a variety of available patterns, that we normally print in red with white trim.  

Heart Shaped Gift Box

 

As luck would have it, we were invited to a favorite aunt's 95th birthday So, we decided to print her a custom heart box using the Candy Red and Gold Silk PLA.  (Her name and a message is inside.)  

This is the result.

Marswork Silk PLA Heart Box

 She loved it and it was big hit with all the other guests.  One even asked how we added the metal trim!

It behaved surprisingly well during the print run.  There were no issues with warping or stringing.  So, from our perspective, it is going to be well worth our efforts to design custom holiday gifts using silk PLA.  I'm really looking forward to what we are able to deliver thanks to the bling Marswork is capable of producing that is so easy to print. 

We ordered the Dark Gold and will be ordering the Rose Gold as well. just to see the additional possibilities.

CHNSpec/VeyKolor ColorExpert Printed or Exported Reports

Continuing to explore what can be gleaned through the Windows application that works with the VeyKolor ColorReaderMax we discovered the Print/Export functionality.

Here is just one sample of the possible formats:

Mystery Box vs Test Samples (All)

Not only does it print the data and spectral graph; but, includes the positioning of the target and the distance from at least one sample in the color space.  

Unfortunately, I have not been able to find any full documentation on this application; but, there appears to be a lot more to explore.

For fun, I wanted to see how the ColorReader Max dealt with high gloss filaments and specialty filaments like Bambu Sparkle.

Here is the export from the comparison between R3D Silk Silver and a Geeetech Silver.

Exported Report from ColorExpert - Silver Compare

 Notice the change in the position of the little red dot in the crosshair graphics at the top right.  Again, it appears to indicate the DIFFERENCE distance value between the Target and Sample.  While barely discernible by eye, the ColorReader Max clearly found the R3D silver to be brighter than the Geeetech.  

What may or may not be evident is the glossiness of one over another.  This may be due to the D8/10 system if diffused lighting used in both the LS173 and the ColorReader Max.  It does not seem to be influenced by specularity of any of the gloss or sparkle samples tested.  It just reported the color accurately.

I think I expected to see little spikes from the bits of sparkle material.  But, as you can see, from this evaluation of Sparkle Red, the spectral graph smoothly reports the color frequencies.

Sparkle Red Color Sample Results

What began as a simple quest to find a filament used in the past, has opened a wonderful door to being able to document filament colors with accurate comparisons that I hope will help us tremendously as we move into full color 3d printing.

DVD Case Color Search - Success?

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.

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.  

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.

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)

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.

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.

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 the target.

If we remember that the LAB Values provide us with X,Y and Z positions in the color space, we can visualize that Phrozen Green is almost directly BELOW the target in space.  Seeing how closely the spectral profiles closely follow each other, with one just under the other, further reinforces this idea.  The slight differences in the X and Y axes is also visualized by the Spectral Comparison with slight deviations in certain wavelengths between 540 and 550nm indicating the lateral shifts.  This, to me, is very helpful and interesting information missing from the software applications used with the other colorimeters we've used.

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!!!

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.