Marswork Silk Dual Color Print Test

For the most part, the objects we design and print are utilitarian in nature.  So, we have had limited experience with dual or color-changing filaments.  But, recently, as we explored filament colors in a general sense, the idea of exploring how to get the most out of dual color filaments became an object of interest.

Dual Filament & Importance of Quality Winding 

When we say "Dual Color Filament" we mean filament with a "Side-by-Side" split.  That is two colors fused into a single filament strand. 

Dual Color (Side-by-Side Split) Filament

 

The most important thing to look for when purchasing dual color filament is the quality of the windings. The filament should be wound so that only a single color is seen when viewed from the side of the spool.  The Marswork Silk Dual Red/Black in this image demonstrates this principle.  Only the red color can be seen from one side of the spool and only the black from the opposite side of the spool.   If the colors are mixed as we view the spool from the side, then the results will be very poor and inconsistent.

 

Excellent! Only a Single Color Seen From the Side of the Spool

Determining Proper Orientation

Since the obvious idea for using a dual color filament is a special effect in our prints where when viewed from one side we see color #1 and viewed from the other side we see color #2, it is imperative that we know exactly how to orient our objects on the print plate to optimize separation.

There are a number of dual color calibration objects that can be downloaded from Makerworld or other sites to help us determine the correct orientation.  In our case we found the "Dual Color Test Helper"  by ph3Dmaker to be our favorite.  We scaled it to 200% to make the angles easier to read.

 

Dual Color Test Helper (Scaled 200%)

 

As this object is printed using dual color filament, one side will be one of the colors and the opposite side will be the second color.  But, the color split will be performed at different angles for different materials or printers.  The angles printed on this test object help us determine the optimal angle for the color split for our particular combination.   In our case, that turned out to be a 45 degree angle.

Once we determined this, we printed the object one more time along with 2 panels specifically designed and placed to check our angle's result. 

 

The panels were chamfered to a sharp edge to see how well we were able to align the color change.  This animation demonstrates the effect we were hoping to achieve.  We only wanted to see a single color on each side of the panel.  

 Here are the printed results:

View #1 - Front View

 

View #1 - Front View: Panel on Left Has Mixed Colors - Panel on Right a Single Color

 

The panel on the right is angled at 45 Degrees and the one on the left is angled at -45 degrees.  Alternating Bands of black and red show up on panel on the left side.  The left side of the right object is purely red  with no color banding.  The red, however, is a deeper shade of red because just .2mm below the red surface is a hidden black layer, as expected.

View #2 - Left Side 

 

Left View: No Color Split on Left Panel

Two things stand out from this view.  First, both the left and right sides of the -45 degree panel are essentially the same.  And, the other observation is that the left side of the right object is uniformly red!  No black can be seen.

View #3 - Right side

 

Right View: Right Side of 45 Degree Panel is Purely Black

 

The view from the right side reveals that the right side of the 45 degree object is a single color... black.

While not a great image, the top view demonstrates that the tool we used to determine the correct orientation for optimal color separation placement worked exactly as designed.

View #4 - Top 

Top View of the Test Panel demonstrates the perfect alignment of the color split.

The color break between red and black runs along the center chamfered edge.  It is a clean shift between red and black along this edge.  Even a slight angle shift would have caused this color shift to drift away from the center edge.  

With this information, we now know the optimal angle to use when placing objects into our slicer.

Dual Filament Object Example

One of the best examples of an object that relies on Dual Filament characteristics is this very cool Color Changing Vortex Fidget  by TriVectoran

Exploring Dual Color Filament has been interesting.  While I used Marswork Silk dual color filament, I relied on an excellent Amolen article in setting up my printer for optimal results.  

Amolen Filament 101: Master the Art of Dual-Color Silk PLA Printing

One of the key settings has to do with making sure the speeds of printing outer walls and inner walls are close or identical to reduce distortion forces.  

Now that we have explored the product, we find that we need to explore the applications for dual filament in greater detail.  Frankly, I didn't find many samples of objects specifically designed to take advantage of the special characteristics of dual filament. But, now that we know a bit more about it, it seems valuable to explore it in more depth.  The first step, of course, is to find the color combinations available.

Markswork currently offers the following in their PLA Silk line:

• Dual Black/Red
• Dual Black/Green 
• Dual Red/Gold
• Dual Red/Blue
• Dual Purple/Green

Bambu Labs seems to have at least 7 choices in the Silk Dual category. 

Amolen offers a very wide variety of choices.  Unfortunately I was unable to compile a list because their web page seems stuck on a single description.  I have not used their PLA Silk; but, I have used their Wood filament with excellent results.  

  

Finished Capturing Current Filament Inventory with VeyColor Win11 Software

We finally got around to capturing the colors of all of the filaments we have in our current inventory using the VeyKolor Colorimeter MAX along with the ColorQC2 Windows software.

It was a much faster process than I had expected once all of the test swatches had been printed. It took just 1 hour and 24 minutes to capture 92 swatch samples!  Once captured, we exported the result to both Excel format and CSV text files.  The Excel export was available immediately in Excel and the .CSV files were imported into Foxpro Database tables for easiest analysis later.

While the original export contained all of the spectral data, for the purposes of this article we have selected only the most relevant fields for immediate color identification.  The HEX data was not included in the original export.  But, the Red, Green and Blue values were.  It was simple to wrote a bit of code to create the HEX data from the RGB() information.

Here is the revised result: (Click on the image for full size or download image)

Once in this format we can sort the result in a wide variety of ways to evaluate and organize. But, more importantly, we can use the data as references to search FilamentColors.XYZ for close matches or complementary colors.

NOTE:  Once the LAB data is captured, it opens up many different opportunities.  For instance, we are now able to calculate the distance between any color in the set with all of the others and to compare all of the colors in a subset of colors, such as blues or reds.  It turns out, for instance that the Elegoo White is the actually brightest white in our inventory with a Lightness value of  93.53 compared to Bambu Labs Jade White with a Lightness value of 91.28 and the Marswork White at 91.37!  While I have not done the full difference calculation, I'm inclined to believe that discerning viewers would be able to see these apparently slight differences if they were important to a project.  

 

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.