Color craftsman Richrap: Tie-Dye 3D printing with Nylon 618

April 12, 2013

taulman's "618" High Strength Nylon Co-Polymer is specifically engineered for 3D printing. It is a very light printing material but has high strength and extreme durability.

Another advantage of high strength taulman's "618" Nylon Co-Polymer is that it is easily dyed with standard fabric dyes (textile and paper acid based dyes). You can simply dye the natural colored (translucent natural to white) material in any color you desire.

"From the moment I spotted the 618 Nylon was available I wanted to try colouring the raw filament with more than one colour, something I have always wanted manufacturers to make is a range of filaments that have changes of colour during the roll or even across the roll, now I had a way to do it myself." notes Richrap, a maker and engineer in UK who has a lot of passion for making things work in the real-world.

"Taulman 3D recommends printing with the natural filament and then dyeing the parts afterwards for best results, but I wanted to see what happened when dyeing the filament first as that sounded a lot more fun." says Richrap.

Before dyeing he tie-wrapped the filament and dropped it into hot water to get it up to temperature. Then he boiled a kettle of water, and added around 200ml to the Rit Dye sachet in a glass Jam jar and stirred for 1 minute until dissolved.

Then he put the hot filament into a Zip-top bag and poured in the 200ml of dye. After around 30 mins he removed the coil and rinsed it in water - done, he had his tie-dye filament. Richrap has included all his tests and tips and tricks he learned during the process on his blog.