Nov.20, 2014

3D printing service company i.materialise announced the availablity of a new line of 5 colors to their Alumide material. Until now, the only color available for alumide is in its natural color, mat aluminum. But starting this week, you can add more color to your Alumide designs: Asphalt Black, Brick Red, Rusty Orange, Sparkly Blue and Moss Green.

Dyed Alumide – Clover Flower by Michaella Janse van Vuuren

To add color to your Alumide designs, i.materialise uses a dyeing process - your model is submerged into a color pigment bath. Because the aluminum particles in Alumide are randomly distributed, no part will come out looking exactly the same.

i.materialise describes the dyeing process as follows:

  1. First, your model is washed by hand to make sure no contaminants influence the dyeing and to make sure the color pigment can properly penetrate the model.
  2. Then, we mix the color pigment in the right ratio. In principle we can create any color but as each batch is a manual process it would be very expensive to do this only for one model. That's the reason why we currently only offer black, dark gray, blue, and red, to keep prices as low as possible.
  3. Afterwards, the pigments are put in warm water; at this point additional materials are added so the color pigment can better the impregnate the polyamide material.
  4. Finally the mixture is heated and your model is added, your model remains in the mixture for at least 20 minutes so that the color can penetrate the surface (although it does not go through the entire model).
  5. Your model is taken out and washed. Done!

Rings by Bert De Niel

The dying requires 2 extra working days. The pricing is:

A startup of 1€ (± $1.38) + 0.2 € per cm³ (±$0.28 /cm3) per model on top of the price for the natural color. The extra cost for dying is limited to a maximum of 3 € (± $4.5).

For those of you who would like to see and feel dyed alumide finishes first, you can order a sample kit for 12 Euro.


Posted in 3D Printing Materials

 

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