There are lots of cases where a 3D printed object would have been more useful with colour but common 3D printers have only one or two colours (if they have a second extruder). Aad van der Geest has thought about this problem and has developed a solution: The Colorpod is an upgrade for a conventional Desktop extruder that makes it possible to print in every imaginable colour.
There are already other printing heads out there that allow a „normal“ 3D printer to print in every colour but they are different to the Colorpod. The Colorpod prints on powder with the help of two Inkjet cartridges. One of them is filled with water to solidify the powder and the second one is filled with the colours. Of course you can print a rainbow with this but it can’t print in black because printing in black would usually need an extra cartridge (like “2D printers” do). There was also software developed to convert STL and OBJ files into printable G-Code. The software produces also walls on the sides so the powder doesn’t fall away too much.
There is a video online that shows how the Colorpod is built into an Ultimaker 3D printer:
The Colorpod DIY Kit will be available for only 488$. Some of our readers might think that’s as much as a beginner 3D printer costs. But the Colorpod is a powder printing head that can print with multiple colours. Usually such devices cost more than 10.000$.
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