14 DAY TRIAL // 3D printers based on the FMD technique (fused deposition modeling) create objects of various sizes and shapes from plastic (usually) extruder, but they have to limit themselves to a single color, unless they have more than one extruder head, in which case they can combine two, three or sometimes four.
This need no longer be the case, say two students from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Their invention will enable full-color 3D printing on them all.
Presented at the 20th annual University of Wisconsin-Madison Innovation Days competition, the device they made is called Spectrom.
In a nutshell, it is a 3D printer accessory, and adapter you install on your FDM 3D printer and which can add dye to the normal filament material on the fly.
And that's not to say that the extruder will come out colored in a rainbow of hues. You can actually choose what colors to print an item in.
For example, a doctor, like a plastic surgeon, could employ a normal FDM 3D printer to create, say, a nose colored precisely like the rest of the skin of the patient. We'll leave the issue of tan for the medic and recipient to sort out.
Spectrom applies solvent dyes onto clear plastic filament continuously. The attachment earned the students, Cedric Kovacs-Johnson and Charles Haider, the $2,500 / €1,800 Tong Prototype Prize, as well as the $10,000 / €7,203 Schoofs Prize for Creativity.