Deep in the heart of the south, Kickstarter-funded, Atlanta-based Hyrel has begun prototyping what could be among the next generation of 3D printers - a full-color printer. The Hyrel unit, presently in development, will use a three-color extruder head to blend red, green and blue color strands together to create any color the user might need in their 3D model. These colors can then be printed at any opacity, allowing for even finer control over the texture, shading and overall color of the product.
In the couple of years that 3D printing has become somewhat prevalent and more consumer-oriented (companies like MakerBot have lowered prices and ramped up production to bring their units closer to mainstream customers), there's been the conventional wisdom that the item you were printing was going to be in one or two colors at the most depending on which model 3D printer you were using.
The current effort seems to be to step beyond these limitations, Hyrel's Daniel Hutchinson pointing out that different companies are attempting different ideas to get beyond the color constraint (Z Corp is currently shipping a full-color 3D printer that uses a powder-based printing process while Fire2Part has been working on a unit that uses ink cartridges to color strands as they're being printed). Hyrel seems to be taking a different angle, opting to use a system in which red, green and blue extruder material is fed into a head, then melted and blended as needed to create assorted colors on the fly.
Hutchinson went on to say that Mac OS X users will be able to use the completed full-color 3D printer through the free, open source Pleasant 3D software and will be able to print to any of the company's printers from their iPhone, iPad or iPod touch with VNC software installed and configured on the device.
The finished (and as-yet-unnamed) units are still in development and are expected for the third quarter/autumn of 2013 with final pricing and technical specifications yet to be announced.
Still, a cool idea is a cool idea and given that Hyrel recently surpassed its $50,000 goal in its latest Kickstarter effort, the company should be in good shape to see its full-color unit out the door.
"Sometimes Murphy is the greatest contributing team member," Hyrel's Design/Engineering department was quoted as saying when asked if there were any interesting disaster stories that had occurred over the course of the unit's development. Albeit no specifics were given, disasters aside, this could be interesting come 2013.
Stay tuned for additional details as they become available.
