Colour comes from stacked layers of filament, not from one roll.
Your picture, built in layers
Each part of an image gets its own combination of filament layers. The colour comes from the materials and the way light passes through them.
Patent pending.
Get the highlights
Compare the palettes your own shelf can make before you print.
Calibrate a roll by eye with a printed card.
Export a 3MF and a print sheet for your slicer.
Translucent plastic mixes colour by stacking
3D-printer filament is not opaque. A layer 0.08 mm thick lets most of the light through. Put a thin yellow layer over a dark base and you see dark yellow. Put white under the yellow and you see bright yellow. Add more white and it gets brighter. Colour comes from the stack, not from one plastic.
- 01A dark base
- 02White lifts the brightness
- 03Yellow on top sets the hue
- 04The stack is the colour
The picture becomes a field of little towers
The image is divided into 0.4 mm columns, one nozzle width. Every column gets its own stack, chosen from a table of every stack the loaded spools can print. Dark parts of the picture get short columns or none at all, so the base shows through as true black. Bright parts get tall columns of white with colour on top. The finished plate is a low relief you can feel.
- 01A flat picture on a dark base
- 02Bright areas rise. Dark areas stay flat
- 03Every column is its own stack of layers
The printer holds four spools. The software picks which four
Most people own more spools than the printer can hold. Polychrome reduces the picture to its palette, then for each possible set of spools it simulates every printable stack, lists every colour that set can make and scores how well the list covers the picture. The best sets are ranked and you are told which spools to load. That is physics, not a guess from the spool colours.
- 01Many spools on the shelf
- 02Four light up. Here is every colour they can make
- 03The picture's colours, scored against them
- 04Swap one spool and the score moves
Five spools on a four-spool printer, no pause
The dark base spool is only needed for the base slab. Once the slab is done its slot is idle, so Polychrome arranges the stacks so the arriving white spool is not called during the first layers above the base. That leaves a window to swap the spool while the printer keeps running.
- 01The base prints from slot 1
- 02Slot 1 goes idle
- 03Swap in the white spool
- 04Slot 1 is back, printing white
Calibrating a spool with a camera, or with your eyes
Every spool is slightly different. Polychrome prints a small staircase of a spool, from one layer thick to twelve, over a base. Photograph it with a phone and the software fits how strongly that plastic absorbs red, green and blue per millimetre. No camera? Lay the staircase across a printed strip of coloured seams and note the step at which each seam disappears.
- 01A staircase from one layer to twelve
- 02One photo
- 03Red, green and blue absorption, fitted
Colour that changes with the light
Like a cuttlefish, a Polychrome print gets its colour from layers, not from pigment on the surface. Move it under a lamp and the relief comes alive.
Start with a picture
Import a picture and set the size, crop and outline for your piece. Polychrome works from what you give it, so the image you choose decides the tonal range a palette has to cover.
Tell it what is on your shelf
Tell Polychrome which rolls you have. It compares the palettes it predicts for your image and shows what each combination can reach.
The latest Napoleon study used eight colour layers¹, calibrated by eye, to extend the tonal range.
Polychrome recommends five rolls. Four will print, five prints better.
- 55
- starter rolls in the library
- 88
- colour layers in the latest Napoleon study¹
- 44
- loaded positions in an AMS²
A prediction you can refine
Filament colour and opacity both affect the result. The same colour name on two brands does not guarantee the same print.
Polychrome can estimate optics for an unmeasured roll. Its calibration tools let you compare a printed card by eye and refine the material model. Estimates and measurements remain distinct.
Estimate
Polychrome estimates optics for a roll it has not measured.
Compare
Print a calibration card and compare it against the prediction by eye.
Refine
Replace the estimate with your own measurement for the rolls you use.
Five rolls, four loaded positions
Some relief recipes use black for the base and white later in the colour region. That can require an operator-assisted spool exchange when the palette exceeds the loaded positions.
The print sheet describes the exchange for the exported recipe. Follow those instructions and check the slicer before starting. A five-roll recipe is not five simultaneously loaded rolls.
3MF export
Build the geometry and slice the exported 3MF in your slicer.
Print sheet
Rolls, order and any exchange for the recipe, on one sheet.
Bambu project export
Carries filament assignments and applicable pause information.
Choose the shape of the result
Relief varies the colour-region height across the image. Flat mode keeps the construction at full depth. Both use the same underlying idea: combinations of filament layers produce the visible colour.
Relief
Use the depth of the colour layers to make an image you can frame and hold.
Flat
Make colour part of a flat piece. Coasters and other small objects are a place to start.
Questions about the process
Do I need five loaded slots?
Not for every recipe. A five-roll relief recipe can use four loaded positions with an operator-assisted exchange. Other palettes fit within the loaded positions. Check the recipe and print sheet.
Are colour layers the same as filament colours?
No. Eight colour layers means eight stacked printing layers in the colour region. Several different filaments can appear within a layer. It does not mean eight rolls are required.
Will the preview exactly match my print?
The preview depends on the material model and recipe. Calibration helps align the model with your rolls. Lighting, material variation and printing conditions also affect the appearance.
Next step
Ready when the release is
See the planned licences, and what is being tested before checkout opens.
- Eight colour layers means eight stacked printing layers in the colour region. Several different filaments can appear within a layer. It does not mean eight rolls are required.
- Physical testing currently uses a Bambu Lab X1C with an AMS. Other multi-material printers are unverified.
- Polychrome is patent pending.