Polymaker has long been known for their incredibly wide range of filament colors, and now they’re adding a pellet colouring system, CymphoniK.
Pellets? Virtually all desktop FFF systems use filament, but larger industrial 3D printers often use pellets, which are far less expensive. That’s because filament is made from pellets, so you are cutting out an entire manufacturing step by using pellets.
The problem is that pellets are almost always made in a natural color, a color you’d never want to use in a print. Filament producers mix in colorants while making filament from pellets, and that’s where the color variations come from.
The new CymphoniK system is intended for use by industrial 3D printing operations where very specific print colors are required. It’s a “color mixing ecosystem”, which allows operators to design color schemes basically on the fly.
That’s very different from how they operate today, which is effectively controlled by their suppliers. To obtain a specific custom color, they have to order the colorant mix from a supplier (called a “masterbatch”). That works, but the suppliers usually require a minimum order that’s far beyond the needs of the company’s work for their customer. That raises the costs significantly, and as a result some jobs just don’t get done.
CymphoniK moves the color development directly into the hands of the operator. Here’s how it works.
The CymphoniK system is based on the CYMK system, where you mix cyan, yellow, magenta, and black in specific ratios to create custom colors. CymphoniK also adds in white and neutral to provide even more color design flexibility.
That sounds great, but how exactly do you figure out these color mixes? It turns out that Polymaker has also developed an accompanying software tool that can do so, CymphoniK
Palette.
The software has two methods of determining color mixes. One way is to simply review their extensive library of pre-made mixes from swatches. The other way is to input a color using RGB or similar values, or even using color pickers. Then CymphoniK Palette uses an AI to figure out the most successful color mix.
At that point, the operator needs only to drop in the correct mixes of the six color pellets into the large-format 3D printer’s hopper, and the correct color plastic should come out the other end of the system.
While this new system will have little impact on most 3D printer operators, I am pretty certain that large-format 3D printer operators will find CymphoniK will open up many new customer opportunities. That, in turn, will generate more pellet sales for Polymaker, and possibly even more sales of large-format pellet systems in the long run.
Via Polymaker
