Sample filament Sunday's, #3. Color changing filament.
Today we're working with 3D selfies and color changing PLA filament from Gizmo Dorks. Anyone else remember the hypercolor shirts? I thought those were cool...
Anyway, it was a small miracle my nephew sat still long enough to be 3 D scanned... So I needed to up the cool factor for the final print. Glow in the dark filament was in the running, so was scented filament. But he's a hands on kid so we went with heat sensitive color changing filament.
Note - I'm still playing with 3D scanners, so we'll focus more on the color changing filament for today. I'll post more on 3D scanning once I've had a chance to try a few more options and pick the one I like best.
Today's material is PLA from Gizmo Dorks. It changes color from grey to white when heat is applied. Surprisingly this was my first filament from them. The packaging was pretty standard, the spool was vacuum sealed with desiccant like most filaments. Plastic wrap around the inside of the spool was a nice touch to make sure nothing could unwind during shipping.
I plugged in my standard PLA settings from S3D, sliced the model and started printing.
The first layer was a little temperamental. It didn't want to stick to blue tape, so I switched to glue stick on a heated glass bed and that did the trick. The rest of the print went great, and the filament printed like normal PLA. Good detail, good bridging, no temp or speed changes required.
Once the print was finished, at the suggestion of what I'd read online about this filament I put the print into the freezer to try and optimize it's color changing abilities. It does seem to make a difference, but it's kind of hard to really quantify the differences. I tried one other smaller print but didn't put it in the freezer. The freezer print responds much faster to heat from your hand than the non freezer treated print.
Overall, easy filament to use and the color change is really neat. I've got a few other ideas for ways to use this filament.
Print 99% complete.
Print in the freezer, notice the color difference.
Color change responds to touch.
