Filament Colorizer - Marker Holder For 3mm filament

cults3d

I tossed this together a while back and have used it quite often. I'd almost forgotten about it, but since I now use mostly PLA and the marker holder doesn't work well on PLA, it's still pretty useful. It works extremely well on ABS though. This holds two standard Sharpie markers (i.e. "fine" not "ultra fine") and should easily clear a standard Cupcake's roof hole. I have no idea about the ToM but I expect it should work just as well. I originally made a similar thing for one marker, but it didn't color the filament much at all resulting in very light coloring. Two markers actually tints the filament enough to be noticeable. Three would be even better, and four would be still better. Maybe I could throw a three-pronged one together. That might make for a great exercise to make parametric in openSCAD. I think a holder that's full of Sharpies might color stuff pretty well. The image with the two parts shown is almost exactly how it really looks. One is natural ABS and the other is natural ABS colored with two black Sharpies. The final color is what I'd call a dark gray. The color goes all the way through the part and is fairly even. Long prints you do notice the color getting lighter as the markers run out. After a six hour print, the two sharpies were almost empty. Most colors come out light to dark pastel colored. I've made many turtles this way already. You can see them here: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4178 The turtles shown are single blue marker, single green marker and the weird-looking one is natural (clear) PLA with a single red marker, then a single blue marker. The red just made the PLA look overcooked orange, the blue wasn't too bad but not as nice as the ABS. Note: There's some solvent in the markers that allows the ink to soak into the ABS. If you rub a Sharpie on ABS and break the filament, you'll see what I mean. That said, if you leave the markers in this rig in contact with the stationary filament, it will (fairly quickly actually) cause this filament to shear off cleanly at that point. I've not noticed any weakness of the printed colored parts compared to natural parts. I expect the solvent is boiled off in the hot end.