Multicolor Desktop Stands (for single extruder)

myminifactory

Looking for a small but useful Multicolor print? These little Desktop Stands are perfect homes for your favorite pictures or business cards. They will look absolutely beautiful on your desk. You only need one extruder and no paint to create them! I designed them specifically for small amounts of filament, such as small samples or leftovers that are usually too small for a print. The multicolor effect is created by filament swaps, which means you pause your print at a certain height, change the filament, and resume printing. This can be done in different ways. For a quick overview, watch this video: I'm currently working on tutorials for this method, so stay tuned for more videos to come. The instructions are below. Instructions: For each stand, you need: 1 x "Backside.stl" 2 x "Triangle_2x.stl" 1 x "Hearts.stl" or "Rainbow.stl" Also, different colors of filament (I used eSUN PLA) of your own choice. These should be from the same type (all PLA or all PETG, etc.) and have a similar melting temperature. And a few drops of super glue for assembly. The "Backside.stl" and "Triangle_2x.stl" are printed in one color. Slice them as usual and print the parts. The "Triangle_2x.stl" file is quite tiny because it's designed as a spacer to hold only one picture. If you want to use it for business cards, you should make the two triangles longer. For this, you can adjust the Z-height of the file in your slicer. Make sure to only increase the Z-height, not the x or y dimensions, or it won't fit correctly. If you're new to color changes during a print, I suggest starting with the Hearts Stand. For the hearts, you only need to do one color swap. Slice the hearts with a layer height of 0.2 mm and pause your print manually after layer 20 (4.0 mm height) is finished or layer 21 (4.2 mm height) has just begun. Remove the filament and insert another color. Resume printing and wait until it's finished. Voilà - you've created a dual-color print with only one extruder! Now, all that's left to do is glue the parts together. Simply put a drop of super glue in each triangular-shaped hole (both backside and hearts), insert the triangles into the holes on the backside, and push the holes behind the hearts over them. Let it dry, and that's it! The Rainbow works just like the Hearts, but you have to do a lot more color changes (7, to be exact). The colors for the rainbow should be: violet, blue, green, yellow, orange, red, white, and black - in exactly this order. Slice the Rainbow with 0.2 mm layer height and start your print with violet filament loaded. Perform the filament changes exactly as described for the hearts, but of course at different heights (watch the video above for more information). These are the layers/heights at which the change has to be made as soon as this layer starts to print: layer 4 (0.8 mm) - change to blue layer 7 (1.4 mm) - change to green layer 10 (2.0 mm) - change to yellow layer 13 (2.6 mm) - change to orange layer 16 (3.2 mm) - change to red layer 19 (3.8 mm) - change to white layer 23 (4.6 mm) - change to black That were lots of changes! But you did it! A full-color rainbow can now be placed on your desk. Congratulations! (Assembly is the same as the hearts, so no worries here.)