Three-Color 3D Print

I’ve been making bottle openers for friends, and I recently struck upon the perfect design for my friend Matt. For some reason, he still pines for a hockey team that left our home state in 1997 (THEN won the Stanley Cup.) His opener got a Whalers Logo:

Up to this point, all my openers have been single color. But combine the fact that I’m jealous of the new dual extruder with the fact that Matt was my Best Man, and I decided that this time I would go the extra mile.

The procedure was straight-forward, and a huge pain in the butt:

• First I printed a blank opener in the base color
• Then I adjusted the Z-Height of the Thingomatic by 5.76mm (the height of the opener base)
• When I switched the color to blue and printed the tail, the printer deposited the plastic on the white base as if it were the build platform
• After switching colors AGAIN, I printed the W and the opener was done

This was a fairly simple multi-color design, but by breaking up the model ahead of time, this technique could be used for any part.