Color Kit with Engineering Resins

General Discussion
1

Greetings,

Have anyone tried mixing the color kit with Engineering Resins such as the Tough or Durable resins?

The standard resins are too brittle for the product prototypes i’m working on and I often found myself replacing broken prints/components.

Thanks.

2

I just printed a few parts for a customer who wanted tough material in black. I mixed a small amount of black dye (5ml) with the tough resin, enough for one tray full and printed in open mode. They turned out well. I would not recommend trying to go to any other color than black with tough because your starting with such a dark color. also, I did not notice any more or less flexibility with the the dye added. Good luck if you try.
Mike
Scout Design & MFG

3

Thanks for sharing Mike!

Do you have pictures you can share? Also, how ‘black’ was the print, opaque/translucent?

Thanks again.

4

I would not use the color kit because the colorants are mixed in with standard resin. If you add them yo anything other than a standard resin the physical properties will change.

Some have used dyes or pigments made for casting resins with good results. A very small amount goes a long way.

5

The Color Kit dyes are designed to work best with the Color Base Resin. We haven’t done any testing with the dyes on other resins, but adding dyes to other materials will change the optimal printing settings. If you give this a go, let us know how it turns out.

6

HotLoli,
Sorry, I can’t show you pictures, I have an NDA with the client. The parts where pretty black, I used more dye than I needed, You certainly need to experiment with the mix to get the effect you want, I am sure that the dye has some effect on the properties of the resin but I did not notice anything about these parts in this case. I assume that FormLabs is dying there engineering resins so that you can tell them apart? Ever notice how each one is a different color.