Rainbow Fused-Filament 3D Apple Logo

3D Printing & Imaging
Rainbow Fused-Filament 3D Apple Logo

Very cool stunt from Thingiverse user acen, using a technique he credits to “zeq.” In fact, this fully 3D version of the original Apple logo is a bit specialized, because the method would be much harder to use on a color object that wasn’t divided into clear horizontal bands of color. Basically, it involves calculating exactly how much of each filament color will go into making your model, cutting those colors to accurate lengths, arranging them in order, and fusing them together. The resulting rainbow-colored length of plastic filament is fed into the extruder and, if you did it right and everything works correctly, all the right colors end up in all the right places in the finished model. A difficult prospect, but still an impressive trick that could be very handy in the right situation.

Original Apple logo in 3d by acen – Thingiverse

4 thoughts on “Rainbow Fused-Filament 3D Apple Logo

  1. Alex Young (@regularfry) says:

    And now I’m trying to imagine what a machine to automatically splice coloured filament on the way into an extruder would look like.

    1. M Lange (@errorad) says:

      5 or 6 different feed rollers, one for each color, and some form of cutter to end a color (or can you just pull it out / “feed” backwards? I’d imagine that may cause air bubbles)

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I am descended from 5,000 generations of tool-using primates. Also, I went to college and stuff. I am a long-time contributor to MAKE magazine and makezine.com. My work has also appeared in ReadyMade, c't – Magazin für Computertechnik, and The Wall Street Journal.

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