Ever wanted to try multicolor 3d printing with the mosaic palette plus? Check out our video below where we walk you through, step by step, how to print a multicolor butterfly with a Creality ender 3.
If you’re the proud owner of a Creality Ender 3 3D Printer, you’ll be ready to really hit the ground running and test what this printer can do! That being said, the process can be confusing for your first run through, especially if you’re looking to print with multicolour. In this guide we will be walking you through how to print a multicoloured butterfly with the Creality Ender 3, one of the best multicolour 3d printers on the market!
What You’ll Need:
Creality Ender 3 3D Printer
Mosaic Palette+
Chroma (Mosaic Palette+ Compatible Software)
Multiple Filament Colors
Setting Up Chroma:
When you load up Chroma, you’ll be presented with a blank canvas ready to be filled with your 3D creations. In the top left corner, make sure that you have the Ender 3 selected from the drop down menu. After this you can click Load Print. From there you’ll be presented with your gcode files that you have on your computer.
In this example we will be selecting the butterfly-1.gcode file, and clicking Open. From here Chroma will be compiling and arranging the settings for the gcode file to be displayed. This might take a minute or more.
Selecting Your Colors:
Once the loading is completed, you will be presented with the 3D rendering of our butterfly! This butterfly will be in 4 randomly selected colors by default, but we will be changing this next! To change the colors, navigate to the top of the screen where you will see 4 colored circles, and drop down arrows along with each circle. These circles represent the colors of each tool head.
To change the color, click on the Tool Head Colored Circle, and your options for color will appear, we’re going to select Black for our first color. After this, you will want to select the Default PLA Settings by clicking the Drop Down Arrow to the right of the first Tool Head Colored Circle.
As we make these changes you will notice that the 3D rendering of our butterfly will change to our corresponding colors. Repeat this process for the remaining 3 Tool Heads, remember to use the Default PLA Settings for each Tool Head.
Saving Your Project:
After you have selected all your colors, you will click Save for Printer in the top right corner of Chroma. From there, name your file, and click Save. You will be then presented with a loading bar as Chroma prepares our 2 output files. One of the files will be an adjusted gcode file that has added the purge tower we just modified, and the other file will be a file that goes straight to the Mosaic Palette+.
Printing Your Project:
Once the files are ready, you will be presented with a screen that says “Ready to Print!”. On this screen you will be presented with the files you have created for your project, which for us are the butterfly-1.msf which goes to the Mosaic Palette+ and the butterfly-1.msf.gcode file which is your newly created gcode file. You will also be presented with “Materials Used” for the project, “Number of Splices” for the project, and “Number of Pings” for the project.
After this, you will need to turn your Creality Ender 3 on if it isn’t already. After making sure that you have all your components set up and assembled correctly, then it is safe to begin the printing process.
Depending on your specific project will determine how long the printing process takes. But once your printing process is complete you will be presented with your beautiful multicolored 3D butterfly (or whatever your project was)! After printing is finished, you should let the project cool before you attempt to remove it from the tray. Once it has cooled you can now gently pry the project off of the tray.
Conclusion:
If you have followed our guide then you will now have a beautiful multicolored butterfly, that flaps its wings, and looks amazing!
During this project, I decided to use 4 different filaments that are from different brands, and also have slightly different temperature settings. This just goes to show how great the Mosaic Palette+ is, with the ability to mix and match filaments without them being a 100% match.
Overall, I hope you have learned a lot form our guide, and you are starting to think about all the amazing stuff you can create with the Creality Ender 3 3D Printer. If you have any questions on multicolor printing with your Creality Ender 3, then leave a comment below and we will get back to you!