First Impression – 3D Printing in Full Color Plastic

So Shapeways recently introduced Full Colored Plastic as a new printable material. I was super excited to try it out.

Compared to Full Color Sandstone, Full Color Plastic is stronger. The colors don’t fade with exposure to water.

We have tested this by submerging the FCP models in water for 2 months and the colors stayed the same. No color bleeding. ~Shapeways Customer Support

However, it also cost about twice as much per cubic cm, which comes out to a lot.

I printed a smaller version of my ArcheAge figurine. Here’s the result!

Overall I’m a little disappointed. The resolution wasn’t super great and a lot of the colors didn’t come out.

You can really see the stripes and spots on the arms and legs. There was also a white graininess to the whole figurine.

To be fair, my Full Color Sandstone version is about 4 times bigger than Full Color Plastic version. My hunch is that even if I scale the plastic version up, the white graininess won’t go away, and the colors will still be a lot lighter.

Due to the price, the sandstone version still cost less than the plastic version, despite the size increase.

Summary:

Pros:

• Can print smaller / thinner models than Full Color Sandstone
• Colors won’t fade with exposure to water
• Stronger; thin parts are flexible

Cons:

• More expensive than Full Color Sandstone
• Have a white grainiess
• Colors are a lot lighter / less saturated
• May not have as great resolution

For future prints, I’d probably limit gradients and shading, and stick to sharp contrasting colors.