Mixing filament

I've been looking for a specific colour of filament for a while, and am struggling to find it. One roll that I thought would work turned out to be way too light in colour.

So I'm considering making a filament extruder to mix two colours of filament, and then extrude a string of my new colour. My first thought was to use something like a cyclops hot end, two extruders with ramps-like control, and a 1.7mm nozzle.

Then the filament would fall down and go past some fans, before being wound onto a roll.

This would mean that you would only need rolls of cyan, magenta and yellow, as well as black and white, and you could make any colour of filament you wanted.


Has anyone done this before? Can you think of any pitfalls to this approach? How even in diameter do you think I'd be able to get the extruded filament to be?

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/18/2016 07:59AM by nebbian.

You would probably be better off getting a filament extruder (filastruder, filabot, etc) that uses pellets. Then you can adjust the amount of pigment pellets to get the color you want and have it in the correct diameter. Will cost more, but will probably give you a better result.

If you put two filament together you get tooth paste like effects. ie stripey

It doesn’t mix them, more just forces them together

Really need some sort of mixing chamber

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/18/2016 10:50AM by Dust.

Quote
Dust
If you put two filament together you get tooth paste like effects. ie stripey

It doesn’t mix them, more just forces them together

Really need some sort of mixing chamber

Interesting, thanks for the insight.

How would you go about designing a mixing chamber to achieve this? I'd imagine that you'd need some form of tortuous path, or baffles or something.

I came across a thesis where someone was trying to do something similar, using a motorised hexagonal piston arrangement which seemed a bit of overkill to me.

How could this be done simply?

How well does the Diamond hotend mix colours? Looks OK to me.


Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/20/2016 01:30PM by frankvdh.