Colour Swatch for Resin Printers

Last crawled date: 4 years, 3 months ago

Problem:
Creating 'custom' resin colours without using CMYK pigments or buying custom coloured resin. Having the ability to see a range of colours in person rather than viewing on a computer screen. Experimenting with mixing resins without wasting excessive amounts.
Solution:
This colour swatch. All you need is an idea of what resin colours are readily available to you, and which of those you can mix to create your desired colour. Then using a 1ml syringe you can
Pros:
Quick and easy to print and assemble.
Files will fit Anycubic Photon & Elegoo Mars build plates.
Minimal resin needed - max of 22ml of each colour (full triangle swatch).
Can be cured in sunlight if UV curing light unavailable.
Hex insides are rounded at the bottom to stop colours getting stuck in corners.
Bottom edges are rounded to prevent elephants foot.
Cheap: You'll only need 3x 1ml syringes and a small instrument to mix with such as a toothpick.
Assemble as many hexes as you like. For a two colour swatch you only need to print 10 single hexes.
Cons:
Limited to the colours of resin readily available.
Your chosen base colours may not create the exact colour you desire. You need to be confident that you're base colours are capable of producing the colour you want, for example; a mix of white/blue/yellow resins will not produce purple.
Only the top 1mm (approximately) of resin is cured, therefore leaks/splashes could occur if the filled swatch is dropped.
How to:
Decide how many hexes you want if you're not printing the full triangular swatch. Each hex or group of hexes can be glued together, superglue works fine. The fewer hexes in your swatch, the lesser your range of colours will be. The full triangular swatch yields 66 different colours.
For the full triangle use files: RCH V2 1 + RCH V2 2 + RCH V2 3.
If you are using solid resin colours then it is preferable that you print the hexes white, you could also print grey or black but avoid colours as it'll interfere with your perception of the colours in your finished swatch. For clear/translucent resins it may be better to print in a clear colourless resin. I can't say whether the colours from neighbouring hexes will interfere with other colours when viewing them as I haven't tried this with clear resins.
Get your hexes printed, post-cured, and glued together.
Next take one of your colours, and row by row drop in the required amount of resin using a 1ml syringe. Use the picture guide to understand what I mean by row by row and how much resin to put in each hex. I found it helpful to have the triangle pointing away from me, that way I wouldn't get confused with the rows.
Once you've done that it's time to do the same with your next colour(s). Again it was helpful to rotate the triangle so the 'new' point of it was pointing away from me.
When all the hexes are filled, use something small to mix each hex, I used a toothpick, be sure to scrape the edges and bottom of each hex.
Next, cure the resin under UV light. I exposed mine under a 24watt LED strip light for 30 minutes (I think, it could have been 15). You want to cure as much of the resin at the top of each hex to prevent accidental spills of the uncured resin underneath. You may want to balance this with the effect overcuring may have on your resin, for example white will brown the longer it is exposed.
With the curing done your swatch is ready!
Reading your swatch...
View the swatch under natural light where possible. Use a marker pen to mark your chosen colour. Now reference the guide, reading across each row one colour at a time. If you have printed the full triangle then the percentages are easy to calculate. Note the percentage of each colour use it to calculate how much of each colour you need for your print*. The percentage of all colours combined should equal 100%, if not, you need to read the swatch again.
I would advise that you mix a small amount first to be sure it is correct.
Happy printing!