Mels 3D Color Madness

Mels 3D COLOR MADNESS : World's First 7 Color 3D Printer Mixing Hotend


Mels 3D 7 color Mixing Hotend based on VIBGYOR Color model.

VIBGYOR COLOR MODEL

RGB contains of three channels (Red, Green, Blue) Each channel is an 8 bit number string.

A bit can consist of 2 values, (0 or 1).

where with 2 bits we can store 4 values

(00, 01, 10,11)

 where 8 bit can store 256 values 

ie; 2^n = 2^8 =256

where 0 is considered a value, hence 256-1 = 255

now with 3 channels of 256 values (shades), we can get a maximum color shades of 16777216 shades of colors.

ie; 256 * 256 * 256 = 16777216 color shades

But the human eyes cannot differentiate or perceive most of the Colors, unless you are a tetrachromat, where you are able to see upto 100 million colors when the average human would see under 10  million.

How many colors are in the world?

It is infinite, but the colors an average humans can see is estimated around 5-10 millions, depending on person.

A modern computer screen shows over 16 million hues of color to show a single image. There are LCD displays that can  reproduce each RGB Channel in 10 bits giving 1.073 billion color shades. But Simply we cant differentiate much of the colors.

In 3d printing, Mixing just 3 colors like RGB to create all possible shades has limitations, using just 3 extruders to mix colors accurately and efficiently is practically impossible,

To overcome this issue, i designed VIBGYOR Color model, where we can use 7 different colors of a rainbow to create more complex gradients and shades efficiently in 3D printing.

With 7 colors mixed, we can create,

256 * 256 * 265 * 256 * 256 * 265 * 256 combinations.

which is 72057594037927936 colors

Yes that's insane!! but practically, we can bookmark our favourite combination of those values and 3D print with them without the need to change filament ever and we can create a random color code where the printer may surprise us with a cool looking print.



EXTRUDER RANDOM COLOR GENERATOR

A cool feature to add would be to have a color generator either as a slicer plugin or in the firmware.

Where the color codes can be randomly generated or selected based on the criteria users set. The result could be crappy or wonderful, which i think would be an awesome way to explore deep into the color concept.

Currently the project is in slow progress as many other projects are in development.