Swatches

Swatches should not just show the color of the filament. They should also be able to show the sheen, sparkle, and multi-angle colors for the more flashy filaments. To do so, you need to see the printed part with angled and curved surfaces. I created these swatches with those kinds of surfaces on one side, and a typical flat surface on the other. These swatches are 60mm long x 30mm wide x 5mm thick, and are roughly the size of a domino.

Labels

Many of the other available options use embossed, or debossed, or multi-color printed label information. In that case, each swatch needs customization to create the correct text on it. While that looks great, it just seems to me like a waste of model design time, print time, filament, and changeover poop. So instead I just added a shallow indent which allows the application of a label printed using a label-tape printer. MUCH faster, better resolution printing, easier to read in many cases, and it’s easy to change if you decide you want some different or additional information on your swatches. The labels I used are from a Brother Label Printer, and the indents are sized for the 18mm label tape.

Tray & Dividers

I’m including a 50-slot tray to use with these, but trays, drawers, boxes, etc. are pretty easy to design so you can make your own if this doesn’t fit your needs. The slots are designed to be just wide enough so that you can swing a swatch up from amid others with one finger to quickly read the label.

I’ve also included a model for dividers for the tray. These can be placed anywhere between sections of swatches, and have a label indent to attache a printed label. For these, I made the indents sized for the 12mm Brother label tape.

Printing

The swatches should be printed standing on their long edge. If you print them flat on the print bed, the faceted and curved surfaces will have very shallow angles on the top surfaces and the layers in those areas will show ugly contouring. I tried setting the brim to Auto and the slicer decided it didn’t need a brim, but I changed it to manual and used a 5mm brim just in case. And in fact, when I printed ASA swatches, I had to increase that to 8mm to avoid warping. I also increased the wall thickness from 2 to 3 layers to avoid the infill pattern showing through. Other than that, all setting were at default for the filament and for the nozzle & layer height. I printed on the gold PEI plate, but I use that for pretty much everything.

I printed the tray flat on the print bed as you’d expect. The dividers were also printed standing on edge, but for a different reason. They have an indent on both sides so you can have the label tab on the left or right side of the swatches just by flipping it around. I wanted both sides to look the same, rather than have the print bed pattern on one side. But the dividers could be printed flat if you so desire.