Bambu Color Blend Swatch

Skip to the end for how to make custom swatches, and how to print.

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The Bambu Lab AMS has revolutionized color 3D printing. Did you know you can print up to 5 colors from a single filament color, plus black and white? This variation in tint and shading is achieved by adjusting the number of layers of color filament used and changing the color of the filament that prints behind the adjusted color.

Theory

Note: For our purposes, and for the dictionary's purpose, TINT = color + white, and SHADE = color + black.

In my testing, I've found that at a 0.2mm layer height, most filaments are often translucent, allowing light to pass through easily—similar to how most 3D printed light boxes work. For speed, ease of use, and limiting color changes, I've based these swatches on 3 layers of color. Taking blue filament as an example, three layers of solid blue filament provide a close approximation to the true tint/color of the filament. However, we can make it appear brighter by layering white filament behind it or darker by layering black filament behind it.

In this photo you can see two example color swatches and the various tints/shades achieved by layering different thickness of color behind them. All of the filament swatches are printed face down on the build plate and are set up as follows:

(substitute orange for whatever color you'd like to test)

So, we've got one layer of orange with black behind it, giving us a dark reddish-brown, pure orange in the middle, all the way to one layer of orange with white behind it, giving a nice light orange color.

Practice

Okay, this is neat, but what's the point? Well, you can achieve a lot more colors with a single AMS (or multiple AMS units) than you thought possible! In theory, each color will give you 5 distinct tints/shades. In our above example, we have 5 colors of orange and 5 colors of brown, plus black and white—giving us 12 distinct colors from 4 colors of filaments. However, we can also layer the black and white to give us silver/gray tones, potentially resulting in 14 distinct colors from only 4 original colors of filament.

There is no gray or silver used in this print. Only Black/White/Red/Brown.

The silver and light gray are from layering black behind white.

From the edge, we have black, single layer of white, and two layers of white

all with black behind it.

And one more example of a bit of ‘advanced’ color blending that I've been working on:

I'm not 100% happy with the colors I for the various parts,

but you can see approximately 12 distinct colors

and the only filaments used were orange, brown, black, and white

How to make custom swatches

I have provided the SCAD file for the swatches, which are parametric. This means you can enter your filament information and create custom swatches for your favorite brands and colors.

Requirements:

You will need a copy of OpenSCAD on your computer. OpenSCAD is a free and open source CAD modeling software.

You can download OpenSCAD here

Once you have OpenSCAD installed on your machine, open the ‘Bambu_Color_Swatch.scad’ file.

The left side contains all the programming for the swatches. Unless you are familiar with OpenSCAD, DO NOT EDIT THE LEFT SIDE.

The right side has all the parameters, which ARE editable for you to make your own custom filament swatches.

From here you can choose the size of your swatches, which part of the swatch you want to render and export, whether you want to include a text box or not, and the information contained in that text.

If you are not choosing custom sized swatches, you only need to export the ‘swatch color’ portion of the model, which contains the text. Do so by unchecking the ‘swatch white’ and ‘swatch black’ checkboxes. Then render (F6) and export (F7) the file to a location on your computer. If you are using a custom-size swatch, you will need to export each part—black, white, & color—of the model separately.

How to Print Your Color Blending Swatch

Drag all three relevant STLs (black, white, and color) into Bambu Studio at the same time. Bambu Studio will ask you if you want to load these files as a single object with multiple parts. Select YES.

Now, the filament swatch is in the slicer, but it is all one color by default. You must select each object individually in the side panel and set the appropriate colors—black for black, white for white, and whatever color you want your swatch to be.

Here we are printing a red color swatch.

The Black STL is set to black filament

The White STL is set to white filament

The Color STL is set to RED

Now you can slice and print your color swatches!