With Color on Demand we have already matched hundreds of colors. We have published the RAL references (over 100 already) online which can readily be ordered. But we can match more than only RAL colors. Some customers send us physical references, others send us well-known color references like CMYK, Pantone or other standards which we then try to match as close as possible.. There are many series of colors & varieties and the one we focus on today is the skin tone color:
With skin tone references 3D printed prosthetics are no longer limited to the basic colors, or subject to extensive post-processing like painting. For today’s print we used the Kwawu 2.0 Prosthetic Hand by Jacquin Buchanan, who is specialized in designing and printing prosthetics. You should definitely check out his website, One Monk Clapping.
We printed this hand on the Makerbot Replicator 2, with a 0.2mm layer height and at a print temperature of 195C.
By using skin tone colors designers and people wearing prosthetics have more options than ever beyond the standard color palette.
With Color on Demand we re-invented the way makers can choose colors. No longer you are bound to the colors that have been pre-selected by filament manufacturers anymore. Now you can order the color you actually need and want.
We have already matched over 100 RAL colors, which can easily be ordered online. Click here to see our collection. You can order as from one 750 grams spool! If we have not matched your favorite color, request it by using our online form. Starting from a 2kg spool we match the specific color you want, based on RAL, other well-known color references or a physical reference.
With Color on Demand you can say “yes” to that print job which needs a specific color or a look you have been waiting for. Stun your colleagues, family or other makers with your prints. You could already print one-of-a-kind designs, now you can also make them look unique!
Check out more recent Color on Demand prints by clicking here. Make sure you read our color disclaimer. Want to know more about Color on Demand, check our our FAQ page.
Born Just Right’s mission is to build creative solutions that help kids with differences live a more enjoyable life. It all started with Jordan Reeves, who was born just right. She is the lead innovator and official ambassador of BJR. We have been in touch with the great team of Born Just Right for a while now.
As it happens, Jordan has a super hero alter ego: Girl Blaster. And as we all know, every super hero needs a super device. Girl Blaster’s is called Project Unicorn, a custom prosthetic that can shoot glitter and which was printed with PLA/PHA Lila. BJR was so kind to send us one and that got us thinking. What if we made another one? We just had the right material for this print: nGen_LUX:
The original:
Project Unicorn is a great project and a fantastic print. No one here has dared to shoot the glitter yet and we leave the use of it to the super heroes of this world.
We used three printers for this project: Prusa i3 MK2, the Ultimaker 2+ and the Stacker S4 for the largest part. On all printers we used a 0.2mm layer height and we used our standard nGen settings.
We printed at 240⁰C with the bed at 75⁰C
nGen_LUX is a unique development based on our best-selling co-polyester nGen, made with Eastman Amphora AM3300 3d Polymer. The excellent clarity of the base AM3300 makes this material uniquely suited for the extremely rare pigment used in nGen_LUX. The material uses diffuse reflection to scatter light in all directions. For the eye it’s nearly impossible to spot layering, even at 0.2mm layerheight. nGen_LUX allows users to print visually appealing models without the need of post processing. nGen_LUX features all the characteristics of our regular nGen, good chemical stability, elevated temperature resistance (85C) and thus allows users to print creations that are functional, durable, efficient and attractive.
For this print we used mostly Regal Violet and Champagne Gold. And this very print will be shipped to the US soon for Jordan to see and use it herself!
Born Just Right was founded by Jen Lee Reeves, Jordan’s mother. She believes giving kids design knowledge empowers them to create their own solutions. The focus of Born Just Right is on 3 outcomes:
Raise awareness about the power of design.
Identify and support inclusive designers & brands.
Support and grow a design community for kids and parents to help foster learning.
Jen works closely with Sam Hobish, designer and 3D printing wizard who made Project Unicorn a reality. The part was printed with our very own PLA/PHA Lila.
Jordan, Project Unicorn and Born Just Right have recently been featured in some worldwide publications:
3D printing changes lives in many ways. Nowhere as much as in the field of prosthetics where it has a direct impact on people’s daily lives. Prosthetics are nothing new, but 3D printing allows for more customization and faster developments tailored specifically to the person who needs the prosthetic part.
In December 2016 we already wrote a blog about this particular use of 3D printing by Mathis Orthopédie. Below are some more examples of organizations that are using 3D printing.
Médecins Sans Frontiéres
Médecins Sans Frontiéres (MSF, also known as Doctors Without Borders) is an organization that operates worldwide in conflict areas. Doctors and health sector workers work together to provide assistance to populations in distress, to victims of natural or man-made disasters and to victims of armed conflict.
One area is to provide prosthetics for Syrian war victims. You can see the great work MSF is doing in the video (made by The Economist) in Amman, Jordan:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_W1veGQxMe4
Video by The Economist
LifEnabled: Enable. Train. Serve.
The genesis of LifEnabled was in a Guatamalan clinic in 2006 when Brent Wright, Certified Prosthetist and Board Certified Orthotist, was invited by Tim and Doris Spurrier, founders of Hospital Shalom in San Benito, Guatemala, to launch the hospital’s prosthetic program.It took several years and a lot of help & input from friends and family to grow the program to a level where LifEnabled became an official non profit organization.
You can read the full story here (and it is a good story!).
Brent is increasingly looking at 3D printing to test and produce prosthetics. In the past few years, 3D printing has made leaps in terms of printers and materials. Quality is of course always the main priority. While traditional prosthetic sockets will still have a place in certain situations, the opportunity to move forward with 3D printing paves the way for helping more patients with less material and time costs. 3D printing also allows the potential for more access to prosthetic care for patients in impoverished parts of the world.
We have been in touch with Brent recently and sent him our new PA-CF Low Warp to test with. The results are very good, as you can see in the video below:
LifEnabled video and images by Brent Wright
He printed a transtibial Prosthetic socket, weighing 208 grams for and with 2.5 mm wall thickness. In his words: “This material is amazing.” It took 3.5 hours to print.
But 3D printing is not the only “new” technology used by LifEnabled. They also use a dedicated app. Brent says: “I have been working on a simple way to create an .stl or .obj file that can be scaled and then sent directly into your fabrication work flow. DigiScan 3D uses the structure.io scanner and an iPad. Some clinicians have found that they use an outside shape manipulation software, others have found ways to scale their model and go straight to test socket fabrication, while others just want a file they can keep in their electronic medical records. I wanted a simple way to capture a shape and not push people to buy a specific shape modification software.”
Born Just Right’s mission is to build creative solutions that help kids with differences live a more enjoyable life. It all started with Jordan Reeves, who was born just right. She is the lead innovator and official ambassador of BJR. Through her activities and opportunities to speak and mentor other kids with limb differences, Jordan is helping change attitudes around physical differences. Check out the TedX Youth talk she held:
Now, as it happens Jordan has an super hero alter ego: Girl Blaster. And the most obvious thing Girl Blaster needs is, of course, a 3D printed prosthetic that shoots sparkles! To make it even more awesome, they called it Project Unicorn.
Born Just Right was founded by Jen Lee Reeves, Jordan’s mother. She believes giving kids design knowledge empowers them to create their own solutions. The focus of Born Just Right is on 3 outcomes:
Raise awareness about the power of design.
Identify and support inclusive designers & brands.
Support and grow a design community for kids and parents to help foster learning.
Jen works closely with Sam Hobish, designer and 3D printing wizard who made Project Unicorn a reality. The part was printed with our very own PLA/PHA Lila.
Jordan, Project Unicorn and Born Just Right have recently been featured in some worldwide publications:
And if you really want to stand out from the crowd, check out their shop.
From the Middle East, via Guatamala, to Missouri and all over the world, 3D printing prosthetics is changing lives. The world can be a harsh place some times, but it becomes great again when people – with the help of 3D printing, a lot of good will, an upbeat spirit and a healthy dose of creativity – start these organizations and make a change for the better. It is important and necessary work.
At colorFabb we aim to develop and produce the best possible materials for this application, be it semi-flexible nGen_FLEX, a high strength PA-CF Low Warp or a wide range of colors in our PLA/PHA and nGen range.
One application for 3D printing that we are seeing a lot of potential in is the the field of prosthetics. Of course we all know the good work that projects like Enable and 3D Life Prints are doing, but 3D printing is already being used in the field of prosthetics as we speak. We have been following the French company Mathis Orthopédie for some time now on social media and specifically on their Twitter page.
We got in touch with them to know a little bit more about this exciting application for 3D printing. They use 3D printing not for the final application, but instead for the phase before that to make sure the prosthetic is fitting well and make sure the measurements and comfort are perfect.
Customization is one of the key aspects for prosthetics since no body is the same. 3D printing offers this on an unprecedented scale, but of course it doesn’t end there. Skills in both fields of prosthetics and 3D printing are essential in combination with the right materials.
With over 40 years of experience in prosthetics, Mathis Orthopédie is one of the leading companies in their field. 3D printing enables Mathis to customize the prosthetics for each and individual customer. It also significantly reduces waste and increases speed to bring the right prosthetic faster to the person in need by 3D printing the prototypes.
We have already seen 3D printing providing dramatic changes in bringing prototypes to life, products to the market and even finding its way into centuries old technologies like investment casting, but there are few ways where 3D printing can make such a personal impact on people daily lives as with prosthetics. Below is Mathis’ company video where you can see partially printed prosthetics being tested:
The material of choice they have been using is our colorFabb_XT, made with Eastman Amphora™ 3D polymer AM1800. Launched in September 2014, it is a fantastic functional engineering material. With colorFabb_XT we achieved to produce a filament that provides good strength and toughness, as well as certain FDA food contact compliances. It has found a wide audience amongst users looking for extra functionality. with a temperature resistance of 75+ degrees, this filament offers high strength and very high toughness, odor neutral processing, a styrene free formulation, FDA food contact compliance and BPA (Bisphenol A ) free formulation. It allows the user, like Mathis Orthopédie, to produce 3D printed functional products in a safe way.
colorFabb_XT was our first co-polyester based filament. Our portfolio of co-polyester based filaments, made with Eastman Amphora polymers, has since extended with the all-round nGen, the high temperature resistant colorFabb_HT and semi-flexible nGen_FLEX. You can find more about what co-polyesters are by clicking here.
The functionality that colorFabb_XT offers makes it a great material for prosthetics, as Mathis Orthopédie is using it. For visual prototyping, one of the materials Mathis uses is our colorFabb PLA/PHA natural, which has become a standard in the past 4 years as an extremely reliable filament.
For their printers they use Ultimakers and a Delta Tower.
Mathis Orthopédie strives for excellence in all aspects of the prosthetics they offer and have chosen colorFabb_XT as their primary material for this application. Be sure you visit their website (in French) and follow them on Twitterand Facebook, where they regularly share their works in progress.
This is the third part of an ongoing series of blogs about companies that use colorFabb filaments in unique and exciting ways. Recently we published about AKLIH, the Slovenian design company who use our woodFill filaments for their products, and last week we wrote about Spectra3D‘s use of 3D printing for investment casting. If you are interested in being part of this feature, or know a company who would be suitable, please contact us at sales@colorfabb.com
