Dyed Nylon Proof of concept

[Barefoothurst]

I have been playing with nylon and recently I attempted to dye it using RIT brand fabric dye. This is my first model sliced with Cura. I really like the Spiral Z setting. It makes for a Very smooth finish with no exterior seams. Here are the results. Its just a small proof of concept

[McSlappy]

That's incredible! It looks really nice.
So how do you setup your dyes?

[Barefoothurst]

Thanks! I pretty much did exactly what this guy did.
http://richrap.blogspot.com/2013/04/3d- ... nt-in.html
I dried my filaments on top of my home stereo receiver. It get nice and toasty warm.
On the printer now. I need to make the walls thicker. It's separating in some places.

[mhackney]

Another option - that is much better for nylon - is iDye Poly. It was developed explicitly to dye synthetic materials. It has some very nice bright colors that do not fade. It's cheap and easy to use too. I've been using it for over a year to dye polyester and nylon for fly fishing lines and more recently, nylon filament.

cheers,
Michael

[McSlappy]

Such gorgeous colours!

You dye your own fishing line? For what purpose - just to trick it out, or is there are more scientific reason?

[Eaglezsoar]

Such gorgeous colours!

You dye your own fishing line? For what purpose - just to trick it out, or is there are more scientific reason?

He wants to catch the fish that have died.

[mhackney]

Funny Eagle!

McSlappy, I have just published a book (literally just started taking orders for it on Friday) on hand-crafting fly fishing and tenkara lines with John Betts (a fly fishing luminary). One of the things I brought to the process was dying the lines to make them look like the beautiful silk lines that were made 100 years ago. Here's a photo:

[img]http://mhackney.zenfolio.com/img/s7/v16 ... 5943-2.jpg[/img]

Since iDye only comes in bright colors I had to figure out formulas to create colors like these:

[img]http://mhackney.zenfolio.com/img/s1/v5/p143389949-2.jpg[/img]

[carter]

how does this work? do you soak it over night? does it work with PLA?

[mhackney]

It works great, follow the directions on the iPoly, it takes about 10 minutes. Since PLA already comes in all the colors I need I have not tried dying it. Nylon only comes in white/natural so it made sense to investigate dying it.

cheers,
Michael

[gajtguy]

Its just a small proof of concept

That is beautiful. Nice job for a proof of concept.