Scarlet Macaw - Filament Painting

Scarlet Macaw

I made this 200 x 200 mm plate from a cropped photograph of a scarlet macaw. It is 1.28 mm thick. Thin translucent layers overlap to make the colours, and the stepped surface gives it texture.

Printer needed

This is not a layer-swap print. Every colour layer has several filaments in different spots. You need a printer that changes filament automatically during the print. The single pause below is the only manual spool swap.

I tested this on a Bambu Lab X1 Carbon with an AMS.

These other setups should work, not tested by me: other Bambu printers with AMS or AMS lite, Prusa MMU3, Prusa XL tool changer, Prusa CORE One with INDX, Creality CFS, Anycubic ACE Pro and similar automatic systems.

Files and slots

Open scarlet-macaw-bambu.3mf in Bambu Studio or OrcaSlicer. The project has the slots, layer heights and pause set. OrcaSlicer should work, not tested by me. For another slicer, use scarlet-macaw-generic.3mf, keep its parts aligned and assign each part to the matching filament.

Load the project slots in this order. All are Bambu Lab PLA.

• Slot 1: Matte Charcoal (11101) for the base, then Matte Ivory White (11100) after the pause.

• Slot 2: Basic Yellow (10400).

• Slot 3: Translucent Red (13210).

• Slot 4: Translucent Blue (13611).

The blend depends on each filament's colour and translucency. A substitute changes the resulting shades. Keep the translucent red and blue translucent if you want a similar result.

One pause on a four-slot changer

The print pauses once, immediately after the 0.56 mm Matte Charcoal base. Replace Matte Charcoal with Matte Ivory White in the same slot, then resume. In the Bambu project this is after the two base layers, before the first colour layer. If you rebuild the setup in another slicer, put the pause at that same base boundary.

With a five-slot changer such as Prusa MMU3 or a five-tool XL, use the plain 3MF and give every filament its own slot or tool. Assign the base to Matte Charcoal, keep Yellow, Red and Blue separate, and assign the white part to Matte Ivory White. No pause is needed. This should work, not tested by me.

Plate and layers

• Print flat, face up, at 200 x 200 mm.

• Use a 0.4 mm nozzle, 100% infill and no supports. I recommend textured PEI.

• Print a 0.56 mm base in Matte Charcoal, the first filament printed, followed by 0.08 mm colour layers.

• The Bambu project uses two 0.28 mm base layers. Keep its layer settings.

• In another slicer, use a first layer that is a multiple of 0.08 mm, such as 0.16 mm, followed by 0.08 mm layers. Make sure a layer boundary lands exactly at 0.56 mm.

• Do not scale, rotate or re-level the plate. The stepped surface is the picture.

The source slicer estimate is 13.5 h and 72 g.

Credits

Based on "Ara macao" by Quartl, Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ara_macao_qtl1.jpg), licensed CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/). Cropped and converted into a filament plate by Goldwin Stewart, with colours adapted for layered filament. 3D adaptation: CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).

Made with Polychrome (https://polychrome3d.com), the desktop app I build to turn pictures into multi-colour plates. You don't need Polychrome to print these files.