Blog Stratasys J750: Color Selection and Texture Mapping in Polyjet Studio
If you already own, or are currently looking at purchasing a new Stratasys J750, you are aware that Stratasys’ newest Polyjet printer is now able to print in full color due to six material bays. This great new feature allows for greater product realism and more opportunities for combining materials. Today we will be talking about how to apply custom colors and texture maps to your parts in the new Polyjet Studio.
Polyjet studio has roughly the same functionality as the old Objet Studio with the addition of a new interface, and a color selection tool. We can first tell the machines which materials are loaded which will determine which color and material combinations are available. The left column is all the base materials, while the right is what is loaded in the machine.
Color Selection
Once we bring a model into Polyjet studio, a new property menu is unlocked. We can now choose some familiar properties such as finish, dimensions, model units, rotation, and scaling. In addition we also see that we can choose our colors.
Using the “Filter by” drop down, we can choose to pick our color using the Color Picker, or a variety of palettes based on what base materials are loaded. We can also manually type in RGB values to select specific colors as shown on the right next to the color picker.
Just below the Opacity bar, we can also see what the actual printed part color will turn out as vs. the selected color you picked on the selection tool. Certain colors come out quite close to the selected, while some colors are slightly off. It’s a nice feature to have to make sure you are printing with the color you want.
If you have a build with multiple shells or multiple parts on a tray, you can repeat this process with each individual shell/part.
Texture Mapping
In addition to choosing custom colors for each shell, we can also apply textures to parts to create even more realistic prints. This is as simple as creating a VRML file with the desired texture applied to the model and using the “Insert VRML” button in the “Insert” drop down. Again, depending on what colors you have loaded will determine how closely the printer will match your texture.
Owen Lu | Applications Engineer – Additive Manufacturing