I’m extremely happy with the 3D printing services I use, but there are certain colors of plastic that they don’t offer. I bet you’d never guess that I’ve been looking for green.
I found these excellent instructions from Make: Magazine on how to dye 3D prints. I decided to give it a shot.
First I tried to brush off the pieces to make sure that any residual dust from the printing process was removed. Next, I soaked them in water overnight as recommended in the instructions.
The next morning I opened up the dye. I used Rit dark green fabric dye. I got this at a fabric store for
$1.99 plus tax. I put about a teaspoon of the powder into a bowl. I got some water boiling and then added the water to the bowl. I added the pieces and let them soak for about 15 minutes.
The water had cooled off a bit too much and so the pieces were not as dark as I would have liked at this time. So I repeated the process, and added hot water a couple more times. The whole process took about 30 minutes, but it will go faster next time now that I realize how important it is to keep the water hot.
Finally, I dried them off a bit and then rinsed them off to make sure any residual dye was off. Since these are jewelry pieces I didn’t want excess dye getting on anyone. And since these pieces have some corners and details, there definitely was some dye leftover on them.
The pieces seem a little more substantial now, not sure why. For the most part they turned out as good as I’d hoped. On the large pendant, there is some “marbling” going on with the color. Some of the ridges left over from the 3D printing process turned out darker than others. This might not be desireable for all pieces, but it looks kind of cool on this one.
