If you're fed up with the drudgery of hand-painting battle armor onto your 3-D printed orcs and elves, then clear off some space on your work desk. XYZprinting has announced a table-top 3-D printer that spits out whatever figurine, model, toy, or tiny hamburger you desire in full, vibrant color.
The da Vinci Color printer uses ink cartridges to drop pigment onto each layer of plastic filament as it prints. The machine prints at a resolution of 100-400 microns, so the lines where two colors meet can get a little blurry when viewed up close, but the output is generally pretty impressive. It's basically an ink jet printer that outputs in 3-D, so the results aren't quite as sharp as a professional production job.
Most of XYZprinting's products are kid-friendly, and this new printer appears to follow suit. The company's XYZmaker design software is relatively easy to use and can print designs from all of the most common 3-D file formats (amf, ply, obj, stl, and 3cp). Operators of any age can download designs and add color, or construct their own pigmented prototypes from scratch.
Since the da Vinci Color is the first machine of its kind, it's not cheap. The printer alone costs $3,500. Beyond that, you have to buy four ink cartridges (cyan, magenta, yellow, and black) for $65 each, and you need special filament that works with the ink, which costs $35 per roll. May I suggest you print a full-color scale model of your private jet to display on the desk in your corner office?
