Awesome idea, just use markers to colorize white filament!
Nice idea, but is it safe to burn paint from markers? (Pigments for quality filaments are tested with higher temperatures.)
I guess I wouldn’t risk it with fancy printer, but with typical RepRap-based, where you can create and replace parts easily - I do not see much harm in trying it.
It doesn’t work as well as you hope. Just doing the math should tell you that. In a cross section of filament with black marked on the outside, you’ll probably have a 1μ film of black. But another (nearly) 2mm of material. The ratio of pigment to filament is just so miniscule that it becomes kinda worthless. You may be able to alter the pigment in your favor if you were using ABS and some sort of acetone-based black pigment, as it would soak into the filament before being extruded.
HOWEVER – Some people tend to coat their filament in an oil for use on certain all metal hot ends. I could see this being a good way to create a reservoir of sorts that you could fill every so often for use with PLA on all metal hot ends.
also the ink from sharpies is caustic to ABS. I left the marker touching my filament between prints and the filament broke going through the extruder.
It makes nice pastel prints and does cause the filament to break if you leave it in. I tried this years ago and liked it.
I have ‘painted’ little sections of filament as it went in and ya, it makes sort of pastelly colours
I’ve tried it with my own transparent filament made from Natureworks Ingeo PLA 4032. Black becomes almost opaque. Red, blue and green turned out quite transparent. The problem is coverage as there is no blending in the extruder head. Here is one image of my result: http://blog.filamentfabriken.nu/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/DSCF2459s.jpg
@Bjorn_Ringholm , this actually looks awesome! thank you for sharing your results! (if you have account with http://thingiverse.com - consider to upload your result into this thing “makes” so others could see what can be achieved)
@Pavel_Karoukin I did my own pen holders: a Dual Bix2300, a dual edding 4095 and combined Bix2300 / edding4095 last spring. I tried to combine a coloured and a white marker (edding4095) but the result was not encouraging so I dropped it at that time…I’ll upload the STL’s to thingiverse if you want to check them out.