Dogs Playing Poker - Filament Painting

Dogs Playing Poker

I adapted A Friend in Need as a 200 x 200 mm filament painting. Thin layers of filament build the image, including the green card table and the dogs gathered around it. The surface is stepped on purpose. Printer and filament changer

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

This is not a layer-swap print. Every colour layer uses several filaments in different spots. You need a printer that changes filament automatically during the print. A four-slot changer needs one manual spool swap at the pause after the base. There are no other manual swaps. - Other compatible Bambu printers with AMS or AMS lite: should work, not tested by me. - Prusa MMU3: should work, not tested by me. - Prusa XL tool changer: should work, not tested by me. - Prusa CORE One with INDX: should work, not tested by me. - Creality CFS: should work, not tested by me. - Anycubic ACE Pro and similar automatic filament changers: should work, not tested by me. Filaments and slots

Load these PLA filaments in the project's slot order: - Slot 1: Bambu Lab PLA Matte Charcoal for the base. Replace it with Bambu Lab PLA Matte Ivory White at the pause. - Slot 2: Bambu Lab PLA Basic Yellow. - Slot 3: Bambu Lab PLA Basic Green. - Slot 4: Creality Red.

Substituting a filament changes the finished colours because its colour and opacity affect the layers above and below it. Other reds are not tested by me. The single pause

On a four-slot changer, the print pauses once, right after the 0.56 mm Charcoal base. In the Bambu project, this is before layer 3, about 30 minutes in. The printer first changes to another filament to free the Charcoal slot. At the pause, remove Matte Charcoal, load Matte Ivory White in the same slot and resume.

For a Prusa MMU3 or a five-tool Prusa XL, the plain 3MF lets each filament part use its own slot or tool. Assign Charcoal, Yellow, Green and Red as above, then Ivory White to slot or tool 5. No pause is needed. This setup should work, not tested by me. Files and setup - Open dogs-poker-bambu.3mf in Bambu Studio or OrcaSlicer for the preset project. OrcaSlicer should work, not tested by me. - Use dogs-poker-generic.3mf in another slicer. Keep the parts together in their original alignment and assign each to its matching filament. On a four-slot setup, Charcoal and Ivory White share slot 1, with the pause and slot reload after the base. Other slicer setups should work, not tested by me. - Print flat, with 100% infill and no supports. I recommend textured PEI. - Use a 0.4 mm nozzle. The base is 0.56 mm of the first filament, followed by 0.08 mm colour layers. - The Bambu project uses two 0.28 mm base layers. In another slicer, use a first layer that is a multiple of 0.08 mm, for example 0.16 mm, followed by 0.08 mm layers. A layer boundary must land exactly at 0.56 mm. Put the four-slot pause immediately after that base. - Do not scale, rotate or re-level the plate. The stepped surface is the picture. Print notes

The included one-wall profile takes about 8.9 h and uses 48 g of filament. I have not tested the two-wall profile, and it is not included. Credits

A Friend in Need, from the Dogs Playing Poker series, Cassius Marcellus Coolidge, 1903. Public domain.

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. Licence

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC). Print it for yourself or as a gift and share it with credit. Please do not sell the files or prints.