Tom Thomson Autumn Coasters, Set of 4, Printed in Colour

About the set

Four round coasters, 98 mm across and 3.44 mm thick, with Tom Thomson's autumn paintings. Nothing is painted on. The reds, oranges, golds, greens and the slate blue lake come from thin 0.08 mm layers of Translucent Red, Yellow and Translucent Blue stacked in different orders over Jade White.

They print face down, so the face that touches the plate is the picture. It comes off the plate flat, with the fine texture of the textured plate on its face, and the picture is plastic all the way through, so it cannot peel or scratch off. A plain white bezel frames each picture and runs the full height of the coaster, so the edge is clean white.

My real prints are grainier than a computer preview: the plate texture and the translucent filaments leave a fine speckle. The photos here are my prints.

Printer

I printed the pictures on a Bambu Lab X1 Carbon with an AMS. Every colour layer has several filaments in different spots, so the printer must change filament automatically during the print. No pause or manual swap is needed. Other printers with an automatic multi-colour system (Bambu AMS lite, Prusa MMU3 or XL, Creality CFS, Anycubic ACE Pro and similar) should work, not tested by me. They need a suitable slicer setup. I have only included Bambu Studio projects.

After my prints I changed the white back to 10% infill to save time and plastic. I have not printed that version yet, so the back settings are untested by me. The picture layers are the same ones I printed.

Files

thomson-1-autumn-foliage.3mf, thomson-2-soft-maple.3mf, thomson-3-autumns-garland.3mf, thomson-4-birch-grove.3mf: one coaster per plate.

thomson-coasters-2x2.3mf: all four on one plate.

These are Bambu Studio projects. They should also open in OrcaSlicer, not tested by me. A plain generic 3MF is not included.

Filament slots

Keep these slot assignments. The pictures were solved for how much light these four spools let through, so a different red, blue or white will shift the colours.

Slot 1: Bambu Lab PLA Basic Jade White (10100), the back, the bezel and the light tones

Slot 2: Bambu Lab PLA Basic Yellow (10400)

Slot 3: Bambu Lab PLA Translucent Red (13210)

Slot 4: Bambu Lab PLA Translucent Blue (13611)

Print settings

0.4 mm nozzle, textured PEI plate, picture side down, 65 C bed for the first layer.

Two height ranges are already on the object as a height range modifier. Do not remove it and do not change the layer heights, or the colours will be wrong: 0 to 0.64 mm is the picture, eight colour layers of 0.08 mm, kept at 100% infill; 0.64 to 3.44 mm is the white back, ten layers of 0.28 mm.

The back is set to 10% grid infill with 6 top shell layers and 3 bottom shell layers. For a fully solid back, set the infill to 100%. That costs about 9 g and 4 minutes per coaster.

2 walls, no supports, no ironing, no brim, prime tower on.

The project also carries printer settings, so Bambu Studio shows the printer preset as modified: no Z hop on the first two layers, wipe off, and a 25 mm travel distance before a retraction. Face-down pictures are the first layer, so these help it stay put.

Time and material

Slicer estimates for an X1 Carbon with the 10% back: one coaster takes 3 h 4 min to 3 h 21 min and about 29.4 g, of which about 20 g is Jade White. The set of four on one plate takes about 10 h 52 min and 99.9 g. With a solid back the estimates were about 38 g and 3 h 8 min per coaster, and 136 g and 11 h 10 min for the set.

Tips

Wash the plate with dish soap and water first and dry it well. The first layer is the picture, so it has to stick everywhere.

Dry the translucent filaments. Wet translucent filament strings across the face.

Let the plate cool fully before you lift the coasters.

PLA softens around 55 to 60 C. Cold drinks and warm mugs are fine. Do not put a mug straight from a boiling kettle on it.