Just a quick question, does anyone know of a filament that is 18% Gray in colour (color if you are American!).
I need to print a prototype that will be cleaned a lot, so I don’t want to paint or spray it, as it will wear off quickly. It’s for hygiene use, so ideally needs to be in ABS or PETG - PLA might do, but only for a short time.
18% Gray is the white balance shade used to calibrate colour photographs, as it has the same colour density in the red, green, and blue spectrums.
If anyone can help, that would be fantastic - I can’t believe that given the interest in photography and 3D printing this isn’t already a thing!
It’s ultra specific and I’m not use to talk about colours in terms of gray scale percentage, so I don’t know what colour it is. But if you can find the RGB or hex colour code equivalent you might be able to find more easily the colour your looking for.
There is this website that might be useful. But take those color values with a grain of salt. Idk how they are taken and the scanned image looks always lighter (which is perfectly plausible but since I don’t know his methodology, I don’t know how accurate those colour codes are) https://filamentcolors.xyz/library/
You can edit the title (see pencil icon) and change the category. Your post doesn’t fall into a ghetto area, it will still be seen by all. The categories give context and sometimes clues to a question.
Well, sort of. That shade is used for exposure setting, not color calibration. What you are looking for is a “neutral gray”, which is something else.
So if you are looking for a neutral gray filament, there are probably some. You could poke around filamentcolors.xyz and find one with all the same hex numbers, like 4f4f4f. The equipment he is using always assumes the same illuminant but it’s shouldn’t matter for gray, usually those are just some mixture of titanium dioxide and carbon black which tend to be pretty flat spectrally.
That’s lighter then any of the gray filaments I’ve used.
I looked at 2 printed samples that I have & they weren’t as close as I thought.
For an actual printed file, you might want to look at some silvers.
I have used 3DE (Premium) and Spectrum Filaments PLA until recently.
3DE filaments have a specific given PANTONE value, whereas Spectrum Filaments use RAL codes.
I’m a professional photographer, but color me stupid, because I’ve actually never thought of testing whether their filaments are the correct value that they write in their specifications.
For color balancing purposes in photography, I’ve always just used my DataColor Spydr Checker 24, as it’s much more precise than only using 18% grey. It’s available on Amazon for around GBP 35 (I think I converted somewhat right, I’m more used to DKK, USD and EUR).
I know this isn’t exactly what you were asking for, but it was the closest I could get. But due to the difference in color response between cameras (fx. Canon and Sony, which are as far away from eachother as any 2 brands can possibly get), I need the other hues for a more precise color calibration and profiling, so 18% grey simply doesn’t cut it. Btw., I use Sony and I’m a former Sony Imaging ambassador.
I assume you know that you can go ahead and ignore everything that has to do with hex colors, due to the nature of additive vs. subtractive colors.
Hi, did you ever find the right filament for what you were looking for? I need something similar for white balancing underwater, not sure if just a light/medium grey will work though.
No, I used a work-a-round - There was no suitable filament available. The custom colours were only available in PLA. I glued a section cut from Datacolor Spyderchecker 24 onto my device. You might want to consider the same but use resin or similar to waterproof it…
