Hi everyone. I’m not sure if this is the right place to post this.
I printed this real nice Formula 1car from Makernaut. I scaled it up and painted it for her favorite team, McLaren. It seems like the black color is really showing under the orange layers. It also appears like something strange is happening with the purge tower as well.
If anyone can please help it would be one of her favorite birthday gifts (hopefully). Let me know if I need to send over slicer settings or anything.
The tires are good but wanted to show off she’ll be running Pirelli Medium Compound. 
This is on an A1 with .4mm nozzle
Top Shell Layers = 5 and Thickness = 6
Orange is BBL PLA Basic and Black is Overture PLA Pro
Thank you in advance.
Orange is a translucent material when there are a few layers printed. Anything below it will be visible.
One way to limited this ‘bleed’ is to increase the numbers of walls and top/bottom layers.
It may also be how the painting occurs as the angle at which the black is applied means it travels to a centre point inside the model. If this means it has a tight angle of travel it may cause very few layers of the orange to site above the black. That brings us back to the first issue.
Ideally, the model would be ,add of parts you could select (in exploded view) or by selecting the individual elects in the objects list on the left. This would then only paint the shapes designed to take colour down to a predictable level which if assembled correctly would limit if not remove the opportunity for bleed.
Thanks. This is a single print in place model. Would I be able to do something like that. I also wonder if the prime tower is indicative of something wrong. The slicer preview shows orange going all the way up half of the tower but only see the little strings sticking out of the one corner.
Is it a 2 color print? If yes, why not go for 3 colors with the body being white and the painting done on top of that to eliminate shine through?
When painting, the surface tool only does the surface. The 3D sphere however also paints a volume below that. Beware of painting through parts or painting in tiny gaps though.
Otherwise, you may want to use modifiers but that can be even more work, especially where lines are curved.
Thanks Eno
I used the fill tool with the edge detection and smart fill angle. I’m not sure what that tool is called. When you say make it a 3 color with the body being white and paint on top of that would it still only show orange and black on the surface? I’m trying to keep it the team colors but it would be better than the bleed through. I see what you mean about using the sphere. Does it paint the colors underneath the size of the sphere? I saw something about modifiers but don’t remember where it was or how to use. I think what i’ll do is try these tips on small pieces before going all in. Her birthday is tomorrow about this time and it is a 13+ hour print.
I really appreciate all the assistance.
When you look at it in the preview mode in the slicer, is there actually black being printed under the areas where black show through. If so, it is strange because I assume the main color of the model is orange and you are painting the black, so black shouldn’t be showing up in those other areas. If my assumption is correct about The main color of the print and there is no black showing in the slicer, than you probably have the flushing level between black and orange too low.
Hi satxmarvel,
Painting in the slicer is a tiny little bit like painting on paper. A lot more color is needed to get vibrant colors on a black piece of paper than on a white piece of paper. However, if there is locally only a single colored layer of black, it may appear a bit gray. And of course, 3 colors rather than two mean more filament changes and hence a longer print time.
The sphere does set a color for a volume rather than a surface. So it defines it also for the underlying material. If the sphere is larger than the local part, it’ll color straight through though. Similarly, when zooming in for tight spaces, it can happen that you inadvertently paint areas of the model that you did not initially intend to color. But you can see that fairly quickly if you know that you need to look for it.
Considering timing, it is perhaps your best option to do the edge lines with the sphere, slice and see if that helped enough to give a good model. Otherwise, once the edges are done, the remaining area should be quicker to paint with the sphere.
Since you do not actually need many layers to eliminate this bleed through, you can use quite a fine “brush”.
Modifiers can be helpful for simple paint jobs. But I think your model is rather complex for the tools available there. Maybe for the wing and the straight line on it. In the preparation tab, select your part, right click on it and then select “Add modifier” in the pop-up window. It offers simple shapes which you can size, move, rotate, etc to the volume where you want to apply modifications. You can then toggle the Global<->Part slider to select the modifier and, by right clicking, assign a different filament. Quite useful for simple colors but much more useful to locally change all kinds of slicer settings like infill density/type, speeds, line numbers, surfaces, fuzzy skin, …
Hope this helps,
Eno
When I opened up the model it was all black and I started painting orange over it which sounds like a major problem from the start. When I get home i will try working starting from white and see how that works. I can also grab a couple screenshots.
Thanks again for the help
Start with a full orange model and paint the black. Don’t bother with white. It will print faster and should be fine.
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Man Eno, Thanks much!
I am going to have to go through this tonight and see how to do some of this. I really appreciate everyone taking the time to help me. I’m resigned to the fact that the complete “proper” one won’t be done by tomorrow but she will get this one and we can watch the Monaco GP together.
