New Technique for Coloring Complex 3D-Printed Objects

In industrial production, there are many ways for decorating 3D surfaces. These methods, including chemical- and electro-plating, decals, enamels, and manual painting, can be limited by complex surface geometries. Hydrographic printing is a well-known industry technique for transferring color inks on a thin film to the surface of a manufactured 3D object. It enables high-quality coloring of object surfaces and works with a wide range of materials, but does not have the ability to accurately register color texture to complex surface geometries. A team of researchers from China's Zhejiang University and Columbia University propose computational hydrographic printing, a computational augmentation of hydrographic printing methods for physically decorating 3D surfaces with user-customized color textures. The technique enables precise alignment of surface textures to possibly complex 3D surfaces and textures.

Transcript

00:00:01 we introduced computational hydrographic printing a new method for physically decorating 3D surfaces with user customized color textures hydrographic printing is a widely used technology in mass production for transferring repeated color patterns to a 3D surface it uses a PVA film with printed color patterns put on top of water then

00:00:24 an activated chemical is sprayed on the film softening the color film to make it easily stretchable next a physical object is slowly dipped into the water through the floating film once touching the object the film gets stretched wraps the object surface and adheres there throughout the coloring printed on the PVA film gets transferred to the surface a fundamental limitation of

00:00:47 hydrographic printing is that it is almost impossible to precisely align a color pattern to the object surface because the object stretches the color film with complex surfaces the stretch can be severe and even tear the film AP part consequently current hydrographic printing is limited to transferring repetitive color patterns as shown in these

00:01:07 examples our computational hydrographic printing enables precise alignment of surface textures to complex 3D surfaces we build a controlled hydrographic printing system using offthe shell Hardware in this system the object to be colored is held by a gripper connected at one end of a vertically placed aluminum

00:01:27 rod driven by a linear motor the the rod can be moved upward or downward at a constant speed a 3D Vision system is integrated to measure the location and orientation of the object with respect to the color film our major contribution is a computational model to simulate Color Film Distortion during a hydrographic immersion our simulation model creates a

00:01:52 texture map between the colors on the film and the surface locations where they are transferred to we use this map to complete a color image for printing on the PVA film after that we print the film with a conventional inkjet printer place it on the water and finally conduct the physical hydrographic printing

00:02:35 here we compare the Digital model and the colored physical object generated using our method our method can be extended to handle complex objects by dipping the object multiple times each with a different orientation this is an example with three immersions e

00:03:30 let's see more results here is a zebra colored with two immersions we first show the virtual simulation and then the color result you can see our method generates precise alignment of surface textures to a 3D surface here's a bunny with complex surface textures hydrographic printing can be applied to

00:04:08 various materials including metal plastic and Porcelain in this example a porcelain cup is first scanned to get its 3D model which is then texture map by an artist finally the cup is colored using our method this is a statue object this example is a globe with an earth texture produced with a single

00:04:52 immersion thank you