HueForge On The Zero

[Liberty4Ever]

I use 3D printing to make functional parts, usually things I create in FreeCAD, so using the 3D printer for arts & crafts was a new experience for me.

I had lunch with a friend who was visiting for Christmas and he gave me a cute Grinch ornament that he printed on an Ender3. He’s in the process of moving out of Los Angeles, so I used GIMP to replace Kurt Russell’s face on the iconic Escape From LA movie poster with my friend’s face and used that art to make my first HueForge.

The original movie poster:

The image I altered to have my friend’s face:

The 140 mm tall HueForge that I printed on the Sovol Zero:

I used black, red, yellow and white Rapid PLA+ and the print took five and a half hours with three manual filament changes. I can see where a multi-filament printer could be handy for doing 3D printed art, instead of me baby sitting the printer to manually change the filament.

There was a learning curve. I first tried printing the HueForge with the 0.6 mm hardened steel nozzle that I usually use for ABS-CF, printing with four colors of ABS. The first attempt was a proof of concept and I’m surprised that the large nozzle produced something I could recognize. I switched to a 0.2 mm nozzle, and printed 0.05 mm high layers to improve the resolution and color blending. I used a raft underneath to thicken the HueForge and to make a small black frame around it (cropped from the above image). The last three prints were mostly improving bed adhesion with the tiny nozzle and making minor adjustments in the HueForge software to slightly alter the colors in the HueForge print by changing the number of layers for each color.

I have low expectations for any art that I produce, and I wasn’t disappointed.

The precise little Zero was ideal for printing this small HueForge. I didn’t run it at the insane speed it can print but it was good to have a fast printer so this very detailed fine layer print didn’t take all day.

HueForge is currently the only software that I use on my computer that isn’t open source, but it definitely has an open source feel to it. If you don’t like paying for software, PolyMaker offers a discount code equivalent to the price of the HueForge software, so you can get a free roll of PolyMaker filament when you buy the HueForge software.

[Matt]

That looks quite good.

[Lion]

I can’t run the program on my computer because of the Nvidia 640 Drivers.
I’m glad I emailed them before I bought it.

I used to print them on my SV06, but I only use the A1 Mini for them now because of the AMS Lite.
I will PM you the settings I use, maybe you can adjust them for the Zero.

[tingo]

Kromacut is an open source alternative GitHub - vycdev/Kromacut: Open source HueForge alternative
(no, I haven’t tested it)

[MikeHides]

@Liberty4Ever

HueForge

@Liberty4Ever that print looks really good, Escape from L.A. “Snake Pliskin”. I have been using Thermal and UV color changing PLA to mess with coloring various character prints and tealight boxed lithophane photo concepts. I was not even aware of Hueforge and it’s ability to achieve a look like that. Thanks for sharing, this looks like another fun project to try out!

The colors of your print made me think of a low poly dragon character I printed that sits on the top vent of my PC which uses this AMOLEN Tri Color Thermal PLA that will gradient change from black, orange, yellow based on the temperature (30c > 45C) of the air being pulled off my PC.
Also tried to get a similar effect using CC3D UV Changing Filament which resulted in a few failed lithophane tests… Hueforge multi filament, interesting!

Really, thanks for sharing, that came out looking really cool.

Cheers,
-Mike

[Liberty4Ever]

I have a LOT to learn about the artistic side of 3D printing. It’s not my cup of tea but I was pleased that I could get decent results on my first attempt. People with more artistic sense and more HueForge experience are getting much better results. @Lion was kind enough to share some HueForge tips and settings with me.

I can see using HueForge as a fast way to separate colors for signs, equipment labels, placards and other functional graphical prints. There are Blender tricks and GIMP tricks that would also work, but the HueForge software is more of a general purpose solution that easily works for color blended photos as well as color separations for solid color artwork, and it’s designed for 3D printing so it allows me to control the number of layers and it outputs an STL directly. I might be integrating HueForge into my functional 3D printing. I also might want to do another art 3D print, and my wife is artistic so she may want me to make a HueForge for one of her art projects.

Mostly, I wanted to post this experience as an example to others of something else they can do with their Zero.

While the 0.2 mm nozzle is installed, I’m experimenting with PETG and TPU-LW filaments for high resolution functional 3D prints, but I might try printing an art miniature even though that’s not my thing. It’s good to try new stuff.