Do the z- abs , z-ultrat and the new z-hips filaments actually really contain and white pigments or is their whitish appearance just their "natural" look?
If so I would like to know if there is any possibility to have a white (or more ideally a very, very bright grey) which has real pigments in it and is therefore not so translucent.
The reason is that because of the translucency right now i have to put on a considerable amount of paint with my airbrush, it takes like 3 layers and is sometimes quite difficult when working on small cavities and alike.
With a higher pigmented bright material this would be much, much easier or not in some cases not necessary at all...
I also believe that painting with other colors would benefit from a solid bright base on which they would be applied.
It takes a lot of pigment to create a truly opaque white... (but it can be done).
Pigment is significantly more expensive than the raw material. So most shops are only going to be putting in the minimum required pigment to get an acceptable result. When we had injection-molded housings that contained an LED, it was obvious when the LED kicked-on that the material needed more pigment. The injection-molding shop wasn't too happy about that. Makes me think grey/black is a better choice for light-housings than white. But that said, the injection-molding shop was able to increase the pigment use to get us a truly opaque white.
I also observed that the e.g. Blue and grey filamemts are way less translucent then the white… It is clearly visible to see even without back light the eye really has difficulties to focus on the surface of the white materials. … when you give the print a light coat of paint from an airbrush suddenly all kinds of surface structures become visible…
as I said, now I am waiting for my hips, I hope in regards to opacity it will perform better, I have some hope in this regard, because it says “matte” in the Material properties table…
Hey guys:) I have also been struggling with white filaments, so Andreas You are not alone in this ;)
I bought some other white filaments and experimented a little bit and this is what I found out:
1. You can decrease the translusency of z-abs (not a lot, but still...) by putting acetone on it with a brush. It creates somehow a white opaque layer on the surface. It is really hard to get off afterwards. It looks aweful on colored abs (https://www.dropbox.com/s/5d3le8vmza6uf3z/2014-12-16%2001.10.16.jpg?dl=0), but seems quite nice on white. Especially, that it stays more in valleys, bringing out the shadows (if You are interested in bringing out the detail in sculptures or something). I usually get rid of the glossy effect by brushing the surface with a metal brush.
2. It is quite an interesting effect to print Your model hollow and pour plaster inside. This way you reduce overall translucency, bringing out the detail, but the surface still is translucent enough to hide layers and just look nice. But this method actually adds time and effort, so If You want to shorten the whole process, You just should use some other filament.
I did some experimenting and this is what I ended up with:
1. Some Laybrick filament I ordered, It has chalk in it, so it is really matte. . Personally I think it is too matte, You can get the same effect just by hitting the surface with a primer...
2. Barrus White. This is my favorite. Translucent enough to look nice, butt still opaque enough to see the detail of the model. And it has similar printing temperature to z-abs, so printing is easy.
3. Z-ULTRAT. Detail more visible than in Z-ABS. I put it in here though it is not really white, but I like the yellowish effect.
I remember back at the start of the year white Z-ABS was much whiter than it currently is. And there was some discussion on the forum regarding this. I actually have a print sample with this white and it looks awesome. The latest one I have still looks good, but because of the translucency you can't see the detail clearly.
