Next Generation Colour 3D Printing
By James Busby
Our good friends at Mimaki very kindly sent us a selection of our scans printed using their latest colour 3DUJ-553 printer. The printer uses a full-colour UV LED curing method that allows for up to 10 million possible colour combinations. Obviously, this has a lot of applications in various industries but what we were most interested in was seeing how this translated to digital humans. As you can see from the images below the results are fantastic! the color reproduction and resolution is a huge step up from anything that we've seen before.
The scan used here is a version of our male 01 cleaned model which for those of you who are interested is available here.
Here are some useful links for you::
- Mimaki website www.mimakiusa.com/products/3d-printers/mimaki-3d-printer/
- I.materialise website (order prints using the 3DUJ-553) https://i.materialise.com/blog/multicolor-plus/
The printer has 3 print modes 20 , 32 and 42 micron layer thickness combined with 8 individual print heads for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black Clear and 2 water soluble support materials. Here are the official specs
| Build Area (W × D × H) | 20 x 20 x 12 inches (508 x 508 x 305 mm) |
| Max. Build Weight | 154.3 lbs (70 kg) |
| Color Range | More than 10 million |
| Print Mode / Resolution / Thickness | Fast / 600 dpi / 42 micron Standard / 800 dpi / 32 micron High Quality 1270 dpi / 22 micron |
| Curing | Water-cooled LED-UV lamps x 2 |
| File Formats | OBJ, STL, PLY, 3MF, VRML |
| Circulation | Internal print head ink circulation |
| Interface | Ethernet 1000 BASE-TX (Gigabit) |
| Safety standards | VCCI Class A / FCC CLASS A / ETL (UL60950 compliant) CE marking (EMC Directive, Low Voltage Directive) / CB certification / RoHS compliant / REACH |
| Operational environment | Temperature: 68 – 86 °F (20 - 30 °C) Humidity: 35 – 65% RH, non-condensing Accuracy guaranteed temp.: 68 – 77 °F (20 – 25 °C) |
| Power | Single-phase 100-240 VAC, ±10%, 50/60 Hz ±1 Hz ×3 (Main unit 1 / Monitor 1 / External PC 1) |
| Power consumption | 1,630W or less (Total) |
| Outer dimension (W × D × H) | 88.6 x 59 x 61 inches (2250 x 1500 x 1550 mm) |
| Weight | 1323 lbs (600 kg) |
The head scan shown below was captured using an earlier version of our T-180 capture stage using around 80 cameras just for the head.
If you have any questions please feel free to comment in the box below.
8 Comment(s)
Hi, I'm interested in buying a copy of this color head, is it for sale? Thank you
Hi Pedro I'm sorry, it's not for sale at the moment just a prototype :)
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That's impressive!! 250000 printer pricve. But I really dig the result!
Thanks, Samuel, yes the printer is pretty expensive! But I guess its one of the few machines around capable of these sorts of prints.
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Hi. On the sample of human head, did you polish after printing? or the printer does the job as as same quality as what the human head sample is?
Hey Daniel, I didn't personally do any finishing to the print this is just how it arrived in the post :)
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Hi. Great results with the prototype ink application, I hope this takes off at a reasonable price. We use mimaki printers & they are brilliant. Keep us updated.
Thanks Dean! Yea it works really well. I really want to see a life-size head now :)
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I am very interested becoming a reseller in the US for your printer and product line.
Hi Kevin I'm afraid we don't manufacture the printers, these are just some prints that were sent to us by Mimaki
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The model is fantastic, but why is the printed one looking forward, and the head scan looking to the right? Are they different heads? they look different.
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What do I say about your posts? It's really nice that you create it so amazing and also give the whole information so well. That is so helpful to make things like that. This information is valuable for most of the users.
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