Japanese metal 3D printing service provider Ifuku Seimitsu produced a set of several sake-cups that have been coated with unique colors ibn order to prove that a colour is indeed an option for metal 3D prints.
While it’s been a huge topic in polymer 3D printing for years already, the issue of coloring metal 3D prints has not really emerged yet. That’s mainly due to the fact that cost dynamics in metal AM still made it hardly attractive for consumer products. At the same time, though, metals are end-use materials and metallic finishes are often aesthetically pleasing enough that they don’t need coloring.
For all of the praise that metal PBF AM technology gets for its ability to generate otherwise impossible geometries, it is often criticized for being difficult to color. Nevertheless, colored 3D prints likely become more common in the future and some of the issues related to effectively coloring metal parts may become the focus of more post-processing specialists.
