Color-managed 3D printing with highly translucent printing materials

Many 3D printing applications require the reproduction of an object's color in addition to its shape. One 3D printing technology, called multi-jetting (or poly-jetting), allows full color 3D reproductions by arranging multiple colored materials (UV curing photo-polymers) on a droplet level in a single object. One property of such printing materials is their high translucency posing new challenges for characterizing such 3D printers to create ICC pro files. In this paper, we will first describe the whole color-managed 3D printing work flow and will then focus on measuring the colors of highly translucent printing materials. We will show that measurements made by spectrophotometers used in the graphic arts industry are systematically biased towards lower reflection. We will then propose a trichromatic camera-based approach for measuring such colors. Error rates obtained in comparison with spectroradiometric measurements for the same viewing conditions are within the interinstrument-variability of hand-held spectrophotometers used in graphic arts.