Designed and manufactured by 3D printing experts and husband-wife-duo James and Brie, The Print Codex is a definitive color guide for popular print filaments. Comparable to a Pantone Shade Card for 3D printing, The Print Codex acts as a reference bank for matching colors of printing filaments to real-world objects, so you always know which filament to use to get the right hue every time. Each box contains anywhere from 17 to 25 swatches, all meticulously labeled for your own convenience. When you find a color you like, refer to the details on the swatch and load that filament into your printer for perfect, color-matched results.
Designer: The Print Codex
Given how comparatively new 3D printing is to other forms of printing (paint, screen-printing, inkjet, laser-jet, etc.), it lacks a certain level of standardization. You don’t have precise color libraries for 3D printing yet, the way you’ve got Coloro, Pantone, and RAL libraries for other forms of color/paint application. The Print Codex is the first step to creating such a guide, with James and Brie planning on expanding the collection even further to make it the ultimate go-to resource for all 3D printers and hobbyists.
The swatches come in a nifty 3D-printed case that makes them easy to store and refer to whenever you need them.
Realizing that they often ended up needing such a resource, James, the 3D printing expert, and Brie, the master of color got together to make the guide for themselves. The ever-expanding guide currently contains popular filament options from three filament makers – Prusament, Bambu Lab, and Polymaker. The filaments are sourced by The Print Codex, who then print swatches out for you to refer to. Each swatch comes with a unique design that highlights the filament’s color and finish, has two degrees of thickness (so you can see its opacity too), and has a label that details the maker, the range, the color name, and the identifying number on a label. Finally, a hole in the corner lets you attach the swatches to a keychain ring in case you want to ‘bind’ them the way Pantone binds their shade cards.
The Print Codex’s Kickstarter is now live, allowing you to purchase anywhere from 17 swatches to a total of 63 swatches across all three different brands. Each collection comes in its own 3D-printed box with slots to store your swatches in, as well as dividers that allow you to categorize swatches by brand name. If you want to print your own swatches too, The Print Codex has made the swatch 3D model available for download on Printables.
