ColorFab process adds new colours to 3D printed objects

Using their own 3D-printable ink that changes colour when exposed to UV light, the team can recolour a multi-coloured object in just over 20 minutes.

The project is focused on plastics but the researchers believe that people could eventually change the colour of their clothes or other items.

“Largely speaking, people are consuming a lot more now than twenty years ago, and they’re creating a lot of waste,” said MIT professor Stefanie Mueller, who co-wrote the new paper about the system. “By changing an object’s colour, you don’t have to create a whole new object every time.”

Mueller co-wrote the paper with postdoc Parinya Punpongsanon, undergraduate Xin Wen, and researcher David Kim. It was accepted to the ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, which takes place in April in Montreal.

According to CSAIL, previous colour-changing systems have been limited in their capabilities, such as single-colours and 2D designs.