For the past few months, the 3D printing community has been poking at a very interesting question: what if a multi-material printer were not limited to the colors physically loaded on it? And we must say it right now: This is a really awesome way to expand your 3D printing capabilities! In this article and video, we’ll show you how to print with dozens of color tones on any multi-material printer and how we made that possible. It’s a proper deep dive, so get comfy – you’re in for a ride! Let’s talk about the community – because that’s where it started. Solutions started appearing in slicer forks, test palettes, and increasingly convincing prints. Ratdoux’s OrcaSlicer-FullSpectrum showed how virtual mixed-color filaments could be created by alternating thin layers of differently colored materials. Justin H. Rahb’s filament-mixer helped predict what those colors might look like, and community projects like PeggyPalette made it easier to compare and share results.…