Hydrographic printing, or in layman’s terms, water transfer printing, has been around for ages and is widely used. The technique starts with a printed sheet of transparent film, which is then set on a tub of water and chemicals, leaving the film of color floating. You then dunk your object in, and the color wraps around and bonds with the object. However, this method’s biggest limitation is that it isn’t precise, as there’s no way to control where the color will wrap. In comes technology, and researchers from Zheijiang University have come up with an ingenious way to combat this limitation — by simulating the paint stretching that happens during the dunking and printing it beforehand. Called “computational hydrographic printing,” the software calculates the expected stretching given an object’s immersion, distorting the color pattern accordingly. Check out the video below, which outlines the entire process and can definitely change how we see 3D printing by offering a method to easily add color.
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