If you’ve ever paged by the shade samples at the hardware keep striving to match a particular shade, you know how really hard it can be. Not only are there practically limitless shade variations, but each maker has their possess formulas and tints. Generally moments, the only way to get the precise shade you have to have is to get it tailor made combined.

Unfortunately, which is not seriously an solution when it arrives to filament for your 3D printer. Will that roll of orange from Hatchbox actually match the orange from Overture? Which is where the Filament Librarian comes in. Created by [Joe Kaufeld], the task aims to catalog and photograph as several 3D printer filaments as doable so you can see just what you’re getting.

Now of study course, if it was as simple as on the lookout at pics of filament swatches on your computer, you wouldn’t will need this provider to start with. So what is the trick? A personalized automatic camera rig, run by the Raspberry Pi, is used to placement, light, and photograph every single filament sample in the library. So when [Joe] just can’t guarantee your keep track of is demonstrating a fantastic representation of just about every filament’s colour, you can at least be guaranteed they will all glimpse appropriate in relation to each individual other. So for case in point, the web page can assistance you determine out if the regional Microcenter stocks anything at all that arrives near to matching Prusament’s Galaxy Silver PLA.

[Joe] introduced a selection of his samples along with his slick camera setup to the 2022 East Coastline RepRap Pageant so attendees could see initially-hand how he provides a new filament to the databases. With an straightforward-to-use contact-screen interface, it normally takes just seconds to get the digicam prepared for the subsequent shot.

Now that he’s got the hardware and the procedure down, [Joe] is inquiring the local community to help out by furnishing him with filament samples to course of action. It does not get a great deal: all he asks is you snip him off a few meters of filament, compose down what it is and who will make it on a pre-created sort, and fall it in the mail. If you’re in the US, you can send out it instantly to his tackle in Indiana, and for these on the other aspect of the globe, he’s got a fall level in the Netherlands you can use.

We enjoy a fantastic passion task listed here at Hackaday, so here’s hoping that the Filament Librarian receives a lot of new filament samples from all over the earth to feed into that extravagant digicam setup of his.