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Users of the HueForge full-color lithophane software are likely familiar with the rigamarole of testing the transmission distance (TD) values for their filaments. This measure of a given filament’s transmissivity of light is essential for achieving true-to-life and accurate colors in your final lithophane prints.

For the most part, testing has involved printing swatches of the desired filament and measuring how light penetrates it in a self-assembled rig that uses LEDs. While such devices, including HueForge’s official TD Step Test, get you to your TD value, you have to print out the swatches and input the values (which are subjectively determined) yourself.

Ajax-3D, however, has devised a better option. The TD-1 is a device that will near-instantaneously generate the TD value and give you the hex code for a given filament, too. Displaying on its LCD screen, it straight up gives you the correct number, eliminating the guesswork and material overhead from manual testing.

Better still, this little box of tricks plugs into your computer via USB and interfaces with the HueForge software directly, populating the fields in the software automatically. Even better still, all you need to insert into the TD-1 to do all this is a short scrap of unused filament– no printing necessary.

It’s early days for the TD-1, and at the time of writing, many of the resellers selling it are awaiting restocks, after seemingly selling out of early batches quickly. Complete units cost approximately $80, with component kits ringing in at $40. Polymaker, an official partner of HueForge, is one such reseller partner, bundles the TD-1 for free with sales of 10 spools of its Polyterra and Polylite filaments, which isn’t half bad considering the likely inevitable investment in filament required for photorealism in your HueForge prints).

Those wishing to source their own are in luck. Ajax-3D offers self-source licenses for the TD-1 as a reward for a $10-tier Patreon subscription (which they point out can be canceled immediately if you only want the files). Remaining as a subscriber bags you updates to the project and fresh licenses each month to build more. The printable files can be downloaded via Printables.

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License: The text of "The TD-1 Takes The Tedium Out Of HueForge Filament Setup" by All3DP is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.