3D Printing Magnetophoretic Displays

TL;DR

This paper introduces a cost-effective method for creating interactive magnetophoretic displays on 3D printed objects by modifying FDM printers and developing a custom editing pipeline.

Contribution

It presents a novel pipeline combining hardware modifications and software tools to produce editable, magnetically responsive 3D printed surfaces.

Findings

Successfully printed and demonstrated various interactive objects.

Enabled external magnetic control of surface appearance.

Developed a practical workflow for end-users to create customizable displays.

Abstract

We present a pipeline for printing interactive and always-on magnetophoretic displays using affordable Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) 3D printers. Using our pipeline, an end-user can convert the surface of a 3D shape into a matrix of voxels. The generated model can be sent to an FDM 3D printer equipped with an additional syringe-based injector. During the printing process, an oil and iron powder-based liquid mixture is injected into each voxel cell, allowing the appearance of the once-printed object to be editable with external magnetic sources. To achieve this, we made modifications to the 3D printer hardware and the firmware. We also developed a 3D editor to prepare printable models. We demonstrate our pipeline with a variety of examples, including a printed Stanford bunny with customizable appearances, a small espresso mug that can be used as a post-it note surface, a board game figurine with a computationally updated display, and a collection of flexible wearable accessories with editable visuals.