How to make your own ABS masterbatch (colorant) at home

In this Article I will share my experiment on how to make ABS colorant at home. I followed the same method used by the user Ggalisky @Solifum who used the same steps from the user Xabbax @ReRap forum, the idea is to mix two equal parts of raw ABS pellets and Acetone, add a few spoons of paint colorant, the mixture to be dissolved, dried then shredded later to be mixed at a certain ratio with your raw ABS plastic pellets in your filament extruder.

Three cats in a basket - Avaialble at Cults3D

How to make ABS colorant master-batch:

1- Dilute ABS pellets in Acetone

I usually take a glass jar and fill the half with ABS pellets, then put 2 coffee spoons of paint dye (pigment), I shake and mix well then pour Acetone to fill the remaining half leaving a little space, seal the lid with a plastic bag and close it tight. 

ABS Colorant Jar

Leave the jar closed for at least a day, shake it from time to time until it's completely dissolved into slurry juice, add more acetone if necessary.

2- Pour the ABS juice on a glass surface:

Once the ABS pellets are completely dissolved, find a large piece of glass, make sure it's clean as any debris will end up in your colorant, your extruder filter or filament and may clog your nozzle while 3D printing.

Pour the ABS slurry on a glass surface

Pour the ABS juice on it, try to make a thin as possible to be easy to peel and cut in the food shredder, I usually use my stove glass top and a plastic card to spread the juice, peel the sheets while they are semi-dried if your shredder is not powerful, otherwise you can wait until they completely dry and peel them.

3- Shredding and Sieving:

Straight to the food shredder. put the chucks you peeled and shred them, then pass them to any 5mm x 5mm sieve of your choice, you can download and 3d print a sieve if you don't have one.

Shredding the Dried ABS slurry

After sieving you will end up with a mix of powder and granulates of 5mm length that are compatible with with all home plastic filament extruders like the Filastruder.

Colored ABS Granulates

4- Drying the colorant powder / granulates:

The colorant granulates need to be dried before mixing with the raw ABS pellets, you can use any food dehydrator of your choice, or just put it in a box with a few silica gel bags. And voila! you have your own ABS based color master-batch powder or pellets, that are ready to jump in your extruder.

Mixing Ratio : 

The powder to be mixed at any desired ratio depending on the color contrast you are after, they suggest certain a mixing ratio, I did not follow that used my proper to judgement to add more or less colorant, the ratio was just the more you add the more contrast you will get, most of the time I just take a handful of colorant and mix it with about 1/2 KG of raw plastic pellets, something like what you see in this picture.

Masterbatch / Raw ABS pellets mix Ratio

Master-batch pellets:

In a funny accident to obtain new colors I added some water based paint and it did not dissolve in acetone, I was unable to fix this only by adding water and ended up with a patty slimy bulb, I couldn't find a way to cut it into pellets except by hand so I did it to clean the mess, it was the only way to save as acetone is a bit expensive.

ABS Masterbatch color pellets

Conclusion :

The process of making ABS colorant masterbatch at home helped solve the problem of the low melt flow rate that I faced with ABS MG47F extrusion,  now I'm able to make nearly any color I want including black color, this process allowed me to produce a cheap and high quality ABS filament that is close and even better than the commercial ones.

Mousy Cat model available at Cults3D

My next wish is to create a color gradient filament, I noticed when I change the colorant powder / pellets to a different one, I get a 2 color gradient that has nice and cool effect, in the next experiments I will try to find a way to exploit this to make two three or multi color filament.

In a separate accidental experiment, I was trying to make a metallic filament following the same coloring process above but using metallic paint instead of paint pigment, I ended up with something that looks like wood filament? It's a promising discovery that one could make special filaments at home which are based on ABS and not PLA, a wood filament that  looks and feels like wood but contains 0 wood particles, I will share more pics, detail and results in the next posts.