Reprapper launches the world’s first skin-color filament series covering 4 colors

[Echo Moo]

This July, Reprapper releases a new series of filaments. The new filament includes no new material, but a new special color of PLA and flexible filament. For 3d printing, material may be an issue to tackle, but color choice also matters. When the existing colors cannot meet new demands, diverse options should be exploited.

According to the customer feedbacks collected, we notice that skin color is one special color that many people wanted. One customer said that he wanted to print out a unique baby model when his child was born to memorize that special moment. But the current colors are not good enough as he wanted the skin color to look more real. Another customer (a medical researcher) mentioned that they needed filament with skin color to make models of human body for study.

So here comes Reprapper’s new skin-color filament series – PLA and flexible filament, each with four colors – skin pink, skin black, skin beige and skin white.

Do you like this new filament series? View here for more: http://www.reprappertech.com/blog/Sk...lament_Series/

Actually, we will hold auction activity on Reprapper’s website for this new filament series. The auction will be held every two days from July 14^th to July 31^st, whoever offers the highest price will get this special color filament. Also, whoever offers suggestion about our new product (send email to innovation@reprappertech.com) will get gifts from us.

[Sebastian Finke]

Opening a huge can of worms with this one, Reprapper is. Says a lot about a company when they release a skin colour range that has 3 shades of white and one 'black'. I'm sure Asians, Africans and many more across the world enjoy the lumping together as 'black' while shades of 'white' are catered for. (sarcasm)

[Sebastian Finke]

I actually found this range so offensive that I wrote to Reprapper. My email was as follows:

To whom it may concern,

Earlier I read an article announcing your 'skin colour filament series'. I was shocked at what I saw; three shades of 'white' and and one shade of 'black'. Is the Reprapper world really that small? Does it consists of mainly white people and perhaps a few black people? To release a range of filament under this moniker and blatantly ignore the large majority of the world's population, for whatever reason, shows a total disregard for other ethic groups and gives a glimpse into the mindset of the Reprapper organization.

It also smacks strongly of a colonial mindset where people were either white or not. One would think that in 2015 this thought process would have been eradicated by corporations but it appears that is not the case. Three shades of white have been catered for. Do these represent the focal shades worth providing? And does everyone else get lumped together as black? Is this a return to a 'them and us' mentality? I doubt that Asians, Indians, Africans, Native Americans (both north and south), to name a few will be flocking to buy your black skin colour filament. Not to mention people of mixed race...

At the very least this filament range smacks of social ignorance. At worst its an insight into an evil that has no place among us.

[Davo]

That is surprising. I'm surprised they haven't taken it down yet.

Kudos, Sebastian.

[DBFIU]

Call me naive but I don't see why you need to get bent out of shape because of this. What if someone wants to print a human-like figurine and just cannot find the right skin color? This would be a good option... Is there anything else to it?

[Echo Moo]

Dear Sebastian & To whom it may concern,

This is Echo from REPRAPPER TECH.

First of all, thanks very much for Sebastian's remind of our Skin-color filament series products. No matter positive or negative feedback, it really reflect some consumer's voice and we will take care of them. We may not doing our marketing well, maybe just lack of knowledge, but I hope you can understand, we have no any intention to disregard for any ethic groups. All of us should be fair. That is our base line.

Regarding to the skin colors. Let me told you how these Skin-color filament series developed. We developed these filament based on the following backgrounds.
1. There are skin color filament in the market. But all of their skin color filament only one color, pink to white. You can search in through the google with "skin filament". We think we should make more skin filament for more customers.
2. All skin color filament in the market is PLA. We think we can develop flexible filament which can make the touch feeling better. That is why we develop PLA and Flexible filament.
3. Our customer in Asia, Europe and US require us to develop skin color filament. Considering their market demands, we temporary developed 4 kinds of skin color filament, that is pink/black/white/beige.

The beige is for skin more yellow, the black is for skin more dark, the white is for skin more white, the pink is for skin more pink. We know that we have not cover all of skin color. But from objective viewpoint, we have already enrich the skin color filament over the world. So here we want to say "Thank you" for all of your suggestions and feedback. We also want you know that we don't have any disregards of others. The four color are our customer current requirement. In the future if customer have more skin color needs, of course we are willing to develop them.

Because it is our new products. Here we also want to do some promotion of our new products. We have one question need to consult all of you; we also have one gift for all of you who answer the questions or provide good suggestions and send email to innovation@reprappertech.com.

One question:In order to avoid the further misunderstanding. Can somebody provide some suggestions of our skin color name? Maybe not skin black or skin white. Do you think what else should we use?

One gift: Any one who provide us some suggestions or feedback in this topic, you can send email to innovation@reprappertech.com and let us know your contact information, we can ship out one roll of skin color for trial purpose. You need to let us know what color do you want.

Anyway, now all of us work more deeply and more friendly and more effectively. Maybe we offend somebody unintentional, pls trust us that it is not what our mean. From business point, we just want to provide more and better products to enrich our consumer's selection. From personally, we just want to be your friend.


Best regards,
Echo on behalf of REPRAPPER TECH

[iDig3Dprinting]

We have struggled with this issue, we wanted to dip our toes in to the water of producing a flesh coloured filament for people to use for figurines etc.. In the end we produced 1 colour, it is essentially, as far as we can make out north western European Caucasian, which we did because I suppose that's our background and the majority in our market place. We are in part experimenting to see if there is a strong market for it, if so we will produce more and explore more.

skin tones.jpg

We got a lot of people who straight away started screaming racism, we were kind of hoping people would be a bit more mature about it than that. Reprapper have made a better commitment than us as they have produced more colours but it is slightly impossible, there are so many different colours of skin everyone is different. We spent a lot of time asking for peoples suggestions of colour, we had the above image on the site for quite some time so that we could start with the most associated with colour. we didn't get very far with that.

It was, and is, a bit of a nightmare issue, in the end we just thought that we should start somewhere. If somebody comes to us and asks for a different colour or has any suggestions of good skin tones to produce we are happy to oblige.

We are expecting to get slated for this response as well.

( NB/ And as an additional note, yes the image is not representative of all skin tones. )

[Echo Moo]

@iDig3Dprinting, thanks very much for your comments. Yes you are right, as a supplier, both of us want to satisfy all of our customer and consumer. We can try our best to meet their requirement but anyway we may disappoint somebody. Anyway, in the future we need to consider more deeply as possible as we can. You also do a nice job when you select flesh color. I think when more demands on variety from consumer, the more products we can provide to the consumer.
If you want to try our skin color filament, pls let us know. We can send some trial samples to you. We can share more information and accelerate 3D printing technology.
Echo from REPRAPPER

[iDig3Dprinting]

It is a whole can of worms, rightly and wrongly. Feel free to send us some samples.

[Davo]

Well, one could select ten or twelve tones from http://www.pantone.com/skintone for a start. Just not all from one end of the scale.

Just a suggestion.