BIQU TD1S measures filament color for more accurate multicolor prints

The TD1S was built for the part of multicolor printing that wastes the most time: finding out too late that the filament on the spool does not match the filament in the print. BIQU’s new unit measured transmission distance and captured a true HEX color value, giving HueForge users a way to build filament libraries from real data instead of shelf-side guesswork. That mattered because lighting lies, translucent materials shift with thickness, and a close enough match on a spool could still look wrong once it was layered into a print.

3Druck highlighted the TD1S on May 29, and BIQU’s own store page put the device at $79.99, down from $89.99. The listing also showed 37 customer reviews with a 4.89 out of 5 average rating. BIQU said the device worked stand-alone, used an OLED display, drew power over USB-C, and offered Quick Capture Mode for fast material registration along with Continuous Capture Mode for monitoring filament during printing or even while spooling in production. BIQU also advertised ±7.5% TD accuracy, which put a hard number on a workflow that has long leaned on eye tests and test towers.

The company said the TD1S integrated with HueForge, which made it more than a simple color checker. HueForge’s own FAQ has required custom filament to be characterized by both RGB or hex and TD values, and Prusa Research has taken the same idea further by publishing HueForge transparency values and HexCodes for Prusament materials. Prusa’s guide says TD values range from 0.1 to 100 and show how much light a filament lets through. That kind of input data is exactly what has made filament planning more repeatable for color-matched prints, especially when the goal is photorealistic layering rather than just a rough multicolor effect.

AJAX 3D said the TD1S was a partnership between AJAX 3D and BIQU, or Big Tree Tech, and described it as a smaller redesign of the original TD-1 that kept the same firmware and same core components while swapping printed parts for injection-molded ones. AJAX 3D also said production of the original TD-1 had stopped as the TD1S was finalized and released. That lines up with the broader direction of desktop color workflows, where Bambu Lab’s Bambu Studio already supports multi-color printing and filament mapping. The message from all of it was clear: if filament color is part of the print, measuring it is becoming part of the job.