Mimaki's Matthew Stark: 'In Full-Colour 3D Printing, Timing Is a Huge Thing'

Mimaki unveiled its 3DUJ-553 full-colour 3D printing system back in 2017. Nine years on, Mimaki USA 3D Segment Manager Matthew Stark says the hardware has barely changed, but the applications and market conditions certainly have.

In a wide-ranging interview with TCT Magazine, Stark reflected on what the original vision for the machine was, why the company had to abandon it, and where full-colour 3D printing is actually finding commercial traction today.

The Original Dream That Did Not Work

When the 3DUJ-553 launched, Mimaki's pitch was full-colour 3D signage for commercial environments. The image was of massive, hyper-realistic three-dimensional figures for streets, malls, and showrooms. But Stark is candid about why that market never materialised at scale.

The math was brutal. A full-colour sign of any meaningful size weighs a lot, and almost all of that weight is ink. Ink is expensive. At the quantities required for large-format signage, the cost per unit was simply too high for the commercial projects Mimaki was targeting.

So the company pivoted toward products where the ink cost was justified by the value of the object. Medical models were the first obvious fit: a surgeon reviewing a life-size anatomical replica before a complex procedure does not care what the print costs. Prototyping was another. The speed advantage of getting a realistic full-colour model the same day, rather than shipping files to China for painting and waiting weeks, transformed certain product development workflows.

Who Is Actually Buying These Machines

The medical story is now well established. Stark says Mimaki has seen significant uptake in anatomical modelling for surgical planning and patient communication. That is a market with effectively no price ceiling on quality and accuracy.

Shoe companies have been another surprising customer. Brands use the 3DUJ-553 to produce colour-accurate mock-ups at small scale, replacing hand-painted prototypes and dramatically shortening design review cycles. Furniture designers do the same thing for client presentations.

FunKo, the collectible company, has had a Mimaki full-colour printer since launch. Stark explains that FunKo uses it for more than just full-colour collectibles: they also print models in the exact colour of their injection-moulded production plastic, then hand-paint them to confirm the colour match looks right at scale. They also print full-colour versions to take to toy shows without telling anyone the figures are 3D printed.

Full-Colour Remains a Niche

Despite the progress, Stark acknowledges that full-colour 3D printing is still firmly in the professional and industrial category. The 3DUJ-553 is an expensive machine, and the running costs of the consumable ink blocks mean it will never be a hobbyist product.

He also noted that AI, data management, and the general maturation of the market are changing the calculus for new customers. As the surrounding software ecosystem improves, the friction of preparing full-colour models decreases, which should open new use cases.

The full-colour 3D printing market has not grown the way Mimaki originally predicted, but it has found real commercial homes. The story of the 3DUJ-553 is a reminder that hardware launches with one vision can end up serving a very different set of customers than anyone planned.