Consumer 3D printers, like MakerBot and the Cube, cost over $1,300 and can only print in one or two colors. If you want multi-color printing, you need to use a commercial grade 3D printer that costs $20,000 or more.

Well, electrical engineer and hobbyist Richard Home, decided to branch out and design his own method of “color blending”, a technique that turns a basic 3D printer into something much more capable. He started with the open-source RepRap design and developed his own extruder design, which he coined “RichRap.”

As featured in Wired:

Here’s how it works: The RichRap has three extruder motors feeding into one nozzle, or hot end. Each motor spools plastic filament into the hot end where it is melted, then deposited on a build surface. An operator could load a RichRap with red, yellow, and blue plastics and generate green parts by mixing the yellow and blue, or purple by mixing red and blue.

Watch the videos below to see Richard discuss his design and show off some of his color prints.