USB-C is fairly standard and almost everyone orders it with their Framework laptop being the default I/O standard for data, power delivery, and video output. Swapping that shell into different colors is significantly cheaper I would assume and more folks buying them in variety of colors.
While I haven’t seen an official explanation from Framework regarding the other expansion cards - they have unique internal molds, and offering them in multiple colors would mean acquiring/stocking a much wider variety of parts.. Since not everyone would buy them alongside their Framework, the added inventory complexity likely isn’t worth it for them.
As a side note, you can find some expansion cards to print on Printables.com. I don’t have a 3D printer, but had good luck asking classmates for 3D printed items that do have one
Maybe I was not clear because I don’t understand your answer.
I don’t want plenty funny random colors, I just would like the color of my laptop. If my laptop is light grey / dark grey, I want to choose light or dark grey expansions (not only for USB-C but for all expansion cards). If it is dark green / light green, same. Etc.
On that point I think the advertising photos are quite ambiguous : the only time we see expansion cards, there are USB-C cards so with the “adequate” color (only the light one, but still adequate).
In my case, I have now one light grey usb-c and three silver ones (hdmi, usb-a x2), so this is ugly…
Then, for the cost, I disagree : they already have the colors (because this is the color of the laptop), and it’s only one plastic part to “paint”, not the full expansion card.
I thought about buying many USB-C cards with adequate color, then change the plastic part, but it would be ugly to do that manually by shaping the plastic myself.
What would be cool, would be to know the right filament for all the different colors.
That would make printing them a lot easier. I remember in the last life stream they showed a type of pink filament that would match the bubblegum. I don’t know if a list exists somewhere though.
