I’m thinking of building a new printer and would love to be able to make 2 color prints or dissolvable supports. Does anyone have any experience with this. I see 3 paths.
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Two hot ends Pros: Most robust No retraction or filament waste Cons: Alignment issues. Reduced travel Dragging nozzle
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Dual filament hot end(taichi style) Pros: Easy to mount No offsets Cons: Jamming? Long retraction
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Y splitter Pros: easy to mount No offset Compatible with any hot end Cons jamming Super long retraction
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Have you looked into a filament changer like the enraged rabbit carrot feeder? https://github.com/EtteGit/EnragedRabbitProject
That’s pretty cool and I like the name. Looks complicated, but something that could be added later.
I got the SV04 a year or so ago. It is an idex printer. It is a giant pain in the ass. But when it works it is great. An advantage it has that the other options don’t. 2 different sized nozzles.
1 (Two hotends): Can be difficult to setup. Requires raising/lowering and ooze shield to lift and block the nozzle. Very reliable and no purging. My recommendation.
2 (dual filament hot end): Easier than option 3 but getting it reliable might be challenging and adds the constrain of filament cooking (requires extrusion of both frequently during the print or the filament/hotend will be damaged)
3 (y splitter): Requires a high-quality y-splitter and perfect setup. Very difficult to nail it reliably. Not recommended if it can be avoided.
more options:
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ERCF/MMU/AMS: Overkill for 2 materials and purge block required. Setup is as bad as two hotends.
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Toolchanger: Overkill for this. There are applications where they shine but for this general task they are expensive overkill.
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Mosaic pallet. Interesting option but expensive. No printer modification required.
2 shouldn’t have a problem with oozing or cooking since the second filament is not in the hot area.
2 is mixing hotends. What you describe is 3 (y-splitter with the splitting integrated into the heat sink). They suffer basically the same issues like an “external” y-splitter. You can get them to work but changing materials requires you to do all of the painful setup/calibration once more.
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That they don’t have oozing issues is correct but I never mentioned this in the first place.
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The main issue with 2 (mixing) is cooking the filament and slicers aren’t great at this (operational challenge). There are more pro and cons but I think in the end it boils down to two applications: 1. cheap to integrate. 2. While they are advertised as mixing hotend the result is on pair with dual color/extrusion filament.
No offense, but I made the list and didn’t include mixing hot ends.
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Personally I like the Jubilee tool-changing system, where multiple extruders are mounted on a rack and swapped between as needed. It’s what I plan to build at some point
That’s a cool way of doing it, but it seems like it would be difficult to align. In my case, I am thinking of doing a belt style printer, so that may be even more difficult to engineer.
They have a method of aligning it using machine vision https://jubilee3d.com/index.php?title=TAMV
The belt part would be a challenge though.
May I ask what is Y splitter? Is that DIY version of 2.?
I would add 4. Idex printer and 5. mmu. Maybe even 6. manual filament swap (its what I use haha) and 7. Sharpie hack (rofl)
I never seriously considered getting one myself, but interested a lot. Following…
Edit: typo
Filament swap is not really a valid alternative when it comes to something like wanting dissolving supports. It’s only realistic if you want to change the color or material for a fairly large consecutive portion of a print. Otherwise you’re going to have to swap out the filament every layer.
Sharpie hack is also not a valid alternative hehe. These 2 were more like a joke, but for simple designs manual swap works like a charm. Swapping filament every layer would be honest work tho
Y splitter is something that goes in the middle of the Bowden tube to allow two extruders. Its similar to #2 but allows you to use any hot end.
How do you handle long uneven and “streched” filament end after full retraction? Sounds like 2. in hard mode
IDK, thats why I asked.
I’ve had my eye on this one ever since I saw it on Reddit years ago: https://www.3dchameleon.com/
It uses switches on the z-axis to kick off the filament change, not sure how it deals with stretched filament.
Interesting, thx for sharing
Never built my own but hear me out, I have years of experience with a Flashforge Dreamer, which falls under #1. I personally found the second nozzle a hinderance to even 1 color prints since it would often bump into partial prints if/when the printed layer height is raised even slightly higher than it should be. The common workaround to reduce that from happening is by raising the nozzle about 0.5-1mm away from the bed, but of course that then causes additional issues.
Don’t get me wrong, the Dreamer’s a helluva machine, but considering how rarely I had something I want to print (or could print) in 2 colors, I found the additional nozzle a waste. Eventually I raised up the hot end entirely, conceding it wasn’t worth the trouble, and I also removed the second stepper motor entirely to reduce weight & increase fidelity.
Don’t let me keep you from tinkering if your mind’s set on building one, but if reliability is the name of the game, I’d look for an existing solution like a kit or predefined plans and build your own design off of that.
Doesn’t Bambu have a multi-filament consumer printer?
@dpkonofa sort of. It’s a single filament unit with up to 4 material changers, each with 4 filament capacity.
How is that different? You can do multi-color prints and collapsible supports and multi-material prints which is what OP was asking for.
@dpkonofa It’s not, just being pedantic.
What is that?
Edit: Ahh… new announce. I wonder how different this is from the AMS system.
