Dual Extrusion

[SoWa]

Looking to start printing dissolvable support material to open up the capability of my Rostock.

Has anyone had any success running two nozzles on their Rostock? Any hot ends you guys recommend, or recommend staying away from?

I currently have an HE280 on my V2/3, would like to keep the autoprobing feature if possible.

[Jimustanguitar]

I can't get their website to load right now, but have you seen the Y adapter that the guys at SeeMe started selling? Basically you can put 2 extruders on the same hotend and retract back behind the Y and feed in the other filament to switch back and forth.

[AlanZ]

I am running the SeeMeCNC's single nozzle dual extrusion on my v2.
This video might be useful
https://youtu.be/A_a9GofByKY

[gchristopher]

I ran 2 E3Ds side-by side (chosen over the chimera purely because the chimera wasn't out yet) to print using dissolvable filament.

It worked fine, with a small amount of fiddling with relative heights and firmware. One trick I found for getting the heads perfectly level was to put several layers of paper as washers in the mounting screws, which was rigid but compressible enough that you could get that last 0.01mm vertical accuracy. That the Rostock V2 was accurate enough that 1 hundredth of a millimeter adjustments were noticeable and repeatable was pretty impressive.

Really, by far the hardest part of dual extrusion right now is the slicing software. There's no freeware available slicer that excels at good tool planning, purge tower or wipe shell generation, etc.

For the Y-adapter, kraeger's work figuring out tool change g-code looks to be the key to success with PLA. That thread describes an extruder retract - pause - extrude - FAST long retract sequence that appears to create a clean break in the retracted filament without leaving a dangling filament string. That probably points the way to finding a jam-free tool change sequence where changing filaments in the Y adapter doesn't leave any material behind to jam. I haven't seen anyone post a similar breakthrough with ABS.

Depending on your controller/firmware/slicer combination, getting it to do tricks like that will be a large part of the effort. I saw someone using a post-slicer perl script to add gcode to create the tool change and purge towers.

I'll be working on a Y-adapter ABS attempt once I'm done replacing a damaged RAMBo with a Duet Wifi. Or rather, the dinosaurs will be doing that while I cheer them on.

[pouncingiguana]

Dual Extrusion on the Rostock w/ the kit from SeeMeCNC is pretty good. Fair warning: There's a known bug in the firmware that shows up every once it a while causing it to throw a random tool change and switch extruders. The bug only happens when the printer is connected via USB, so on long (or critical) prints, make sure you print from the SD card. Other than that, it's been great.

[SoWa]

Should have been a little more clear about my intent. I need to be able to also print support material with higher temp materials. To my understanding this rules out the Y adapter as the hot end would have to cool and heat between filaments.

I use Simplify 3D, to my knowledge it handles dual extruders fine?

I have been leaning towards the chimera hot end, but am unsure if maybe there is a better option?

[KAS]

Prometheus System is another Y-adapter solution. https://www.distechautomation.com/produ ... eus-system
although, the Seemecnc Y kit is much cheaper.

In S3D on your FFF/Scripts/"Tool Change G-Code" you can add Dwell time.That will help with the heating up during changes. http://reprap.org/wiki/G-code#G4:_Dwell
Cool downs would be handled with the filament transition tower/purge and the above dwell times.

S3D supports up to 6 extruders, each with their own temperature profiles.

[sandcrab3]

Does anyone with the Y adapter for Dual Extrusion on the Max V3 have Simplify 3D set up to print with this mod? If so, can you provide your settings?
Thanks In Advance

[pouncingiguana]

Should have been a little more clear about my intent. I need to be able to also print support material with higher temp materials. To my understanding this rules out the Y adapter as the hot end would have to cool and heat between filaments.

I use Simplify 3D, to my knowledge it handles dual extruders fine?

I have been leaning towards the chimera hot end, but am unsure if maybe there is a better option?

You can still use a Y adapter for this. It'll heat and cool the hot end at tool change (usually less than 10 seconds).

[SoWa]

Should have been a little more clear about my intent. I need to be able to also print support material with higher temp materials. To my understanding this rules out the Y adapter as the hot end would have to cool and heat between filaments.

I use Simplify 3D, to my knowledge it handles dual extruders fine?

I have been leaning towards the chimera hot end, but am unsure if maybe there is a better option?

You can still use a Y adapter for this. It'll heat and cool the hot end at tool change (usually less than 10 seconds).

I ran this by Tom from taulman and he said it probably would not work.

Has anyone fit an E3D Chimera hot end on a Rostock?

[mhackney]

Yes. I used the 713Maker effector and Chimera mount. You should be able to config Repetier and RAMBo but my experience is with Duet and RepRapFirmware. I've also done the Kracken on a Rostock V1 - that was quite the experience.

[SoWa]

Yes. I used the 713Maker effector and Chimera mount. You should be able to config Repetier and RAMBo but my experience is with Duet and RepRapFirmware. I've also done the Kracken on a Rostock V1 - that was quite the experience.

Is it worth the effort? Talking to a lot of different people, and it sounds like it's not an easy task.

[mhackney]

No multi extrusion is "simple" and only you can determine if it is "worth it" or not! If you have a legitimate problem you need to solve and multi extrusion is the solution, then it can be made to work. I can't speak for Repetier on RAMBo though as I have very little experience with that except for the Kraken a few years ago.

From a "mechanical" perspective the installation of the Chimera and effector and config in firmware (even on Repetier) is not difficult. Tuning it, learning how to slice and actually printing has a significant learning curve.

[ivanhandler]

I finally got my dual extrusion kit working. Made a mistake loading the firmware. I also use Simplify3d and it does change extruders exactly as I want. But, of course, I am still having some problems. Here are some questions I have and what I am doing about them. Please feel free to comment.

• 1. What size pillar do you use? I am using 25mm, it seems to work, but I worry I am wasting filament.
  2. Do you use the same layer height on the support side?. I just went to half size since it appears that it should take 2 pillar layers for every model layer.
  3. How big a temperature difference can PVA take? I don't like the idea of putting in a wait time and a different extruder temperature, that will really slow things down. Any experiences here will be greatly appreciated.

[gerdybug]

I seen this posted by sandcrab3. "Does anyone with the Y adapter for Dual Extrusion on the Max V3 have Simplify 3D set up to print with this mod? If so, can you provide your settings/profile?
Thanks In Advance"

I am in same boat, can anyone help with same question. I have tried to use the flashforge in the dual config wizard setting but it does not work and get a lot of gobbly gook in the command lines coding and printer fails fails, funny part is when I go back to Rostock Max 3D in wizard afterwards it will still show up as a dual but get ".x3g files are not supported on this version of machine" when I try to print. The Rostock Max V3 does not show up for an option for "dual".
And I did go in and try to manually and as extruder2(T1) but still would not print, would switch back to TO and then print and never change over to T1. Am sure it's all due to something simple I hope.
Thanks
Bruce

[PengLord]

Has anyone come up with a good Simplify3D profile for Rostock Max v3 with the Y-Adapter?
I tried it with mostly default settings from a fresh profile and it seems that the machine is retracting twice the distance (roughly) it should compared to how much filament it then extrudes, resulting in printing air much of the time.