Pause at height to change nozzle size

[jonatanrullman 17]

Hi everyone,

I know there is a script to pause the print so that you can change the color.

I have a project where it would save enormous amounts of print time if it was possible to do the first part with a 0.8mm nozzle and then switch to a 0.25mm and another color for the detailed top parts.

I assume that this cannot be done purely by a script in cura but would it be possible to slice the exact same setup twice and splice the two parts together perhaps?

These items will be printed with 100% infill which would probably help since the two halves of the print would not need to take the position of infill into account.

Cheers

[owen 19]

Yep possible by that method with Simplify3D and should be in Cura.

I printed some Dog Tags. Bottom half 1.7mm high with White XT 0.6mm nozzle. Top half 0.3mm high starting at 1.7mm height of course with Black XT 0.25mm nozzle. The top part had a void for the text so the white showed through.

I did it by hanging around when the bottom half finished. Turning the heatbed back on (though you could get the gcode to leave the heatbed on). Swapping the nozzle and purgeing the new filament and then starting the new print. All done in 0.1mm layers.

Need to ensure your nozzles are the same height and the top half has Brim turned off.

Owen

[jonatanrullman 17]

Yep possible by that method with Simplify3D and should be in Cura.

I was just trying to google simplify. Do you know if it is possible to change the nozzle size in the process settings or do you still have to edit the gcode manually?

[neotko 1,417]

Yep possible by that method with Simplify3D and should be in Cura.

I was just trying to google simplify. Do you know if it is possible to change the nozzle size in the process settings or do you still have to edit the gcode manually?

Edit gcode??

You can set it or use a 'fake extrusion' width.

Dont mind the red square this picture is from other post

[jonatanrullman 17]

Edit gcode??

You can set it or use a 'fake extrusion' width.

Well. Now I have to get simplify...

[neotko 1,417]

Well you can fake the extrusion up to a point. For a 0.4 nozzle with bowden I could go down to 0.32 without issues, but with the ZGE I can go down to 0.27-0.28 for fine details.

But from 0.8 to 0.2 or something like, is a big leap, you can't control the extrusion from a 0.8 to 0.2, most probable the lowest you could go is 0.6 (with same nozzle).

The problem of changing the nozzle in the middle of the print it that most probably you will make small changes to the Z of the nozzle (might be noticeable or not, depends on how good you reassemble it) but also when installing a new nozzle you affect the X/Y, and that's hard to avoid and will be noticeable quite fast.

Since you want to test it anyhow, you can do all that's being said here, use pause at Z, etc etc. To set the line width, on current cura you can also set the Line Width for different parts of the object if you 'split' it. You can't change the layer height on Cura just because, but on S3D you could do both, change the layer height, and nozzle width to make it decent. Like for example using a 0.6 nozzle faking 0.4 and printing 0.6 the fast areas while also you could mix different layer heights.

About how I use S3D to optimize layer height and areas you can check this video

To do something more basic on Cura you can split the object in different parts, use merge, and then ctrl-click and assign different Per Object Settings for each part something like this: