Dual Head Future upgrade ?...

[raffo333 0]

Hello, does anybody know if ,in the near future, it will be available a dual head upgrade ?... or it will be a brand new machine ?...

best regards

Raffo

[ddurant 0]

Dunno if it will be available soon but I don't see any reason why it'd require a whole new machine..

The printhead might have to change if more space is needed but I think the current design was intended to allow multiple materials/colors.

[Daid 306]

There is some room for dual extruders. But from what I heard on the Ulti-evening it didn't sound like it was high on the priority list. There are issues with the two colors mixing with each other during print because the 2nd 'drips' a bit. The makerbot dual extrusions are done in blue and green, which doesn't show very well when you blend the colors (blue + bit of green = blue, green + bit of blue = green) but if you mix black and white it really shows black strings in the white. (Not sure who told this)

Also the software for dual extrusion is still in the child phase.

[ddurant 0]

There is some room for dual extruders. But from what I heard on the Ulti-evening it didn't sound like it was high on the priority list. There are issues with the two colors mixing with each other during print because the 2nd 'drips' a bit. The makerbot dual extrusions are done in blue and green, which doesn't show very well when you blend the colors (blue + bit of green = blue, green + bit of blue = green) but if you mix black and white it really shows black strings in the white. (Not sure who told this)

Also the software for dual extrusion is still in the child phase.

I wouldn't mind having it for support material. The software side of that (in SF at least) has been ready for that for a while..

[mr_seeker 0]

Hello, does anybody know if ,in the near future, it will be available a dual head upgrade ?... or it will be a brand new machine ?...

I can only say that I am working on a research project for Ultimaker. Hopefully drop some jaws when my research is released. I am sure that its something you have never seen on a 3d-at-home machine

EDIT: Daid, you are right. The ultimaker was designed with dual extrusion in mind, but the dripping made it utterly impossible to print good prints. Take also in account that the bowden tube also causes a little bit of extrusion even when the thing is not extruding.

[ddurant 0]

I think the Bowden issue can probably be worked around, though it may be tricky. The real problem is that because the drive and hot end are so far apart, reversal has to compensate for the compression of the filament in the Bowden tube.

It seems like it should be possible to do this - sOmebody just needs to figure Out the right things to do. Other printers use virtually the same hot end and plastic; the difference is just the dIstance between the drive and hot end.

[ddurant 0]

I think the Bowden issue can probably be worked around, though it may be tricky. The real problem is that because the drive and hot end are so far apart, reversal has to compensate for the compression of the filament in the Bowden tube.

It seems like it should be possible to do this - sOmebody just needs to figure Out the right things to do. Other printers use virtually the same hot end and plastic; the difference is just the dIstance between the drive and hot end.

Yoiks. 'Scuse the "reply via cellphone while downing vodka/tonics at Chinese food" punctuation/caps..

[raffo333 0]

ok, could you at least tell as if it would be an upgrade or something totally new ?...

 

Hello, does anybody know if ,in the near future, it will be available a dual head upgrade ?... or it will be a brand new machine ?...

I can only say that I am working on a research project for Ultimaker. Hopefully drop some jaws when my research is released. I am sure that its something you have never seen on a 3d-at-home machine

EDIT: Daid, you are right. The ultimaker was designed with dual extrusion in mind, but the dripping made it utterly impossible to print good prints. Take also in account that the bowden tube also causes a little bit of extrusion even when the thing is not extruding.

[Daid 306]

ok, could you at least tell as if it would be an upgrade or something totally new ?...

I would expect an upgrade. You could even do it right now if you want. But you need to source and build some things yourself. Like a 2nd extruder drive. The latest marlin firmware understands multiple extruders, so that's prepared. There is room for a 5th polulu. And I guess you could order a "replacement" head from Ultimaker for the 2nd head.

But you'll be doing experimental stuff, so expect problems.

[raffo333 0]

an upgrade is good news for the old owners ! i am 90% ready to place my order

[mr_seeker 0]

ok, could you at least tell as if it would be an upgrade or something totally new ?...

Really hard to tell (took me an hour to think about the best way to say it). Its actually more than just adding a dual head. I would classify it as MTV's "Pimp my ride", where they take an old car and convert into a new one. But be sure that I (and the UM team) wont disappoint current owners of the ultimaker. Something I learned from school: "Never create something new if it already exists, but make it faster & better instead. It will save you a lot of time and disappointments later."

[raffo333 0]

ok, so as i understand it will be a major upgrade, a big one that will change allot the printer... not just + 1 head...

[mr_seeker 0]

ok, so as i understand it will be a major upgrade, a big one that will change allot the printer... not just + 1 head...

But keep in mind couple of things:

1. I cant say when it will be made public. Depends on the UM team.

2. Upgrading will be possible for all UM machines, so if you buy a machine now, you can buy an upgrade kit when it gets out. Its a promise of mine. Else UM gets stuck with a lot of stuff that they cant sell.

3. There is a possibility that it will never make it into the market. Its a prototype, not the next-gen ultimaker. Its same with the UM+, it never made it into the market, because of the next rule.

4. Ultimaker wants to deliver quality, not quantity. If its not to quality standard, it wont get on the market.

And before I forget, the UM team has 2-head printers, but they dont comply with rule 4...

[mizu42 0]

Hi,

any news on the dual extrusion thread?

Mi

[mr_seeker 0]

It works in repG, but thats all. However, you need to do some adjustments in firmware.

[Daid 306]

Hi,

any news on the dual extrusion thread?

Mi

I hopefully fixed mine yesterday. (With many thanks to Harma)

It's in the experimental phase. RepG34 from Ultimaker can do dual extrusion, but requires customized firmware. Cura-Development can do dual extrusion, which only requires you to enable the 2nd extruder in the firmware.

However, there is a big oozing issue with my Code so far.

[mr_seeker 0]

Mayor difference is the question if dual extrusion should be supported firmware side or software side... Which makes the difference in the way gcode is made.

[destroyer2012 0]

I feel like firmware side support is the way to go... just like how acceleration used to be software-side but then switched to firmware-side because it was faster. Firmware-side multi-strusion would give us more flexablity in terms of being able to specify idle modes, extruder specs, etc. After all, you are more often going to change your software than change the number of extruders you have. In my opinion.

[Daid 306]

Oh, support from the firmware side is fine. Would be a good way forward. But Cura currently doesn't depend on it, because the mainline Marlin firmware does have multiple extruder support, but not the tool switch commands.

I do want to propose the possibility to use multiple extruders at once. For example, E controls the current selected extruder, but A/B/C/D control extruder 1/2/3/4. This enables you to retract 1 extruder while pushing in filament in the other. Or print 2 of the same objects at once (object needs to be smaller then the distance between the nozzles)

[mr_seeker 0]

I do want to propose the possibility to use multiple extruders at once. For example, E controls the current selected extruder, but A/B/C/D control extruder 1/2/3/4. This enables you to retract 1 extruder while pushing in filament in the other. Or print 2 of the same objects at once (object needs to be smaller then the distance between the nozzles)

Agreed. However, do note that the ABCD values are not the best way to do this. Better is to keep as much standard as possible, using multiple E-values and multiple F-values, instead of using A-D.

[Daid 306]

ABCD are the extra rotation axes in GCode, see

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GCode#Letter_addresses

Not sure what you are proposing, but I was thinking about:

 

G1 Z-10 A-5 B+5 F300

 

To retract and push at the same time.

[tachyio 0]

I too would like dual extrusion, printing with soluble PLA as support would open up so many possibilities for my designs

But I do notice the Bowden Tube "lag" as well. When the extruder gear reverses, the hot plastic continues to drip out.

How do they combat this on the commercial printers? The hp 3d printer, design jet, uses FDM but prints with support too. So there's some dual extrusion magic going on there...

Or...just some imaginative thinking, could the extruder system be made to switch between filaments? Like those multi-cd loaders we used to have in our cars...that way one head can print multiple materials.

A friend of mine is thinking about using drums to print entire layers at once, like a laser printer only in 3d. Personally, I'm still stuck on the concept of DLP printing, but yeah resin cost is expensive, and having worked with it in a lab before, resins with UV cured photo initiators are not child-safe.

[destroyer2012 0]

In my opinion the only reason you would ever need to retract one extruder while pushing on another is to make tool changes. Thus, it could be a pre-programmed tool change sequence triggered only by T0 T1, etc. Although if we did that then we'd have to finally change the E command to be volume instead of distance. Which is really the way it should have been. Printing multiple objects at the same time might be useful for some things but no commercial machine does this, and I don't see why we should build our whole firmware-software architecture around something so specialized. Besides you could just put in a command to select all tools and still print multiple objects with only one E command per line (volume).

[Daid 306]

I too would like dual extrusion, printing with soluble PLA as support would open up so many possibilities for my designs

PVA is water soluble, it's a bit more expensive then PLA. But it works.

 

But I do notice the Bowden Tube "lag" as well. When the extruder gear reverses, the hot plastic continues to drip out.

This is fixable. This is an Dual head Ultimaker print:

http://www.thingiverse.com/derivative:27402

But you do not want to know how long the slicing took, as it was manually edited GCode to get it to work. (Not my print)

[tachyio 0]

Ah right sorry, PVA not soluble PLA...

Does anyone know where I can learn GCode? Is there a resource for this?