Prime Tower, Single Material

[AbeFM 35]

Is there any way to have the prime tower print with just one extruder?

 

The majority of my problems stem from underpriming my PLA, or my prime tower failing as every single bond is dissimilar materials... And I don't have trouble extruding PVA without priming anyway.

[gr5 2,267]

Oh.  This.  This would be a good feature.

[Dim3nsioneer 558]

If you have a problem with the adhesion between the two materials you may want to increase the thickness of the tower. With 4mm you usually should not have any troubles for recommended combinations of Ultimaker materials.

 

[kmanstudios 1,120]

I think it would be an excellent choice. Kinda hard to always see possibilities, but to have the choice would be amazing.

[gr5 2,267]

Or ability to have 2 towers - one for each material.  And you can print one or both depending which material(s) you feel need the tower.

 

The downside is if you have two separate towers you are printing twice as much because currently it does this: change nozzles, then print ONLY ONE layer of tower, then print TWO LAYERS OF ONTO THE PART, then repeat.

 

With only one tower it has to print on the tower just after the nozzle change and again before it changes to the other nozzle.  Either that or the tower layers would have to be twice as thick as the print layers.  That would have a danger of heavy undextrusion on the tower and overextrusion the first few seconds of printing the part.

[AbeFM 35]

I forget where I posted this before, but I'd like to see two concentric towers: PVA as a "core" inside of an outer PLA circle.

 

Each material would be on top of itself, the glue would be well contained.

 

Two towers would work as well.

 

Lastly: A solid PLA core/surround, with the current every-other-layer tower inside/around it. Probably PLA in the center would work better - if there's a bad PVA layer you'll end up with blobs inside the circle, causing issues for next layer.

 

Quote

 

If you have a problem with the adhesion between the two materials you may want to increase the thickness of the tower. With 4mm you usually should not have any troubles for recommended combinations of Ultimaker materials.

 

 

 

 I've used up to 14 mm. I can get failures. I feel my material may be sub-standard, but fixing the towers makes sense anyway.

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Again, as PVA primes just fine, having ONLY a PLA tower would work for me. It's cheaper to use twice as much PLA anyway.

Edited May 18, 2018 by AbeFM

[kmanstudios 1,120]

The thing to keep in mind is that you would lose extra material as the towers would be required to print double layers to keep the heights consistent.

 

There are a lot of possibilities, but options should be available.

 

Edit: George may be right about what gets what as far as double layers go. The rest is more information to consider.

Edited May 18, 2018 by kmanstudios

[AbeFM 35]

I don't know about you, but my PLA costs a lot less than my PVA.

 

My PVA hardly needs priming, if at all.

 

A tower that was MOSTLY PLA would be strong and cheaper than 50-50.

 

 

Every other layer still has PVA, but enclosed/captured by a solid, contiguous PLA cylinder.