Suggestions for the next Ultimaker

[Dilli 0]

Hey Ultimaker makers,

I was wondering about the next Ultimaker printer, I would be happy to see if the 3D printer can print 4 or more materials at a print. Maybe with 2 two or 4 print heads or fast interchangeable print heads. The slicing profile for 0.1, 0.15, and 0.2 mm diameter nozzle would also be appreciated. An autofocus camera too (if I'm not too greedy? ).  

That's it for now. 

Signing off

Dilip Chalissery

[KickahaOta 14]

I like the thoughts. Just bear in mind that a quad-extruder printer would be even slower than the Ultimaker 3, which is already considered slow. (The more machinery you've got in a print head, the greater its mass; the greater the mass of the print head, the harder it is to move it around quickly.)

 

If you're after lots of colors rather than different material types, an approach that prints CMYK colors on the surface of a print -- like the 3D Systems ZPrinter or the DaVinci Color -- might be a better solution.

[Dilli 0]

I would like to print with different materials. 

 

In the case of increasing the extruder, which increases the weight of it, I would suggest that, let it uses the same system as Ultimaker 3, but each extruder gets two Bowden tube which may get connected with a "y" connector to the extruder, for example, where, when the 1st material is printed for the layer, the filament is retracted to above the y connector and the next filament advances to the extruder to print with the next filament, same case for other extruders. So, the speed and weight of the printhead remains the same and also gets 4 materials with the same printer.

[KickahaOta 14]

It would be really hard for routing multiple materials through one nozzle during a print to be practical. Sure, you can retract Material A and feed in Material B; but there's still going to be a significant amount of leftover Material A in the nozzle. Think about the existing process of swapping materials or print cores -- after making a swap, you have to move a significant amount of material through the nozzle before you start getting a good, pure extrusion of the new material. You'd wind up wasting a lot of material and time if you had to do that multiple times during the print, especially if you had to do it during every layer.

 

And, of course, if the print temperature of the materials is different, things get harder.

[JRDM 5]

Even just two materials causes headaches that stack on top of normal printer problems. There’s more points of failure and there’s no ideal way of doing it, just a bunch of competing strategies that have their own trade-offs.

[GigaWaTT 1]

S5 features with a UM3 build size for a UM3+ price

[JohnInOttawa 104]

Well, three things related to this that would help me:

 

1) the ability to print three materials simultaneously, specifically to support two model materials plus support like breakaway or PVA.  If the third nozzle was just for support, perhaps it would not need to be as feature rich as primary print heads/cores.

2) The ability to lay down continuous reinforcement in a manner similar to markforged, but of course respecting the boundaries of their patent. 

3) From the beginning of the print core concept I have wondered about the potential to have a completely different process use a print core station - something like a laser engraver or a light duty mill to improve surface finish or dimensional tolerance.

 

Hey, a man can dream, can't he? ?

John

[GigaWaTT 1]

An additional camera(s) and software that could detect a failed print based on the predicted silhouette of the print.  I've had print beds shift or prints get knocked over. It would be nice if this could be detected with cameras and software to alert or send a notification and possibly shut itself down to save filament and energy.