My tests with dual extrusion

[viralata 78]

So here are my tests and impressions about dual extrusion:

As I said in another post, the wiki is very good, just lack the fact that you need to update the firmware.

The only problem I have is visible in this picture:

It seems my long screw are too short, making the plates not horinzontal at all. It's printing like that, but it doesn't look professional at all :???:. I was wondering about shortening the 2 black plastic spacers to give more space so that I get a more leveled plates. Any problems with that ?

It seems, like 3Dcase said it that the second hot end Diameter is not taken in account by cura (13.11.2) I had underextrusion problem with my filament in head 2 and no way to solve it by lowering the diameter. But increasing the flow solved it (and no big trouble with over extrusion of hotend1).

For calibration I used this : https://www.youmagine.com/designs/dual-extrusion-calibration-and-first-test, it's easy with a caliper to get the approximate offset, here you can see the first print and after calibration:

Now that I understood this under extrusion problem and the use of ooze shield and wipe tower, I will post soon my first real print.

 

[Dim3nsioneer 557]

[...]

It seems my long screw are too short, making the plates not horinzontal at all. It's printing like that, but it doesn't look professional at all :???:. I was wondering about shortening the 2 black plastic spacers to give more space so that I get a more leveled plates. Any problems with that ?

[...]

 

As you have a 3D printer, there is an alternative to shorten the spacers... :wink:

I printed mines 1 or 2 millimeter shorter and now the bottom plate is more or less horizontal...

 

[3dcase 37]

So here are my tests and impressions about dual extrusion:

As I said in another post, the wiki is very good, just lack the fact that you need to update the firmware.

The only problem I have is visible in this picture:

It seems my long screw are too short, making the plates not horinzontal at all. It's printing like that, but it doesn't look professional at all :???:. I was wondering about shortening the 2 black plastic spacers to give more space so that I get a more leveled plates. Any problems with that ?

It seems, like 3Dcase said it that the second hot end Diameter is not taken in account by cura (13.11.2) I had underextrusion problem with my filament in head 2 and no way to solve it by lowering the diameter. But increasing the flow solved it (and no big trouble with over extrusion of hotend1).

For calibration I used this : https://www.youmagine.com/designs/dual-extrusion-calibration-and-first-test, it's easy with a caliper to get the approximate offset, here you can see the first print and after calibration:

Now that I understood this under extrusion problem and the use of ooze shield and wipe tower, I will post soon my first real print.

 

Well..

I should talk you into printing this thing. https://www.youmagine.com/designs/dual-printhead :cool:.

But that's up to you..

If you need longer bolts or something anyhow, you might as well, try the next best simple thing to get a more solid and stable printhead.

Buy a piece of threaded M3 rod. ca. 4 times the length of the long bolts +15mm.

Find 12 M3 nuts with a few washers, ( spare ones from your kit).

From the bottom up:

4 pieces of M3 rod in the Aluminum Plate.

A nut on each rod to clamp the 6 mm wooden bottom plate against the aluminium, to keep the Teflon in the hotends and isolators.

On top of the first nut a second one. will be on the bottom of the 4mm piece of wood.

the 4 roads go up trough the printhead. on the topplate you put the 3rd nut.

Now you can clamp the printhead together separately from the hotends. and move the for rods up and down the printhead by adjusting he nuts.

The adjustments will last a lot longer. because the hotends always seem to hit something of the print.

The tension in the filament will not move the nozzle anymore.

You might loose 3mm more in printing height. because of the 2 nuts in between the alu and wooden plate

So check your Z endswitch!

Suc6

H

 

[viralata 78]

Thanks for the advice, I think I will use the second advice for the moment.

Any way, here is my first print:

More pictures on this post:

http://umforum.ultimaker.com/index.php?/topic/2346-first-tests-of-architectural-prints/?p=28444

 

[burki 1]

I'd like to share my experience with the dual extruder kit, too.

First of all:

Ultimaker team, and Daid especially, you did a very nice piece of work there. Thank you!

In detail:

Assembly worked fine, i had no issues there.

Calibrating took quite some time, as expected, but i managed to do that, too.

So today i wanted to try my first print with PVA as support material.

Printing the PVA works nicely, with no problems. After it started steaming a bit at 210° i lowered the temperature of nozzle 2 to 200, with beautiful results.

Now i wanted to test the cura feature to use the second extruder for support material.

In the expert settings i set the fill amount to 30, the distance X/Y to .1, and the distance Z to 0, since i would like to have the support material actually touch the printed object.

I also set the support type to "everywhere", and the support dual extruder to second extruder.

The print as such works well. Although i guess i still need some playing around with the PVA.

However, i noticed some strange behaviour.

First of all, i cannot find a difference in the tool path view betreen the two settings "tocuhing build plate" and "everywhere".

In fact it seems that the "everywhere" setting does not work and instead the "touching build plate" setting is always used.

Plus, cura does not create support for the vertical loop, although in my opinion it should, even in support type "touching build plate".

So, all said, the dual extrusion kit is really cool, and it works fine with PVA support material, but in order to get the support material to be everywhere you want it, it seems to be necessary to create a second object for the support material and merge them.

That is the next thing i will test.

Hope that is of any help for anyone.

Wish you happy holidays!

(find below a screenshot from Cura. It looks the same both for "everywhere" and "touching build plate")

 

[3dcase 37]

Hi Burki,

You might want to read this post, it's concerning support as well.

You could try version 13.10 for now.

 

[burki 1]

Which post do you mean, 3dcase?

 

[3dcase 37]

Which post do you mean, 3dcase?

 

Sorry,

was hunting the turkey...

http://umforum.ultimaker.com/index.php?/topic/3818-cura-slicing-error/