Frequent change between ABS & PLA

[finnhahn 0]

Hi,

we are still waiting for our UM2 for our company .

I have some experience with 3D printing myself.

A thing i learned was that frequent material changes can result in a clogged hot end. How is the experience i that respect with the UM2?

Would it be a good idea to have separate nozzles for ABS and PLA? Or is it rather un-problematic to change between these two materials?

Thanks for any replies

Kind regards,

Finn

 

[ian 32]

Hi Finn..

Most users decided between PLA and ABS and then stick to one or the other.. mostly ! :-)

BUT

People that do swap between one and the other often have varied experiences with small clogging that can be cleaned out with a syringe or big clogs wherre the whole nozzle hotend has to be cleaned out by hand.

If you think of having two seperate nozzles for each material.. be careful with the idea.. it takes a quite some time to take out the nozzle out of the existing hotend design and replace it... and also you want to be very careful when putting things back together.. the fans are delicate.. well the back one mostly and if you accidentailly trap any of the loose wires in the hotend between the black plastic housing.. there is a big chance you can cut the power cables...

So honest recommendation.. stick to PLA or ABS....

or option 2... buy yourself 2 ultimaker2s !! :-)

Ian :-) :-)

 

[jonnybischof 60]

If done correctly, there should be no problems switching between ABS and PLA. It does take some time, and wastes a bit of material every time - so you may want to switch as little as possible just for these reasons.

Switching nozzles is quite a bit of work though, I doubt you'd want to do that every time you switch materials. Also, this would be a lot of unnecessary stress for the threads.

If you are going to use your printer professionally and regularly, you might consider buying two printers - one for each material.

This may seem exaggerated - but at some point your time will probably be worth more money than the printer:

If you save a considerable amount of (work-)time, then using two printers without the hassle of switching materials, you may come out saving money in the longer run.

And another possible good reason to have two printers: You have redundancy - If one printer breaks, you have another one that still works. Don't forget that it may take a few days (or weeks) until you get spare parts. I hope that'll change soon, but at the moment it's quite the problem for "business users".

I'm doing something similar at the moment (setting up a second printer). But for me it's more a redundancy thing, and the fact that I need "quick output of multiple parts" capability..

/edit

Ian was quicker than me

But good to see that we had similar thoughts

@Ian: We should ask Ultimaker for sponsorship for suggesting people to buy more Ultimakers

 

[finnhahn 0]

Hi,

thanks for the replies. In the long run we for sure will consider (and most certainly buy) an second or third printer.

I just wanted to avoid any problems in the start up phase where we maybe want to experiment with different materials for different purposes. Therefore this question came up.

I didn't know the nozzle was that hard to reach - changeable nozzle = no option then!