Duel Extruders- Is it worth the effort?

[Holy1]

Hi Everyone,

I have had my Orion and Rostock Max V2 long enough now to want to get into Duel extrusion. I have read many posts but I haven't seen many, if any, pictures or videos of any successful prints.

For the people that have done it, is it worth doing? Do you use it regularly? It seems challenging but I am up for that.

I would really appreciate some feedback.

Thanks
Happy Printing!

[Nylocke]

I think that it would be worth it if you have a way to design parts that would benefit from it. The main problem is the slicing software doesn't support it super well, the best dual extrusion support I've seen is Cura, and even a few bits in it need some work. The other major problem is most people don't have a dual machine, and so there aren't a lot of people designing cool things to take advantage of the dual extrusion. I think right now one of the most useful features of dual extrusion is the PLA/PVA water soluble support. HIPS and ABS can be used in a similar way, but HIPS dissolves in citrus oil, which isn't the cheapest from what I remember. Its a cool thing to have, especially when you get it working, but its more of a "would I really use this?" kind of thing.

[bubbasnow]

plenty of pictures and stories on these forums about dual, my biggest issues to be resolved were firmware and nozzle heights. Until the nozzles are exactly the same height off the bed at all places on the bed i kept getting knocked over prints or color contamination. all the major slicers support multi nozzle extrusions its just spending the time and effort to get it done right with the configurations. I don't use dual extrusion every day I only did the conversion for the challenge.

[Polygonhell]

Short version is it's a pain to get working correctly and I rarely use it.
My current view is that the best solution is a single Hotend with a split input, it takes away the hardest part of the process which is getting the two nozzles exactly level. Though it does have its down sides.

[printednest]

This guy is preparing this: http://3dprintingindustry.com/2014/09/0 ... ment-webs/
I suggest to wait..

[Polygonhell]

Rocking Hotends is exactly how at least one of the Stratsys machines does double head printing.
It resolves some of the issues with levelling, but doesn't address the filament leaking of the unused head. Even if you retract the filament all of the way out of the Hotend, there is still enough melted plastic left in the melted section that it will ooze.

[Holy1]

Thanks for the feedback. It seems if I did get it working I would fool with it for a while and then say mmm, now what? and continue with a single head. Perhaps a bit of an interesting novelty.

[bot]

The only ACTUAL reason I want a dual extruder is to print flexible filament in conjunction with rigid filament. Some interesting things can happen. Printing stepper motor dampers would be theoretically possible.

But I'm not gonna upgrade the rostock for that. The rostock is meant for speed. I would get a cartesian with a direct drive dual extruder system specifically for this prupose, if I do decide to pull the trigger.

[McSlappy]

Wow that spiderbot head is just like a suggestion I made about 6 months ago on the forum, though my method was using the delta arms to provide rotation (which I found out wouldn't work anyway). I'm not saying it was my idea - for him to be working on it I'd hazard he's had the idea for longer than I ever did. I'm just glad someone is making it, it seems to make sense!

[gestalt73]

+1 to don't even bother with dual-extruder until you get proficient at single extruder prints.

I've been messing with a dual extruder setup on and off for months now. Each time I end up switching back to my single extruder in frustration.

I was drawn in by the promise of using HIPS as a dissolvable support material for ABS prints. I'm kinda tired of peeling off supports, and it sounded like a godsend. When it works, it's kinda awesome, but more often than not, the print fails for any number of the reasons below.

Here's everything that's not awesome about current dual-extruder printing:

• leveling the print heads is straight forward, but very time consuming, you need to be <25 microns of perfectly level for it to work, otherwise you're dragging your unused print head across your print
• nozzle drool can be minimized by lowering the unused hotend temp between layers, but now your layer time increased as you ramp up your temps for each layer. Kisslicer supports the custom gcode to handle this, not sure about the other slicers
• a slicer that supports a prime tower is essential, without it, you tend to have a messy print
• any excuse your print has to curl, will cause the print to fail, as the curled lip will catch the unused extruder and ruin the print
• ABS does not really stick to HIPS, so any type of ledge, overhang, or other supported part of your print will probably curl, catch the unused extruder, and ruin the print

Looking at the Spiderbot, using a servo seems kinda silly, but that type of design is really the only thing that is going to make dual extrusion printing reliable. Any solution that pivots the active hotend into position will solve most of the above problems.