Dual Extrusion wizard doesn't like checkerboards

[joealarson]

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:285343/#files

So i try to print this dual extrusion style and I get this:

Ooh, that ain't right. Some square missing, others only the outline, no infill, and the ooze wall is totally confused.

I try to fix the model, and it looks like a lot of the corners have been merged, which makes them technically non-manifold. So i create a new one by duplicating the sqaures and not merging the corners and I get:

Wait, that's not what I got last time. last time I got them all but the one in the middle. I mean this was closer, but that was closer still. Ah well.
I tried it with a 0.000001 gap between them. It turned out... better?

Listen, this is straight messed up. I should not have to go back to RepG to get my dual extrusion on.

[dennisjm]

I've been trying for a day to get a complex two color part to print for a whole day now.

* prime tower bugs
- if I edit each process individually and use a unique prime tower for each process I still only get one prime tower for one extruder.
- If I just use the one prime tower and set to both extruders I get both colors in the prime tower but the layers for one of the colors actually print after the part has printed (FAIL... it primes on the part)

* Can't make my own prime towers
- I wanted to just import my own cube and set each process to start each layer nearest the x/y coordinates to the tower.
FAIL - It seems S3D ignores the start coords during a multi process print, I can't for the life of me set the coords to any value that change the starting spot for the layers.

Anyway, as so many times before, I have to revert to inferior makerbot software to do a dual extrusion print that turns out. (inferior in all but it's prime wall algorithm)

[billyd]

Yeah I've given up on dual extrusion for now. Between hardware issues I'm having (the Taz Dual extruder is loaded with hardware problems) and S3D's dual extrusion issues I have decided what I have is simply not ready for prime time. Perhaps this is true for all dual extrusion. Is anyone getting super good two color prints out there? With no contamination from the wrong extruder and over all excellent quality? I wonder if it even exists. FFF printing tech is probably going to go the way of the dinosaur anyway. Too slow, too many issues. I would imagine years from now a completely different approach.

Anyway for multicolor printing at the least perhaps these machines should use one extruder and the ability to change color nozzles, similar to a CNC machine with multi-tool head changing.

[dennisjm]

Yes it's a hard problem.
I don't get perfect results from makerbot software but I get
1) no blobs
2) far less color contamination

And yes, FFF is going the way of the dinosaur in not that much longer. I print high quality prints on a Statysis Objet and the results blow you away. It's not perfect either and both have their places, but you know.. .technology gets cheaper... etc.

[dennisjm]

S3D printed in my hand.

* purge bumps.
- Get these even with a purge tower. Can't configure manual purge towers to save me.
- specs. Some say adjust tool change retract settings but I have no luck with this. I've tried lots of settings, with negative restart distance etc. Part of the problem is that each extruder needs it's own settings but the processes don't really allow different settings per extruder unless you start using multiple processes which then has it's own host of issues with dual prints.

On the makerbot printed parts on the tray you can see I don't get any bumps and the specs are much much reduced. This particular print is the first I printed with this filament from makerbot. The white is particularly over extruded and the blue is a bit over extruded too. Other than that I just popped it and and hit print. I suspect if I go back and tune the white filament extrude rate I'll get near the result I'm looking for.