Software controlled ditto printing

[FlashErase]

Unfortunately the FlashForge Dreamer does not support the useful ditto print feature.
As the FlashForge support told me they are not willing to add this feature to their firmware
to preserve the benefits of the more expensive FlashForge Creator.
The sailfish firmware with supported ditto printing is not available for the Dreamer.
So it would be a nice feature to realize the ditto print by the slicer.

[CompoundCarl]

This actually HAS to be implemented in the firmware, since most printers don't allow gcode commands that move both extruders at the same time. For example, to print with the right extruder (T0), you usually do something like this

M108 T0 ; switch to right extruder
G1 X1 Y1 Z1 E123 ; some E-movement with right extruder

Most firmwares don't support commands like this
G1 X1 Y1 Z1 A123 B456 ; move both the A and B extruders at the same time??

And even worse, many firmwares are literally written to only compute motion parameters for a single extruder at a time. It would require quite a bit of work in some firmwares to add functionality for moving multiple extruders simultaneously.

So no matter what, it would require firmware changes to support this. You can't do it only through software.

Now if you really wanted to get creative, you may be able to electrically wire the printer so that both extruders are essentially wired together and driven from the same input, but that's a lot of hacking/soldering/reverse engineering to figure out how to do that on the FlashForge control board.

[FlashErase]

Thanks for the hint. I'll try later if it is possible to heat the second extruder
even if it not been used. In the worst case I'll have to modify the start script for
every g-file to include the heating command manually.
Because it will not be possible to wire both extruder motors in parallel because
of the current regulation of the stepping motor end phases I must scratch on the
PCB to place a dispatcher before the amplifier of the second extruder. Then I can
switch the source of this amplifier between its regular signals and the step pulses
for the first extruder.
But before I can do that I have to wait till the end of the warranty of my printer.

[FlashErase]

Hmm, OK, the amplifiers itself are mounted on sockets. So it should be possible to use
plug adapters between driver and PCB to manage the signals. I'll try it out in the next
time.