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a couple of ideas for dual extruder printing

Posted: Sat Feb 17, 2018 3:25 am
by jab136
so I was recently trying to print in ABS/Hydrofill (a water soluble support material for ABS) and I encountered an issue where the Hydrofill could not be retracted or it would jam, but I still wanted to retract the ABS on toolchange, unfortunately it appears that you can't have different toolchange settings for switching from one or the other nozzle (retract on end of left nozzle printing, but don't retract at end of right nozzle)

also, I was using the temperature controller to vary the temperature during printing to turn off the support nozzle on layers where it wasn't being used, but on larger printers, individual layers can take significant time, which leaves the idle nozzle at temperature for the entire layer even if it is only used at the end, would it be possible to put in a "startup" routine for a nozzle that only starts bringing it up to temp a certain amount of time (estimated from printing speed) before it starts being used instead of at the beginning of the layer?

Re: a couple of ideas for dual extruder printing

Posted: Sat Feb 17, 2018 6:13 am
by 24c
jab136 wrote: ...which leaves the idle nozzle at temperature for the entire layer even if it is only used at the end, would it be possible to put in a "startup" routine for a nozzle that only starts bringing it up to temp a certain amount of time (estimated from printing speed) before it starts being used instead of at the beginning of the layer?
+1 for this, as I have seen it with other software when I have looked at the gCode, there is a time estimate, and it starts up x time before needed, so it is up to temperature ready for use, when required.

Re: a couple of ideas for dual extruder printing

Posted: Sun Feb 18, 2018 1:45 pm
by Aha
Definitely a plus one on this. I'm not at that point yet, but I'm being forced to fight Cura doing odd warming times, and I just can't wait to get back to S3D with my new dual extruder. I think this would be useful.

Re: a couple of ideas for dual extruder printing

Posted: Sun Mar 11, 2018 4:08 pm
by Patronus
I support this idea. Letting the idle nozzle cool down and then pre-heating it to be ready "just in time" for when it's needed again, is standard in Cura and as a new S3D user I'm surprised that it's not a supported feature here.