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07-24-2020, 02:58 AM #1
- Join Date
- Oct 2016
- Posts
- 184
On software side, for slicing multi-color or -material prints I use PrusaSlicer, Simplify3D and KISSlicer, depending of the models. Different slicers do some things differently, like how support material is assigned to extruders so with some models there's a some experimentation needed. Usually I use KISSlicer, with that assigning extruders to models is quite straightforward. PrusaSlicer is a also a good alternative and has better control over what extruders to use for different parts. S3D has a nice wizard for multi-color printing, but sadly it works only with 2-extruders. And the profile system is a bit hard to master, especially if printing different materials with different temps etc.
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When I started this multi-material journey, none of the slicers supported a single nozzle/multi extruder setups. Sure they all have the custom tool change gcode section, but with this single nozzle/multi-extruder hw it's limited with functionality. Getting the retractions right is hard and needs constant updating. The original Prometheus instructions were for Cura 1.4x and involved custom gcode and positioning a custom brim model to correct place on the bed where the custom gcode did the purge movements. Janky but it did work, but I didn't like Cura at the time so I went to explore altenatives right away.
After tuning the custom gcode on multiple slicers, I decided to write my own post-processing software called filaswitch: https://github.com/spegelius/filaswitch. Basically what it does it adds the tool change gcode to sliced files. A purge tower is added or optionally purge bucket is supported. Currently it works with S3D, PrusaSlicer, KISSlicer and Cura.
Today PrusaSlicer has a quite good support for single nozzle/multi extruder setups due to MMU units. In the beginning with MMU it was somewhat locked to Prusa printers, but with some hacking I did some prints sliced with it. Now it should work more readily with other printers too, but I haven't tested the latest version yet. With filaswitch I use quite specific tool change movements for better filament tips which aren't available in PrusaSlicer.
PrusaSlicer does have some interesting features like purging to a separate model which saves material. One of the downsides of single nozzle/multi extruder setups is the need to do a purge when changing filament. The amount of purge can quite big, especially if printing small model with lots of colors. It's a good idea to print many pieces of the same model in one go because the purge amount is still the same since the tool changes happen per layer, not model.
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