How does multi-extruder heating work?
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I'm doing power requirement calculations for my printer, and realized that maybe the Duet firmware has something built-in which allows only one extruder at a time to heat. For instance, for one PWM cycle, extruder 1 would heat, then for the next PWM cycle, the second extruder would heat, and so on for the 3 extruders. Does this functionality exist?
This would be nice because for the printer that I'm building, it might have 5 extruders and so would reduce the load on the power supply.
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No, it doesn't have that functionality. In any case, you would usually want to heat one of your heaters to active temperature and the other 4 to standby temperature simultaneously.
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I should have clarified that I am referring to the time when each extruder needs to maintain their own temperatures in the middle of a print. Know what I mean?
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For example, if suddenly a very cold breeze comes in and makes each extruder several degrees colder, will each extruder's heater be constantly on, or will they take turns heating? I have a feeling the answer is the same, just thought I'd make sure.
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They won't take turns.
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For power supply requirement, you should plan for the worst case scenario which would be when you start heating all 5 hot ends from ambient (cold) and PWM is not initially being employed.
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Ok thanks.
