multi color hot ends ?
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Is the QuadFusion an active mixing hotend, or more like the Diamond?
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@fma said in multi color hot ends ?:
Is the QuadFusion an active mixing hotend, or more like the Diamond?
AFAIK, there isn't any sort of motorised mixing which would imply that if it mixes at all, it is done passively. How effective that is, remains to be seen.
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@dc42 said in multi color hot ends ?:
We'll have a QuadFusion hot end running at TCT so by the end of the week we may have a better idea of how it behaves.
Do you have any review/feedback on the QuadFusion hot end?
I have been investigating what approach I want to take for multi-material printing and haven't been able to find any solid reviews of the QuadFusion.Would you recommend the QuadFusion over any of the other solutions? IE E3d has a Cyclops(2 in to 1 out) and Kraken (4in 4 out).. also there are the Diamond hot-end, I'm sure there are others I'm not aware of.
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I wonder if we get a white base material with a simple CMYK common inkjet from some commercial printer and just spray both sides with colors,close to the hotend changing like mosaic would swap filament colors.
If people can color filament with simple soft tip markers why not some paint directly to the filament?
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There is also this one:
http://www.xcr3d.com/MechanicalAccessoriesfor3D/62-40.html
It has the potential advantage of using a nozzle which can be changed.
Frederick
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The QuadFusion hot-end (as well as the Crane printer with the Quad as an option) is only beginning to ship to early supporters in the last few days or so, I believe. What field experience there is has just been from a small group of beta testers.
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The quadfusion hotend worked quite well on the machine at the TCT but it is not active mixing, solid colours do "toothpaste" the same as any other multiple in, 1 out hotend.
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@t3p3tony with pla or all the materials?
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@cata it was working with petg. @deckingman is the expert here but the advantage of PETG is it tolerates being "cooked" in the nozzle when not extruding for significantly longer than PLA.
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@cata On the quad, there was no motor or any other mechanism that would indicate some means of actively mixing the filaments together. Also, the filament path to and through the nozzle was too short to indicate that there is any effective passive mixing. So as far as I have been able to observe, and from the very limited literature available, I would say that as far as mixing is concerned, the quad has the same limitations as a Diamond hot end. That is to say, the filament coming out of the nozzle is akin to stripey toothpaste. That will be the same, no matter what material goes into the input.
So the colour of any printed object will vary around it's perimeter. It would not be possible to make say "Fire Engine Red" which in CYMK colour space uses proportions of roughly 0% Cyan, 84% Magenta, 80% Yellow and 19% Black because unless the filaments are truly mixed, those proportions will vary throughout the cross section of the filament being extruded. For sure, one face would have a heavy Magenta bias, another would have a heavy Yellow bias. Other facets of the print would vary. Maybe if the printed object was cylindrical, at some point around the perimeter it might actually be "Fire Engine Red" (perhaps).
The demonstration unit that I saw at the TCT show, was printing with transparent filament. This is a trick that I use with the Diamond which disguises the fact that the filaments are not being fully mixed. It's OK and works reasonable well but of course, not every object lends itself to being printed with transparent filament.
The unit was very small and compact, I'll say that. It was running very slowly though. If I was considering making a purchase, I would want to know what the reason for that was. If it has something to do with limited melt rate or thermal management (there was no heat break that I could see), then that would be a potential reason for me not to make a purchase.
But, other than a brief view at the TCT show, I have no experience of this thing. What I have written above is just my own opinion based on limited observation.
