My multi input, multi material, mixing hot end
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Im really looking foward to see how it turns out
- The "maze mixing" design sounds interresting! -
@martin1454 There are a few untested ideas that ultimately might not work. I've set the bar quite high trying to do multi-material as well as mixing so in the end, I might have to make some sort of compromise. But for now, I'll leave the bar where it is and keep on trying.
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Did anyone aready try to inject ink in the melted zone to color the filament? It should be easier to mix CMYB inks rather than PLA...
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@fma said in My multi input, multi material, mixing hot end:
Did anyone aready try to inject ink in the melted zone to color the filament? It should be easier to mix CMYB inks rather than PLA...
Kind of. IIRC, that was something that Adrian Bowyer or one of his students was looking into. If you look at the firmware, you'll see this https://duet3d.dozuki.com/Wiki/Gcode#Section_M578_Fire_inkjet_bits. It seems to have died a death so maybe there were some problems that couldbn't be overcome.
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@deckingman said in My multi input, multi material, mixing hot end:
Ref heat breaks [...] Also the Slice engineering Mosquito seemed to be a very efficient heat break design. If I could adapt my design to use either of those, and if either of those companies would supply me just the heat breaks, that's another option.
At least Slice Engineering sells the heatbreak as spare parts: https://www.sliceengineering.com/shop/heat-break
Manuel
Duet 3 6HC (v0.6) with RPi 4B on a custom Cartesian
with probably always latest firmware/DWC (incl. betas or self-compiled)
My Tool Collection -
@wilriker said in My multi input, multi material, mixing hot end:
@deckingman said in My multi input, multi material, mixing hot end:
Ref heat breaks [...] Also the Slice engineering Mosquito seemed to be a very efficient heat break design. If I could adapt my design to use either of those, and if either of those companies would supply me just the heat breaks, that's another option.
At least Slice Engineering sells the heatbreak as spare parts: https://www.sliceengineering.com/shop/heat-break
ahh, thanks for that.
Edit- £35 USD a pop and I need 6! That's an expensive experiment.
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@deckingman I never said they where cheap.
EDIT: But for test you could start with one.
Manuel
Duet 3 6HC (v0.6) with RPi 4B on a custom Cartesian
with probably always latest firmware/DWC (incl. betas or self-compiled)
My Tool Collection -
@wilriker said in My multi input, multi material, mixing hot end:
@deckingman I never said they where cheap.
EDIT: But for test you could start with one.
True. Or I could try making something similar. Looks like a copper heat sink, copper nut with (probably) Titanium tube swaged in between. hmmmm........
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@deckingman said in My multi input, multi material, mixing hot end:
@fma said in My multi input, multi material, mixing hot end:
Did anyone aready try to inject ink in the melted zone to color the filament? It should be easier to mix CMYB inks rather than PLA...
Kind of. IIRC, that was something that Adrian Bowyer or one of his students was looking into. If you look at the firmware, you'll see this https://duet3d.dozuki.com/Wiki/Gcode#Section_M578_Fire_inkjet_bits. It seems to have died a death so maybe there were some problems that couldbn't be overcome.
I think DiVinci sells a proprietary printer that uses inkjet coloring.
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Mu suggestion was to inject the ink in the melted chamber, not on the printed part.
But It may be difficult to maintain pressure, and it may mess up the print process...
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@fma I don't know what the boiling point of printer ink is, but I'll bet it would likely just vaporise if you tried to inject it into the melt chamber at circa 200 deg C.
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You'd think some of the pigment or dye might survive. What do they use to color the filament itself?
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@phaedrux said in My multi input, multi material, mixing hot end:
You'd think some of the pigment or dye might survive. What do they use to color the filament itself?
I believe coloured pellets go into the mix but I'm not sure.
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@deckingman said in My multi input, multi material, mixing hot end:
I believe coloured pellets go into the mix but I'm not sure.
Yes, you're right. So, it would need to add solid pigments in the mixing chamber. Even more complicated!
BTW, Ian, where you able to test you mixing-matrix-chamber? Does it work?
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Love your blog entries. Looking forward to the follow-up
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I realize you've already bought them (sunk cost and all) but for future reference:
I have a reservoir pump just like yours. That reservoir has a shallow working range. It's about 1cm from full to sucking air due to a whirlpool funnel effect. I end up topping off my loop every 6-8 weeks just from coolant evaporating through the tubing.
You likely don't need the large radiator, a single 120mm cell is fine even for six heat breaks. I use a 80mm radiator for a dual and I've tested both running at 300˚C. The amount of heat lost through a heat break is probably a low single digit watts each.
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@deckingman said in My multi input, multi material, mixing hot end:
@fma I don't know what the boiling point of printer ink is, but I'll bet it would likely just vaporise if you tried to inject it into the melt chamber at circa 200 deg C.
There are liquid masterbatches, they are used in the plastic injection industry primarily for PET and PC resins, so they resist 300° C easily. They get injected with a peristaltic pump if I remember correctly, but you need a pump per colour.
Solid masterbatches won't work unless you have a very long screw, so I think not even pellet extruders might get consistent colors with that... -
@jrdm Thanks, I'll bear that i mind. The pump and radiator were the cheapest I could find on the basis that they would do for testing. So if I end with water cooling as a solution, I'll bear your comments in mind.
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@3doeste Ah OK. I suspect that dosing tiny amounts of filament might be a bit challenging. Any idea what sort of range the ratio of dye to filament might be? Just looking at some numbers, for a 0.5mm segment length at 0.3mm layer height and 0.5mm layer width, the extruder move length is about 0.025mm which is about 0.00375 mm^3 of plastic. I would imagine that the Dye content would be in the order of parts per million of that?
