Vote: Smart Effector for Dual Head Chimera extruder
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A chimera is 2 in 2 out as you say however on a delta you need to have the effector moving perfectly flat for it to work. Cyclops is easier with just one nozzle but as has been pointed out there are disadvantages there too.
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Anyone for a Diamond?
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I going to be building a Delta after I complete my D Bot. On my D bot I am going to use a THC-01 which is a 3 in 1 out that uses Chimera heatbreaks and v6 style heat block and nozzles. I would like a Smart effector that would be able to utilize one of those. It is narower thhan the Diamond but taller.
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Newest-3D-Printer-Parts-3-in-1-out-Multi-color-Extruder-Hotend-Kit-NF-THC-01/32813067592.html?aff_platform=aaf&cpt=1508287412714&sk=EqR72bm&aff_trace_key=c105205c68d1435d90e4ad9b0391ba3d-1508287412714-08954-EqR72bm&terminal_id=350402a9564e4ee5aef16d1e2ee36016 -
I going to be building a Delta after I complete my D Bot. On my D bot, I am going to use a THC-01 which is a 3 in 1 out that uses Chimera heat breaks and v6 style heat block and nozzles. Unlike the Chimera 2in and 1 out you dont have to worry about running both filament lines as the THC-01 is more like the Y adapter from Prusa.
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Just my twopence worth. I know zero about Deltas but a bit about multi colour printing. I thought the main advantage of the Delta design was that the moving mass could be kept low, allowing faster printing. By adding multi colour/multi material capability you will increase the moving mass quite considerably. Doesn't that negate the reason for using Delta over other designs? Then where do you put the extruders? If you have a "flying" type arrangement, you add even more mass. If you put them on the frame, you have hellishly long Bowden tubes. In either case, the multiple inputs are likely to play havoc with effector tilt. The more I think about it, the more I think that Delta really isn't the best design for multi material printing. But then I guess if all you have is Delta and you don't have the resources\time\space for a second printer then I can see the need.
On the subject of inactive material "cooking", it is true that PLA will hydrolyse (become more runny) but PET-G is less affected in the respect. It is easily counteracted by purging when you switch between filaments. In my experience, hot ends that have all the filaments loaded require less purging than switching hot ends plus you can mix filaments (sort of).
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Just my twopence worth. I know zero about Deltas but a bit about multi colour printing. I thought the main advantage of the Delta design was that the moving mass could be kept low, allowing faster printing. By adding multi colour/multi material capability you will increase the moving mass quite considerably. Doesn't that negate the reason for using Delta over other designs? Then where do you put the extruders? If you have a "flying" type arrangement, you add even more mass. If you put them on the frame, you have hellishly long Bowden tubes. In either case, the multiple inputs are likely to play havoc with effector tilt. The more I think about it, the more I think that Delta really isn't the best design for multi material printing. But then I guess if all you have is Delta and you don't have the resources\time\space for a second printer then I can see the need.
On the subject of inactive material "cooking", it is true that PLA will hydrolyse (become more runny) but PET-G is less affected in the respect. It is easily counteracted by purging when you switch between filaments. In my experience, hot ends that have all the filaments loaded require less purging than switching hot ends plus you can mix filaments (sort of).
You don't really add that much more mass with a switching system - the only addition is the Y filament splitter. The extruders on my Kossel are mounted on a frame and I had to swap to that Capricorn bowden thing to reduce retraction length to sane amounts.
As for the material cooking… The problem isn't when you do multi-material, generally there's not enough time for anything bad to happen during a single layer. It starts getting wonky when you want to do a long single material print. Since you have to keep all the inputs plugged, the inactive one stays at the printing temperature for the whole print duration. I really had a lot of trouble purging PLA after a 8 hour print on the Cyclops once - I had to resort to heating it to something like 230 and then manually pushing the ugly blob out.
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….................................As for the material cooking... The problem isn't when you do multi-material, generally there's not enough time for anything bad to happen during a single layer. It starts getting wonky when you want to do a long single material print...............................
Trust me. With PLA bad things start to happen straight away - they just get worse with time. This is something that I've been doing a lot of work on. You might want to take a look at this, https://somei3deas.wordpress.com/2017/10/04/the-diamond-5-colour-fullcolor-hot-end-and-other-related-stuff/ which although it's mostly about the Diamond 5 colour hot end, there is a lot of stuff common to all multi input, single output hot ends.
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Wow. I did have the exact same problem of "the melt chamber will come out all at once as a single runny blob". But in my case it only happened after cooking the filament for a long period of time (at least 30 minutes). I guess one can attribute it to the fact that I was printing with a PLA/PHA blend rather than pure PLA.
Yeah, I guess in case of 5 different filaments using a switching system wouldn't be that practical - you'll waste completely insane amounts of material on priming, far more than needed with your monstrous (in a good way) Diamond setup.
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Yes the hydrolysing starts straight away but takes about 30 minutes or so for it to get to the state where it all comes out as a single runny blob. However, it is a gradual process so up to about 30 minutes the filament wont be runny enough to come out as a single runny blob but it will be considerable less viscous than it was at time zero. So after even a few minutes, it will give the appearance of over extrusion.
Both methods of using multiple inputs have their pros and cons (and yes, my machine is insanely monstrous).
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"the melt chamber will come out all at once as a single runny blob"
as for myself: once i know that i will be printing single filament - i would just unload 2nd filament with UNLOAD button on web interface…
no issues at all...in my case unload is programmed to 50% of length.
to change filament i just press it twice. no cooking
