@deckingman said in Add "Z" Axis to lift each extruder indipendently, it's feasible?:

paraphernalia

Thank you for reply!
I know the system you're mentioning and you'd be right if you think about "standard components", for many reason long to explain here it's not feasible, the project is not intended for a standard size printer with commercial extruders.

Briefly imagine for example what's happen on the carriage overall dimensions in X direction if you use a very long extruder (eg 200mm), wherever you place the pivot point between the two extruder you have increased the x-size in vain.

D.

Hi everybody,

i'm starting to design a dual extruder printer and this will be for me the occasion to start to use a Duet, being a mechanical designer i decided to draw all the machine from scratch and now i'm working on the layout deciding between cartesian, CoreXY and H-Bot, now this is not so important at the moment because in any case i will have a X , Y, Z system as usual, my concern is about the feasability of implementing an additional indipendent lift-system for each extruder.

The idea is to interpone 2 additional axis ( linear systems with rail/screw/coupling/stepper) between the X carriage and each extruder that now i will call "U" and "W" axis for semplicity.

In general what i would like to do is:

1. Retract the extruder which is not working or,vice versa, lower the extruder that have to print. (mechanically indifferent but i want to understand if one if preferable than another considering the firmware)

2. Indipendent sensorless probing for each extruder (contact of the nozzle with plate) done moving the U or W axis down against the plate which is stationary ad his top dead center (Z=0).

3. Have the plate that move only down (Z+) during print, and having the U/W axis that lift up the extruders when g.code call for Z-hop.
   This last "feature" allow to downsize all the linear motion system of the plate/Z-axis because the plate is quite heavy and considering high print speed/accelerations is more convenient to move up/down 2kg of extruder group than all the plate. Obviously the plate has to come back again to the top but this will be done before the print start at very low sped/acc so is not necessary to have high torque & stiffness.

Now i'have not yet a duet and i'm a beginner in terms of programming so before to procede in this direction what i want to understand if it is feasible, yet implemented, hard..impossible, etc

Any help, comment or suggestion are welcome =).

Thank you
D.