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Topic: RepRap X2V3 - Dual Extruder Upgrade? (Read 3065 times) |
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MazonDel
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RepRap X2V3 - Dual Extruder Upgrade?
« on: Jul 20th, 2014, 9:01pm » |
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Greetings!
I have seen the X2V3 and I am interested in building my own. One thing I was wondering though, is just how difficult would it be to swap out the individual extruders to make them both be dual extruders?
My hope is to be able to have a printer where I can have one build volume with 4 different plastics (the need has arisen before) or two build volumes with 2 plastics.
My end goal is to actually build a custom frame that still allows for the XYZ traverse to operate as per normal, except that the build volume would be a cube 2 ft to a side.
Thoughts?
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Denis Bakin
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Re: RepRap X2V3 - Dual Extruder Upgrade?
« Reply #1 on: Jul 21st, 2014, 12:36am » |
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It's doable, but IMO won't be the best design for such a machine. It would be a sort of brute force approach vs an elegant solution to a problem.
What will it take... From the top of my head:
- 2 more extruders, wider X stage with bigger carriages fitting 2 hotends each, the additional hotends themselves;
- there should be (I'm just guessing) enough IO pins on Arduino MEGA to handle 2 more heaters with temperature sensors and extruder motors, but you'll need an extension board to drive all that additional hardware;
- a few software tweaks will be needed too (to handle more than 3 extruders).
As for the more elegant approach, search RepRap forums for posts related to "Delta" printer design and switchable heads. I remember seeing posts there from somebody trying to come up with a design that could change the printing heads on the fly (it was at the drawing board stage at that time though). Maybe it came to a fruition by now.
Hope that helps and good luck!
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Denis Bakin
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MazonDel
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Re: RepRap X2V3 - Dual Extruder Upgrade?
« Reply #2 on: Aug 29th, 2014, 8:52pm » |
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Hmm, how difficult would it be to provide a second "dual" axis? Both in hardware and in software.
I would be willing to design this setup so it had two of the dual axis rigs. I just figured it might be a mere settings change for the dual/dual extruder setup.
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Denis Bakin
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Re: RepRap X2V3 - Dual Extruder Upgrade?
« Reply #3 on: Aug 30th, 2014, 9:47pm » |
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I think what you'd planned at first (one more hotend on each X-carriage) will be easier to do than to support a whole other axis.
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Denis Bakin
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MazonDel
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Re: RepRap X2V3 - Dual Extruder Upgrade?
« Reply #4 on: Sep 1st, 2014, 12:23pm » |
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Alright, what modifications would need to be made to the software to allow for such a setup to work? I can do all the hardware side of things, but I'm not exactly in on the software side.
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Denis Bakin
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Re: RepRap X2V3 - Dual Extruder Upgrade?
« Reply #5 on: Sep 1st, 2014, 2:07pm » |
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The software should be capable of handling 3 extruders (2 on one carriage and one on the other) with very little or no tweaks at all.
The most of the work will be in adding the fourth extruder and heater. The proper way to do it is to make software flexible to configure any number of extruders. The fastest and simplest is to search the code for references to EXTRUDERS define and add handling of the 4th extruder to all the places where the code is crrently limited to deal with just 3 of them.
Then do the same to heaters.
The LCD support (if needed) might require a bit more work (for example the graphical one shows only 3 extruders on the status screen).
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