That’s quite a complicated setup there. I saw the Crane a few months ago, prints in CMYK, and uses small motors for the extruders, although, I can see how 4 filaments going directly into the hotend can get messy really quick.
Yikes, That is ambitious.
There was a company that was changing filament colors, and then cooling it down to send it into a regular hot end. Think of using this setup, but just to generate 1.75mm filament. The alicer knows what volume of each filament is needed, so doing it ahead of the print isntwa big deal, and it would make this a lot easier than swinging thay thing around to print.
So many questions though. What software is going to do this control? You need 13 steppers!?! What if the thermistors arw different enough between hot ends?
Very ambitious and very cool. I just want to see the redacted parts because they are redacted.
For all that trouble I might use one filament and just try to inject dyes instead.
True but where is the fun in that?
BTW, I just happened to see on my blog that there was a referral from this forum, hence the reason I thought I’d pop in and say hi. Ref the thread title, yes this journey may end up in a dead end in which case it will indeed be a piece of holy crap (or more likely unholy crap) but we’ll see…
I’m cheering for you on the inside, and I’m more than a bit jealous I’m not there with you wprling on it.
@Jeffeb3. I think the thing you were thinking about that joins filament is the Pallete 2 https://www.mosaicmfg.com/products/palette-2
Re my hot end - I already use a Diamond 5 colour so I already have 5 extruders - just need to add one more. Ref the number of steppers - my printer is a CoreXYUV so has a separate gantry above the hot end gantry and which carries the extruders. Then I have yet another load balancing/force cancelling XY gantry that sits above that and mimics the movement of the other two gantries but in the opposite direction. So that’s 6 steppers. Then 1 for the Z axis makes 7 and so 6 extruders will make 13.
I’ve always been of the opinion you actually want six mixed colors, not five. The last is transparent, so CYMKWT.
That’s my belief too. On the basis that CMYK and White will give the hue, we’d also need transparent to get the saturation. I’m not too sure how inkjet printers achieve that but I’d imagine they vary the dot density. But with 3D printing we don’t have the option of putting space between the “dots” so we’d have to use transparent filament.