4 simultaneous extruders?

theundercat

New to 3D printing. I am looking for a 3D printer, during my search I was planning to going the prusa route... but I need something more like IDEX? I want it to have 3-4 extruders to print multiple copies at the same time. Flashforge has 2 but its expensive and I could get 3 printers for that price!

How can multi extruder be set up? Can Prusa or prusa XL be upgraded for this? If not what is a good printer with decent size bed for this?

And is duet the board or is it firmware or both? I need help sorting this information out and be pointed in the right direction so I can build a multiple extruder machine.

Also what would be the highest possible extruder count?

dc42

@theundercat Duet has supported IDEXY (independent X and Y) for a few years, and there are at least two IDEXY 3D printer designs now. To the best of my knowledge, Duet + RRF is then only open source platform supporting IDEXY. We plan to introduce some exciting new capabilities for IDEXY machines in RRF 3.5.

Tool changing and IDEX or IDEXY are not incompatible. RepRapFirmware already supports this combination in theory, although I don't know of any actual machines that combine both.

o_lampe

@theundercat said in 4 simultaneous extruders?:

I want it to have 3-4 extruders to print multiple copies at the same time.

Some people tried to use two extruders in copy mode, but that requires a really flat bed ( which also means no gantry sag). Four nozzles would be a nightmare.
Usually we use mesh leveling for beds, which are not so flat, but that doesn't work with more than one nozzle at a time.
As @DC42 mentioned, there will be features in RRF3.5, which hopefully allows us to use multiple independent tools simultaneously.
My hashPrinter can't wait for it

MaracMB

I am walking this path for a while now - an IQEX… in process of building a new one, based on what i’ve learned in past 2 years with it.

To start I used cheap i3 style IDEX (Tenlog D3 was my choice), threw out crappy boards and did height adjustable toolmounts (very important). Used Duet2 + Duex5. Then just doubled the IDEX axis and viola, got IQEX… at this point, i use one as IDEX and one as IQEX. Daily.
So this is totally doable and huge advantage when you want high output.
What you want is take time and assemble the thing VERY precisely. Everything square and BOTH X rails EXACTLY parallel and square to Y and Z. Not a huge challenge, but I for example didn’t think of this when building first time.. fixed that, learned something. Making a jig on which you assemble the X gantry so that both X linear rails sit flat and then you torque everything up helps a bunch.
Whoever relies on meshbed levelling is doing stuff wrong. Yeah it’s nice, but you tram the machine and level the damn flat bed. Then you print on it with absolutely no problems day in and day out.

Disadvantage: with i3 style, Y axis is only one so while you can do multiplication, you can only mirror in X direction. Not huge disadvantage & still has better output at the end of the day than any “i printed a benchy in 10 minutes” gimmick. Machine is not realistically encloseable tho.
Works absolutely fantastic for about 1000 bucks printer.

What i am doing now is a box design - so XY plane is moving and bed is on the Z. It uses (well it will eventually) 2 stacked double markforged kinematics. Something similar to Muldex printer, but doubled.

Is it worth it? Not really sure. Should be fast as hell compared to my current i3 IQEX. More silent for sure. Encloseable. Insane output. Etc. Still, if concept works, then i will have to scale the design up to like at least 600x600 mm buildplate so this monsters electronics and build price are justified.

If this triggers your heart, i do posts from time to time on my FB group (“Marx group”. As in Marks’ group, not in marxistic way )

https://www.facebook.com/groups/237163797566846

deckingman

There is a lady called something like Justine who built an amazing, large, machine capable of printing 4 copies simultaneously using Duet boards and who posted a year or two back on these forums. It used an X shaped gantry with an extruder mounted on each of the 4 points of the X. As an engineer, I can appreciate the difficulties that had to be overcome to get all 4 nozzles at exactly the same position relative to the (very large) build plate (in the Z direction). Using a single Z axis, also meant that the build plate had to be flat and level without using firmware compensation when using 4 nozzles which would be at different XY coordinates. The advantage of her design meant that simple kinematics such as Cartesian or CoreXY could be used because the tools were not strictly independent other than extruder motors.

Solv777

@MaracMB I know this is an old post, but taking a chance, currently building a DQEX or IQEX. Very similar to this, a modified E5 Plus printer, is there a way of activating all 4 extruders and nozzles at once? Or will this be done from the slicers side? I have a Duet2 + Duex5 wired up, just need to set the Z limit switch, everything works so far. But the next step would be to slice a part on an appropriate slicer - Any suggestions on the slicer I should use?

I have been able to control all the part cooling fans and the hot end fans, as well as extruders. Interested in duplicate or mirror printing, nothing else, need high throughput.

Utilized the new config tool, and I think 3.5X firmware, was very cool to set it up.

sebkritikel

@Solv777 To activate all four extruders and nozzles at once, in your config.g you would define a tool using M563 that uses the applicable extruders, heaters, fans, etc. https://docs.duet3d.com/User_manual/Reference/Gcodes/M563

You could then use pretty much any slicer I believe, so long as it supports tools other than 'T0'. I use Cura, which in my experience has great support for printers with multiple tools (I use it with my IDEX printer). In the Cura printer settings you would tell it how many tools your printer has, and then when you want to slice a given model, you activate the tool(s) you would like to use.

Solv777

@sebkritikel Thank appreciate it, will check it out, I wanted to keep the tools separate so you could switch an extruder off if a jam or something happens.

I have checked in Cura, still trying to load a single part that is multiplied across the four tools, because the offsets are fixed, DQEX is probably a better system, I have two independent X-axis each with two nozzles at a fixed distance from each other, and the Two X-axis are at a fixed offset in the Y-axis.

dc42

@Solv777 the offsets between the nozzles would be set up in RRF. Cura wouldn't need to know about them. If you configure the machine and your slicer so that the bed centre is X=0 Y=0 then when printing multiple copies it just looks as though you have a smaller bed, and you don't need t adjust the print XY offset in the slicer.

Solv777

@dc42 Thanks for the response, so then I don't need to do multiple heads in CURA, as long as I combine all the extruder drivers into one tool on Duet Firmware? My only concern would be to stop a failed hot end nozzle including its extruder, during the process should this happen, without stopping the entire print. This I would want to do on the paneldue? On the console perhaps?

droftarts

@Solv777 said in 4 simultaneous extruders?:

My only concern would be to stop a failed hot end nozzle including its extruder, during the process should this happen, without stopping the entire print. This I would want to do on the paneldue? On the console perhaps?

That might be tricky to do, because the four tools would, in effect, be one tool, so there wouldn't be any way to 'turn off' a specific hot end/extruder. It may be possible to redefine the tool and exclude the hot end/extruder, but I'm not sure if you can redefine a tool (with M563) while the tool is selected, and/or whether it causes the tool to need rehoming.

Ian

oliof

@droftarts the four extruders would be connected via the mixing ratio, no? so you could disable one by setting the mixing ratio to 0, i.e. if the third extruder fails, set M567 1:1:0:1 ...

droftarts

@oliof Yes, that's a good way to stop extrusion.

And to turn off a specific heater when there are more than one heater configured to the tool, use M568, eg:
M568 S200:200:0:200
would set the tool's third heater to 0. I don't know if the M568 A parameter can take parameters for each heater, eg if
M568 A2:2:0:2
would turn off the third heater.

And you can turn off the fan by commanding it directly by it's fan number with M106.

I think all of the above would be dependent on there being no extrusion factor/heater/fan commands in the gcode file after you have turned them off.

Ian

dc42

@Solv777 one way to stop one of the 4 extruders would be to set its extrusion factor to zero. You can do this in the Status screen of DWC or PanelDue.

Solv777

@dc42 @oliof @droftarts

Thanks everyone for your help, I wanted to do this last night, I am gonna try set this up tonight. Thanks for the input, I think those commands should be fine, the fan is not the biggest issue, just the heater and the extruder.

Will provide feedback soon!

MaracMB

@Solv777 others answered everything sorry for late reply.

Yeah, basically you set it as single part (or batch of them... let's call it part, just for the sake of simplicity) in slicer, then you set that to be printed with multiplication tool. That is set similar to a single tool definition, but you'll set additional tools like T4 to be a duplication tool (for like front two), T5 to be a quadruplication tool..
You place your part to be printed in the middle of the bed and firmware will take care of offsetting and multiplying it based on offsets set in config.

You've probably found "Marx group" on Facebook. I've shared my configs (top most post, links to google drive) ; https://www.facebook.com/share/qNYUQoUD2tn3p4hP/

As for slicer, you can use whatever you're comfortable with as long as it can inject stard and end g-codes.... So really whatever you're fond of most

As you've got the info above, you can stop specific one of the head printing using extrusion factor, should one of the copies fail during print.
I've even printed TPU, PLA, PVA and PETG in one job, each copy being it's own material since one can use individual Pressure advance factors on each individual extruder. It's a long ago. Was featured on one of E3D's facebook groups/pages.

Also, set both left toolheads as one tool and both right toolheads as one tool. This will enable you to do a duplication of dual material printjob. Because you can.