Dual extrusion thoughts?
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So, this year has been a bit crazy, and I didn't get near as far as I was hoping, on my custom printer (I had hopes of being able to get more time at home, but that was short-lived). To make sure I can get one going over the coming months, then maybe add to it later, I'm reigning in my feature set. One absolute must is dual outputs, with one being a high flow type (Volcano if shared X, or Dragon high-flow if IDEX). A single carriage would allow for one bundle of cables and tubing, and one X/Y mechanism. IDEX would prevent interference, but require more parts, more space, and more tuning, assuming the shared carriage would work alright.
I notice some people use things like Chimeras, and even same-plane V6s, with no real issues. Many others can never get them working right, and give up, going to very different mechanisms. Does anyone have any insight into what causes these experiences, both ways? FI, for the idle hotend marring prints, would faster printing mitigate that, maybe, or going colder for idle, with (small) ooze shield or purge tower?
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The biggest problems I had when using multiple nozzles on the same carriage, is getting them at exactly the same height and then living with the fact that the "unused nozzle" will always ooze ever so slightly as it cools (or warms) and so always drags unwanted filament across the print. I changed to mixing hot ends (multiple inlets, single nozzle) to mitigate those problems but mixing hot ends bring their own, different problems and don't help if your interest is using filaments wither very different temperature requirements. I'd either go IDEX or tool changer personally.
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Originally, I was going to try tool changing from the start, but I'm more interested in getting something going, now, that's a bit more proven, and easy to implement (which now includes CoreXYU/XYUV). There are several things I'd like to try, but embedding TPU into prints, choosing to print coarser stuff faster, without swapping hotends and nozzles a lot, heating it and venting it out a window (for funky fuming filaments), and to make it cat-proof (spools need to go in the enclosure, too), are the key things.
