Did anyone make a iDex with dual x gantry bar?

mgrimes1907

@3d_low Just for curiosity sake, what are you trying to accomplish with two Y gantries? If its only a weight issue, then use bowden tubes and keep the weight of the extruder motor off the gantry. The only downfall to this is printing with flex. Not saying it's impossible to print flex with a bowden tube either. If you are printing with two extruders, you are either going to park one while the other is printing or you will be doing a ditto or mirror print which you will have to half the bed up anyway. The only reason I have designed mine that way, because I have 36 inches of X travel on the bed and I can mirror or ditto print and I still have 18 inches for each extruder and if I want to print a multi material, I am able to still reach the entire bed with each extruder.
Two Y axis drives would be too much sugar for a dime for me

T3P3Tony

@3d_low yeah, I see that but did not see a particular advantage over existing IDEX unless you wanted to be able to print on two parts of the same model at the same time, however that would require some clever slicing!

mgrimes1907

@t3p3tony I was not aware that you could do that. Having two different parts of a print going at the same time seems to be to much going on at one time for me. I might not be coordinated enough to keep all that straight. I have a hard enough time keeping my profiles in Simplify3D with the correct part of the print, I can't imagine having two profiles printing at the same time at different parts of the print.

dc42

You could put two IDEX carriages on each gantry to create a 4-material printer.

3D_low

@dc42

Yeah that could be done but I would need additional stepper drivers. Is it possible to use multiple duex boards?

To answer the other questions : this machine will be of big size (600x600) so dual print becomes available. I’m making a lot of molds for a foundry where I have to print 2 identical parts. An idex printer would allow me to cut the cost and lead time for my customer while raising my profit margin.

I’m using a dyzextruder since I plan on using a heated chamber. Those things are incredibly reliable and robust and will also allow me to print high end materials. I quickly estimated the weight of an additional dyzex + x-motor setup to roughly 650g. Shaving this off the axis would allow faster accélérations and considerably cut print times. Most parts i print for my customers are over 20 hours so a 10-15% reduction in print time is considerable. As for complexity, I don’t really see where the challenge is there. I would only need an additional set of linear blocks, another Y motor/belt and a set of pulleys.

dc42

@3d_low said in Did anyone make a iDex with dual x gantry bar?:

Yeah that could be done but I would need additional stepper drivers. Is it possible to use multiple duex boards?

No, but you can connect a DueX5 plus two additional stepper drivers to CONN_LCD, making 12 drivers in total. So 4 X motors, 2 Y motors, 4 extruders, and 1 or 2 Z motors.

JoergS5

To construct independent extruders, you could install them on different levels and:

guide cables and filament to the side, not top
extruder 1 y position always smaller than extruder 2 y position, or you lift/tilt the extruder while crossing
for hotend being on same z level, you need to have one hotend more distance from x axis level than the other

This would allow more than 2 extruders and all steppers independent from each other.

If you want to have independent extruders, I would also consider an extruder exchanger like this one:
https://hackaday.com/2017/08/27/3d-printer-tool-changer-gives-you-access-to-lots-of-extruders/

3D_low

Thanks for the answer guys. I think i've got a pretty clear idea of how i'm going to pull it off. Also i just received a funding confirmation so i'll be working on this pretty soon