#1

Hi everybody, i want to buy a new 3d printer basically to have dual extruder support to let me print with the support material, i was about to buy a flashforge creator pro (now i have a makerbot replicator 2) but then i saw the Multimaterial upgrade for the Prusa and i am very curious about the possibility to print 3 color and a support! I did not see so many test and i am waiting here for someone who can do this kind of test and show the result (3 ABS colour + HIPS or 3 PLA colour + PVA). Then i also see some videos of people using diamond hotend more or less to the same extent of the Multimaterial Prusa upgrade (print different colors). Can the diamond hotend be used to print dissolvable + 2 color? I am more interested in printing support than in blending colours but it could be a nice feature to have…

Many thanks to everyone who will help me

Diego

#2

Hello, i can only speak of prusa multi material.

It is great if you want to print colors in same material, eg: 4xPLA. It will give you the best print quality without the problems of dual extruders.

But you only have 1 hotend, while i don’t know if it possible to mix materials, if so hotend will have to heat up and cooldown to match filament specs, this will delay your print and will not be good mixing them, because it will change alot of times (2 per layer when support is present).

Also before it change filament it need to clean old, meaning you will waste a bit of filament and time. If your print have big density and lot of supports you will waste tons of fillament

If you print alot with supports double hotend will best suit you, it can have different temperatures and is always ready to extrude. And the important thing is you don’t mix them

Hope that helps you

1 Like
#3

The main thing with these systems is they are Bowden feed. So materials that are flexible may have difficulty.

I have never used “support” material so I don’t know how it behaves.

The other suggestion on a dual extruder setup would probably be preferable if support material is going to be used more than multi color.

#4

Talked to Josef Prusa at NYC Makerfaire. Yes Ninjaflex doesn’t work in the setup but Cheetah does. I much prefer it anyway because it cuts print time in half.

#5

To be honest there isn’t much different between the two. It’s really just that Prusa uses a printed part to direct the filament whereas the Diamond hotend uses multiple metal heat sinks. That being said, it sounds like Prusa has put a bit more development into their system and it uses a genuine E3D V6 which should give a bit more consistent results. The downside it that upon release (just about to come out of beta) it will only work with the Mk2. The Mk2 is a phenominal printer and prints better than machines multiple times it’s price, not to mention it’s a phenomenal printer to use to learn about 3D printing. The system is open source and you can already download the beta files so it most likely will be adapted for use with other printers but you’ll have to depend entirely on the community for that whereas the Diamond hotend can be reasonably easily adapted to fit most printers.

TL;DR go with the Prusa system

#6

For what I read about hips and PVA they print at the same settings of abs and pla respectively so this shouldn’t be an issue… for the filaments loss I will lose the same quantity as one of the printed color…

#7

Well I decided for the prusa and wait for the multi color upgrade to be reviewed before buying, until then i will make experience with the printer to be ready to print multimaterial :slight_smile:

10x to all!