Multi color printing

[grobbins]

I agree - I sat on KS at 11:55 and refreshed until the campaign launched at 12:05 - it popped up and the early birds were gone... the jump to $750 was too much considering the January delivery. It's just down the road from me too - I'm in Toronto.

Yeah I was seriously debating the early bird price of $600cad but even that was still hard to justify to myself. I am located way down the 401 from you lol just past Brockville, ON

[BobenhamHotspur]

I also looked at the price and thought it was too much for me Did the Palette people explain exactly how they did the magic?

[grobbins]

Yes I was talking to one of the founders at Mosaic asking questions and they basically put it like this.

There software mimics 3 extra "ghost" extruder's that your printer thinks you have. You then print as if yiu had a quad extruder machine and the palette knows when and where and how much of a certain color to splice into the feed. You then also have to either have the old color purged out by doing infill before permiters or by adding what they all a "purge tower" to you build so every color change the extruder moves off to the side and adds a layer to the purge tower to flush out the old color and start the new.

Personally I think it's smart tech but there a couple things I do dislike about the whole process. One being the requirement of using their special software and the other is losing build space on the machine by having to add that purge tower if you don't want to purge the old color in your infill.

[BobenhamHotspur]

Yes I was talking to one of the founders at Mosaic asking questions and they basically put it like this.

There software mimics 3 extra "ghost" extruder's that your printer thinks you have. You then print as if yiu had a quad extruder machine and the palette knows when and where and how much of a certain color to splice into the feed. You then also have to either have the old color purged out by doing infill before permiters or by adding what they all a "purge tower" to you build so every color change the extruder moves off to the side and adds a layer to the purge tower to flush out the old color and start the new.

Personally I think it's smart tech but there a couple things I do dislike about the whole process. One being the requirement of using their special software and the other is losing build space on the machine by having to add that purge tower if you don't want to purge the old color in your infill.

As it appears there is only one tube exiting the device to the printer does their machine actually cut the filament and if yes do they weld it to the end before pushing it towards the extruder?

[clayton]

Actually Grobbins, that is how the Daimond Extruder works - the Palette splices (with a knife) and fuses the filament into a single filament so it extrudes the right colour at the right time from the single nozzle - there is no need for a purge tower with this one as the software supplies the right colour to the hotend.

[Joao]

I was trying to design (first in my mind) how this machine could be built, and I tested manually to do the same behaviour. And it worked.
The machine does splices the colours, but do not fuse them, or if it does, there is no need for it.

These are the steps that I 'imagined' and tested manually (using my hands instead of motors):
1- Have the filament going throughout a teflon tube up to the extruder motor;
2- Pause the printing;
3- Cut the filament just before it gets into the teflon tube;
4- Continue the printing;
5- Insert the new colour filament into the teflon tube;
6- Keep moving in the new filament, at the same speed of the extruder motor (this is where a stepper motor moving at the same speed of the extruder would be really helpful);
7- Repeat from 1 as many times you need.

It wouldn't be very complicated to build a script that:
- looks into the gcode commands identifying where the extruder change command appears;
- moves that command X millimetres ahead where it should be (that X would be the same distance from the head up to the tube and to the cut exchange);
Then the cut would happen exactly when that command is called by the printer.

Any volunteers to start drawing a cutter and filament switcher mechanism?

[bolsoncerrado]

Yes the palette fuses into a single filament... there's the video of the guy holding the fused filament (multicolor) somewhere....

[grobbins]

Actually Grobbins, that is how the Daimond Extruder works - the Palette splices (with a knife) and fuses the filament into a single filament so it extrudes the right colour at the right time from the single nozzle - there is no need for a purge tower with this one as the software supplies the right colour to the hotend.

Not so from what I see and gathered from mosaic. If you go to there website and not the kickstarter you can see a video of them printing a company logo and off to the side is a big mixed color block looking print that the extruder just travels to and does a layer or however much to get the old color purged. That and I am also pretty sure they even mention the use of purge towers in the kickstarter(i could be wrong).

If i am thinking correctly the palette and the diamond nozzle both print multicolor using the same principal they just both have 2 different methods of executing it

Also from talking with Chris at mosaic he also informed me the smallest length of filament the palette can cut and splice is 35mm.

[bolsoncerrado]

Diamond fuses, mixes and extrudes on realtime. Palette fuses and generates a new mixed filament your hotend fuses later...

[clayton]

Cool - well I stand corrected. I'm going to pickup the Diamond hotend - anyone else? Think it will it be a pain in the ass to setup the triple extruders?