David that is interesting, thanks for posting.
Printable View
David that is interesting, thanks for posting.
Lee it does not switch every layer, normally you print in just two colors. The one that David posted is a lot more money because it has to be large enough for two extruder heads. But instead of colors, you could print the supports out of water soluble filament and the rest out of water proof PETG or ABS that could be done with the Prusa I have.
My machine has one extruder and a 5 filament "loader" named the MMU2. Depending on what you are printing you could be switching between all 5 filaments on every layer. As I said in a previous post that 4 color sheep that I printed took over 9 hours and would have probably only taken a couple of hours in a single color. The printer not only has to switch the color but it has to extrude a little bit of the previous color onto a waste block. It is probably a couple of minutes to switch filaments.
Yes - you are correct. And also the problem of mixing the filaments in the extruder when changing from one filament feed to the other. This type of setup is more for those wishing to print an object with multiple colors where the filament switch does not occur that frequently and a little bit of filament mixing is not a problem.
But for printing water soluble supports or other more sophisticated applications the single extruder may present some real challenges and may not necessarily be the best way to go - in my opinion. But the printer that Cary has does sound interesting, and certainly has some more capabilities that my little MP Voxel printer.
David