Dual X Carriage duplication printing. For faster production in less time with better quality by printing slower and finishing faster than with a single extruder with double the speed.
It’s a good idea if you’re only printing 2 of everything you print, and need to save the space. For that matter you can do 4 heads then. Down side is it halves the print bed. And doubles the risk of a failed print. You also have to lever the print heads to the bed which needs to be redone if you have a jam. I’d still go with 2 printers the cost saving of small build volume machines vs bigger ones and if one print failed the other will still complete. But it’s still nice to see a machine like that.
@Michael_Scholtz Yes thats a very valid point about the possibility of print failure. I suggested on marlin github for an option to stop an extruder motor in case one print fails (no luck with a response so far…). The other print could still finish. The head leveling is not a problem at all in my case. I used a CNC spindle clamp type mounting for my E3D v6 which allows me to very easily adjust the heights. My procedure goes like this: 1st i level the bed for 1 extruder and then i just place them side by side and unscrew the clamp. Then they just fall down on the bed and when retightening the clamp they are on the same height. It doesn’t take more than 2-3 min for the height alignment. And the duplication is only one of the many advantages of a dual x carriage system.
What size is the bed in that pic? Looks like the Y is bigger than the X. If you’re running dual extruders like that, usually you’d want the X to be the longest width so you can get the largest area available per extruder when dual printing (due to the gap between them), unless you’re just intending to print lots of long thin objects (ie: the length of the longest part of your bed). Also, the downward fan mounts on the sides use up so much space (particularly the ones in the middle, which means you can only print small objects, especially if your X is reduced. Would be better putting the heatbreak fans on the outsides, and using cage fans for the downward cooling (you could probably fit one under the X carriage side on it’s edge). That would allow the extruders to get MUCH closer together.
@Stuart_Young The bed is 200x300mm. The duplication option is not the only purpose of this printer. The X is shorter because it takes less time for switching the extruders when i do dual color/material printing. But if the sole purpose of the printer would be duplication printing it would make more sense to have X wider. The fans are not the problem here. I still get 100x300mm space for each extruder in duplication since the X home positions are 82mm from each bed edge and when printing with single extruder both have the whole 200x300mm available.