Has anyone used a separate extruder for their infills? I am considering adding a separate extruder on my Rostock Max after I get the thing put together and figured out.
Would Slic3r and Skeinforge do the infill last after the perimeter was made?
There’s no reason to think that you couldn’t use a second extruder for infill, the question that is more pressing is “Why?”
a larger nozzle could speed up infill if you wanted to do that, but it may cause problems for smaller needed infill points. I guess that could be resolved with some smart software calculation, but I don’t think anyone’s written that yet. (That would be an interesting challenge)
Alternatively, a separate infill for color could be interesting. Or are you thinking of separate materials?
Different materials, different quality of filament (probably recycled), different methods of putting the infill material in, etc.
Yes, you would have to set the software up with a little bit of tweaking. If there is not a threshold already in place for the slicer software, there should be. Anything under the threshold should be counted as a perimeter and not an infill. At least that is how I see it. I am a programmer, so I most likely could download and patch the code.
http://slic3r.org/blog/1.5-years-of-slic3r-development is interesting. I was reading about the microlayer feature where it infills every N layers. That will greatly increase the chance of what I want to do actually working.
@Loren_Brandenburg Have you used any lower grade filament or self, extruded filament for your infill extruder? Do you use the feature in slic3r or skeinforge for making the infill layers thicker than perimeters? Is your infill extruder the same nozzle size as your main extruder?
I may have been looking a tad bit into the future: http://slic3r.org/blog/1.5-years-of-slic3r-development
hmmm…I heard retracting on bowden extruders is a pain anyways.
Got a vid for the problem you just mentioned?
@Loren_Brandenburg jetguy pointed out that we’re seeing the natural thermal expansion ongoing in the melt area of the non-active extruder on multi-extruder runs - ie: even with the filament retracted and generating no direct pressure on the material in the meltzone of the extruder (retraction cannot pull this material out) the polymer will expand due to the continued supply of heat. The only true “solution” apparent would be to cool the non-active extruder head below the glass transition point somehow. This is a software question.
How bad is the result?
@Loren_Brandenburg with the stock slicers we are infact SOL - I’m looking at creating patches for skeinforge and possibly Slic3r in the code which creates the tool-change GCODE to adjust the non-operating extruder temperature down and the newly swapped extruder up with a short pause - if combined with the use of the “Wipe” action (move to a pre-set location where the extruder nozzle can draw across a silicone pad) then the entire thermal cycle can likely be embedded within the time it takes to move, wipe and return to position.