Whatever happened to…the Kraken?
I can’t say as I’ve ever seen evidence of a 4 color, fully loaded kraken actually printing…and I can’t seem to find anything on Youtube…
I think it was about 8 months ahead of its time. Even three heads are hard to get working because the electronics typically only support two extruders. Slicers are still a little buggy when it comes to multiple extruders. I think that in the next few months we will see big improvements and see much more of the kraken.
I’ve got a Kraken sitting here from the first batch, hasn’t even left the box yet. When I looked into it originally I could not find a firmware that would support 4 extruders so it seemed kind of pointless to bother messing around with it.
There are a handful of people who had it hooked up, including myself - but holy fucking shit leveling 4 nozzles without it ripping up the print was nearly impossible.
A little OT, but has anyone had/seen success with an automated hotend changer?
@Matthew_Satterlee - search up automatic ToolHead changer. You should find a thread on the reprap forums. I don’t know how far it’s gotten since I last saw it, many months ago.
Also look at 3D digital cooks (video of delta bot printing pancakes) and Firepick Delta.
It is peculiar, but there are a LOT of Krakens out there in the wild. What is also interesting is that we have a lot of repeat customers and bulk orders for Krakens from companies and organisations. People keep buying them, and we’re continuing to manufacture and support them. We even made some super subtle changes in the latest batch.
What on earth these people are doing with these things is beyond me. If I were to hazard guesses at the intentions of the companies and organisations that are buying large amounts of these things it seems to fall into two use cases; using a high temperature heated chamber, where you need the water cooling, or strange and peculiar combinations of many materials. Contrary to what I expected there doesn’t seem to be much use for the purpose of colour.
Repetier now supports 4+ extruders, and this can be taken advantage of using an Azteeg X3 Pro - which is how we currently have our Kraken test bot rigged. Another good option is the Duet board with DueX4 expansion. @Tony_Lock from T3DP3D did a good blog post on it.