1 Topic by ITman496

  • ITman496
  • Member
  • Offline
  • Registered: 2013-07-16
  • Posts: 288

Topic: multi extruder and multi operation

so I'm designing my own ultimate printer of sorts.

I'm gonna go with a bunch of extruders, probably on the order of five or more.  What I want to know is this:

I see that in slic3r you can specify support material extruders, outer wall extruders, infill extruders, all separate. Good.

I also see that you can specify different parts of the stl to be different materials! Also good.

Here is what I want to know, can you do both of those things at the same time?  Can you have your different extruder for dissolvable support material and then one nozzle is normal abs, then one is ninjaflex, and then the ninjaflex one always infills the ninjaflex sections, but the dissolvable only prints the dissolvable support, and I can have one or two of the main abs extruders working on the abs section?

my arrangement that I've been thinking of is as follows:

1 e3d volcano for dissolvable support.
1 specialty material extruder, also e3d, for strange filaments such as nylon or ninjaflex
2 normal extruders for 2 colors of normal abs
1 volcano for high thickness high speed infill or high speed, high strength structural prints in normal abs

The way everything is worded it appears that I can have nozzles set to their own jobs for one material prints, OR I can have different nozzles do different materials, but not both?

2 Reply by Anthem

  • Anthem
  • Member
  • Offline
  • Registered: 2016-05-21
  • Posts: 136

Re: multi extruder and multi operation

Slic3r is unfortunately limited in how you can assign extruders for supports and infill. As you said, you can either use each tool to supply its own infill and supports, OR you can use a specific extruder for infill and/or supports. You can't mix the two using Slic3r's settings.

That said, there might be a way to do it through very tricky toolchange gcode, or definitely with a post-processing script, but it's not a straightforward, drop-in solution.

I'm certainly not advertising for Simplify3D here, but you can do things like what you're asking with it. I recently completed building my 4-color setup (with two nozzles each sharing two filaments via Y-splitter). In S3D, you can specify whether you want to use a single extruder or "All Extruders" for supports, infill, etc., and by creating additional "processes" you can even have different options on each STL you import. So it can basically do everything Slic3r can... BUT it carries a hefty price tag, I *really really* hate its configuration interface, and there are no modifier meshes sad You can replace those by splitting up your STL using a modeling tool or OpenSCAD, but it's annoying when slic3r has it built-in.

3 Reply by carl_m1968

  • carl_m1968
  • carl_m1968
  • Member
  • Offline
  • From: Far North almost not Dallas
  • Registered: 2014-10-17
  • Posts: 6,512

Re: multi extruder and multi operation

If you do some searching there is a ahem free or liberated version of S3D floating around. However it is old, does not have the multiple extruder wizard and cannot be updated. But it is out there if you want to try before you slap down $150. I only mention this as S3D has no trial or try then buy option which I think is stupid. Also I will not supply a link either. If you want it, find it.

Printing since 2009 and still love it!
Anycubic 4MAX best $225 ever invested.
Voxelabs Proxima SLA. 6 inch 2k Mono LCD.
Anycubic Predator, massive Delta machine. 450 x 370 print envelope.