For the unfamiliar, in SM Orca, four colors were painted (yellow, red, black, and white). By right clicking on the timeline, I added a Pause command just below his nose.
Then to start the print, brown is first loaded into black, and pink in for white. When the printer paused halfway through the print, I unloaded the brown and pink and loaded the black and white, then resumed printing.
Using the 1 pause to change 2 colors, we printed a 160 mm tall, 6 color Pikachu in about 5h 45m all together, including the pause to swap two spools. A 141g model with only 24g of waste.
Great post. A lot of people will appreciate that the U1 can actually print five, six or even seven colors via pausing and swapping filament l. Of course it’s model dependent, but still very useful, especially when using Hueforge like in my case.
Yeah. And for a tool changer that, depending on the model, you may only need to pause once rather than multiple times. Since you can swap out multiple colors at once then walk away again. If you’re clever with how it’s painted
It’s a neat trick to stretch the capability a little further! Depending on the model, of course.
For sure this is expected capability, but it’s cool to see it in action.
It would be great if @Snapmaker_Official can incorporate this into the software.
Allow >4 color painting in orca.
Automatically detect if filament swap can accommodate the painted model during slicing.
Automatically generate the most efficient color swap pattern.
Automatically update print parameters for new filament.
Automatically place pauses into generated gcode for the color swap.
Add additional purge for color change
Send notification to mobile for color change (in 5 mins, now, etc.)
In the example above, user will paint the Pikachu with yellow, red, black, white, brown, and pink. This gives the user a good visual representation of what the end result will be. Then during slicing, orca will figure out yes, you can achieve this result using filament swap and instructs user to load brown, pink, yellow, and red first. Orca will also figure out the ideal spot to place a pause for filament swap. In this case, a single pause at layer 399 will do (other prints might require multiple pauses). Then at 399, the printer will instruct the user to replace brown with black and pink with white.
Thank you for sharing your detailed suggestions and ideas. I’ve collected your feedback and passed it on to our product team. If there are any clear plans or updates regarding these features in the future, we will make sure to share them with the community.
Planning out filament swaps is a good idea to get more colors.