Every time I use this dual extruder, it kills my motivation to create what I’ve made. 85% of the time, one of the extruders stops pushing filament. Immediately left with one filament still printing, and the other one just stops extruding completely. The single extruder head never has any issues for me. Can someone please tell me that this problem is resolved with the repair kit that is being sent out? That new Bambu lab ams lite is looking reeeal attractive at just $100 over the price of the metal junk I have now.
Are there any tricks to prevent the module from doing this? I am not going to be tuning for hours for the multitudes of pla colors I have. It seems this module is so temperamental when it comes to the retraction distance/printing temps. Every time the ambient temperature changes, I need to adjust the printing profile to have a 25% higher chance of succeeding. I have never needed to excruciatingly tune profiles with the single extruder.
An owner of multiple things I have considered. How has your experience been with the P1S and the palette 3 Pro? Are there any nuances that you’ve come to notice after owning them for some time? Do you prefer to use your P1S over the Palette 3 Pro?
I am unable to get a successful print with my dual extruder. I spent a week tuning multiple filaments when the dual extruder came out. After barely getting them to work, I was able to manage about 3 successful prints. Now, going back to those same profiles that I tuned, every attempted print fails because of clogging. Have you made any modifications to your DX to use it successfully?
There are limitations with both systems, the P3 works well for what it does, the Canvas (their slicer) is horrible, but since Prusa finally released their MMU and unlocked multiple extruders with custom editable GCODE parameters it works flawlessly, and I use it exclusively with my larger prints and HueForge, as I can play with the flow rates for each extruder and let it go. Don’t get me wrong I love the P1S too but that is a different beast, and was purchased to print ASA/ABS for Vorons mainly, and it does it well. I tend to forget I have prints going in it (longer print runs 4-7 days total print time) It’s a robust system no doubt but it is a locked down eco system as far as parts and consumables go though which is a slight drawback for me still. Have you taken the DX apart completely yet to check that something isn’t stuck in the nozzles? a cold pull might be in order just incase it might have picked up a piece of metal shaving? I know it sounds weird but I have seen some weird things get stuck, and also the teeth on the extruders when you flip the front compression wheel down look to see if you shredded your filament there, that does happen even with my single extruder too. The only mod I did was to the A350 enclosure, I made the PTFE tubes go straight through the acrylic roof as when I bought the DX it was before they figured out it had a BAD heat creep issue because of the front door, and its lack of circulation, matter of fact did you get the updated door with purchase or did you get a replacement door?
The locked down ecosystem thing is something I do tend to avoid after getting into Snapmaker. I’ve realized that it is in my best interest to stay away from such things, or at the least, weigh advantages vs disadvantages for the system I’m considering. Good to hear that the P1S is robust. Heavily considered getting either that, or a 40W laser engraver. The laser won.
I haven taken apart the Dx recently other than swapping the quickswap assembly nozzles for two 0.8mm ones. I’ll have to dig around in there. Whenever the clogs happen, there is indeed shredded filament inside the gears. That is the second thing to happen though. The filament heats, expands, and gets stuck. Then starts to shred away in the gears. Happened sinch launch.
I started with the original front plate on the Dx, and resin printed the temporary front plate from the repair kit that there sending out. Still waiting on mine to arrive. I’ve found that I seem to have a higher success rate with the front plate completely removed, so that’s how I’m running it now!
I know it doesn’t help that I require an old version of firmware on my machine(Skree’s V4.5.34 flashed on top of official V1.15.21 firmware) because Snapmaker isn’t good enough to enable inline Laser engraving which I have hundreds of dollars of orders depending on.
I have to know. What is the easiest way to have custom firmware for one head(10W laser) and up to date official firmware for another(DX)? Do I have to buy a separate controller for the machine? Can I just install a partial firmware update for a specific head using a usb drive?
I appreciate all the help. Creation-ing has been a journey, with many stepping stones in all areas.
The DX door will help, but here is a another trick I learned about the SM entire line, when you set the Z, make sure its always done in a downward motion, meaning as you get closer to the .1mm gage paper or whatever you use, when you get close enough to hit the .05 if you over shoot and make it too tight, move the z up twice so .05 twice then move it down again. I know it sounds weird but I think the steppers drag and that gives a small variance at the source however its larger at the nozzle tip. I have used my 10W less than 20 times so far, I even bought LightBurn but haven’t used it yet, I don’t have the quick swap kit either since the prospect of reducing the print volume isn’t appealing yet. As far as separate custom firmware I don’t have any, I thought about joining the Beta for the custom firmware but after reading the issues it caused with the DX I decided against it, but I am running custom Gcode throughout OrcaSlicer and PrusaSlicer, including post processors for the P3. But to answer your queston about the separate controllers, you could reflash I mean its a 2 minute install and reboot, I’m wondering if Skree might know of a better way or less repetitive I should say to work around that, I still ask him A LOT of questions too
For me the new door seems to have solved my issues. I’ve done a few two-filament-prints with the new door, and after figuring out that a 0.2mm nozzle needs to be run a tad hotter, my prints have been 100% successful. Fingers crossed…
Glad to hear inline engraving has been integrated! One step closer to being able to use official firmware again. I still use the custom firnware to wirelessly send .nc files to start on my Snapmaker, which is very helpful with the position of my printer/pc.
As for the dual extruder thread, I was part of that from the beginning. Hasn’t seen the couple new responses yet though
Very interesting technique on the leveling there. I normally do end up on the last bit in a downwards direction, but I’ll have to actively make sure I’m doing that.
I must say after using lightburn, I will not be returning to Luban unless they demonstrate some pretty cool abilities. Lightburn has become such a great tool in my arsenal as it allows me not only to prepare my files, but edit them and repair them to an amazing extent with many different options, settings. It has quite the variety of tools available in the software.
I have bought a printable quickswap kit off of etsy that you screw the laser/cnc bed into. It magnetically snaps onto the heated buildplate. Ups and downs to this. Upside is there is no reduction in build volume when 3d printing. Downside is, item noticed the screws have scratched the heated bed a bit, and since it is magnetically fit, it will not be in the same Exact location every time. May be looking at the official quickswap kit soon myself…
At the moment I am reflashing, in hopes that when I return to the custom Skree software everything works as it did before. It would be nice to be able to switch between the two isntead of being able to only use either the laser, or the Dx at once.
What a cool development! Looks like I’ll be trying this out at some point. I do have one question anout it. I am not able to alter any firewall properties due to the network I’m on. Is it likely I’ll be able to do this without tinkering with the firewall?
Firewall shouldn’t be an issue, if you’re already sending the files via bat file. In case the autodiscovery won’t work with sm2uploader, just add it manually, following the guide. I have a firewall in between too.