Issues with multi-material/multicolour prints

I received my Snapmaker Artisan a few weeks ago, I went through the calibration steps and the printer seemed to be printing single colour prints fine. When I moved on to multicolour prints the left extruder would stop extruding after switching back from the right extruder. I tried adding a purging tower but the issue still keeps happening. I’ve recalibrated the printer and it can still print single colour prints from the left extruder properly but it struggles with multicolour prints. Has anyone had a similar issue?

Many people, myself included, have been experiencing these issues. We believe the issue is due to filament prematurely heating when the nozzle is idle, and then bending rather than feeding correctly which causes a clog.

Some users are able to get 1-2hours of print time before the nozzle clogs, others 30 minutes, and finally others print without issue.

There doesn’t seem to be an official response yet from Snapmaker, and I have been unable to get it working. But here are some suggestions to help

-Decrease retraction
-Lower idle temp
-Run enclosure fan and keep enclosure door open
-Cool the ambient environment around the printer as much as possible.

Hopefully we’ll get something from Snapmaker soon

I see, when I opened up the extruder module the filament seemed to be straight, and when I unloaded the filament I didn’t see any signs of it bending. I’ll try reducing the retraction length and lowering the idle temperature and see if that helps. Thanks for the suggestions!

When you open up the extruder, have a look for filament shavings / debris in the gears. This is a telltale sign that (for some reason or another), the filament is unable to be pushed through the nozzle. It might also help to look into other causes of clogs unrelated to heat creep.

I did a few more test prints and I did notice small specs of filament in between the gears, how come there isn’t any damage to the filament still attached to the spool?

Same thing. 2 small good prints out of 6. Too low rate…
Same thing for 1 color/material print

I haven’t had too many issues with single colour prints so far. I found levelling the z offset and using the PEI coated side of the build plate have resulted in less failed prints, it won’t have the nice finish if you use the non-coated surface but you should have more successful prints.

The Dual Extrusion Module for Snapmaker 2.0 causes the same user reports of seemingly clogged nozzles. My theory is that it is not about heat creep/clogged nozzle, but either the retraction settings (the filament shavings observed here in this thread IMHO support this theory) and/or some feeder design problem (the feeder lock levers being to weak). I personally plan to change retraction settings and printed the lever blocks as Snapmaker suggested as in interims solution and will see how far I get (but as I am a low-frequency-printer - I’ll not have feedback very soon). More details here: Dual Extrusion Head: Heat creep? More likely: Bad feeder!

I thought so too, there didn’t seem to be any evidence of heat creeping, I’ll try messing around with the retraction settings until something interesting happens. On an unrelated note, do you have any Cura profiles for the artisan? I’m using Luban currently but would like to switch to cure as it gives me more control over the printer’s settings.

Not being an Artisan owner, I did not bother with creating any profile, but I guess it should be pretty straightforward. Code base for Snapmaker and Artisan firmware are similar, so Start/End GCode should be the same for both machines, only dimensions need adjustment. Perhaps this here is a starting point: Cura & Dual Extrusion head first try

EDIT: and this is there: Connect/Set-up Artisan to/with Cura - ssems someone already did the work.

Update:
After reducing printing speed and messing around with the retraction settings, I’ve been able to get the machine to print in two colours. The print quality still isn’t the best but that could be because I’m using older spools and because I still haven’t found the optimal retraction settings. I did notice some filament shavings when I opened up the module and removed the nozzle for cleaning. When I do ending up finding thew best print settings, I’ll make sure to post it in this thread.

So basically, if you remove the entire extruder section of the module and notice shavings and your multicolour print quality sucks, reduce the printing speed and change the retraction settings.