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One of many frequent frustrations with frequent filament based mostly 3D printing is that you just’re sometimes caught with one materials at a time. The Swapper3D Kickstarter is taking a considerably tried and true strategy from CNC machining and making use of it to a 3D printer.
observe: It is a kickstarter. Kickstarters will not be like shopping for a product from a retailer. If this firm fails to fulfil the guarantees, there isn’t any safety on your cash. Don’t assist kickstarters financially till you’re absolutely conscious of how kickstarter works.
Folks have provide you with every kind of inventive methods of getting round this limitation. There are settings in your slicer so to change supplies manually throughout a print, typically used to create a colour shift at a particular top for logos and objects like that.
Palette 3 by Mosaic manufacturing
There are additionally people making fascinating mechanical means of adjusting filament throughout an energetic print. This may be seen in objects just like the Prusa MMU, which modifications which filament hits the extruder, or the Pallete by Mosaic Manufacturing, which fuses totally different filaments collectively at varied locations to be printed on the acceptable time. These approaches include a standard frustration: the purge block.
While you change materials or colour, it’s important to purge the extruder of the remaining materials. This provides up in each time and materials.
Prusa XL with 5 unbiased extruders
A typical response to this frustration is to easily add extra device heads. Full extruders that may be loaded with totally different filaments. You possibly can see this in Prusa’s new XL, or the e3D Device Changer system. This solves the purge block difficulty, however utilizing full extruders has a pair downsides as effectively. Price and weight for instance.
The Swapper 3D is trying again at what CNC milling machines have been doing for many years, merely swapping out the merchandise on the very finish of the chain, on this case the recent finish. It’s cheaper, lighter, and fewer area hungry than swapping out a full extruder with all of the related components. The one factor remaining to be seen is that if this method holds up over time, and naturally in the event that they ship on the kickstarter.
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