Does anyone recognise the dual hot-end setup on Richard Horne  's 3DR shown in

3D Printing
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Does anyone recognise the dual hot-end setup on @Richard_Horne 's 3DR shown in his blog post from 8th July? Knowing RichRap it’s a devious device of his own imagining but wondered if anyone else had tried this setup on a 3DR. Hard to imagine fitting dual hot-ends into the tiny space under the micro-platform. I’d ask direct but I suspect I bombarded him with enough questions already…

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I thought RichRap used a 3 filament blending nozzle powered by 3 extruder cold ends.

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Hi David,
On that 3DR machine I setup a dual mixing extruder (two feeds in - single nozzle out)

I’m cheating a little :slight_smile: but it is really mixing two feeds and does a good job of retractions. The print quality is as good as any of my other hot-ends.

I have been drafting a blog post on how to make up a mixing extruder nozzle and driving it for mixing for about the last year, but not quite got around to finishing the post yet.

I first showed it at the London Makerfaire in June 2013, and then again at TCT Last year, so various things are scattered about it on my blog.

I have also made up and tested a five input mixing nozzle, again that will need to be documented and posted at some point.

I do get a lot of people asking me about it, and we won’t get a good software tool-chain of slic3r - and firmware for mixing until more people have a mixing nozzle hardware so it’s on my list of things to get well documented and released this autumn.

I have talked to various people who are also thinking about making mixing nozzles @Sanjay_Mortimer that should hopefully be more available for experimentation - My ones are all hand made and take some time and effort to get working well.

I hope that helps, and more info soon.

Cheers,

Rich.

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@Richard_Horne Thanks Rich. Your ongoing project list is pretty dizzying!

My 3DR is pretty much done now. I’ve designed quite a few extra 3DR parts including:

50mm spool adapter
25mm hot-end fan bracket
80mm blower fan bracket
Side-mount bed restraints (for FSR)
Handles
RAMPS adapters (based on Luke Turner’s design)
GLCD bracket

Some of them might be of interest to other 3DR owners/builders. I’ll stick them all up on YouMagine when I get chance.

Thanks again for the 3DR design!

adavidm

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Further to what @Richard_Horne says, we are still developing the mixer, and ploughing some serious time and cash into doing so. We should have a not-quite-mixer on the market very soon, in fact I just got alpha hardware in the door this morning from manufacture.

True mixing is going to require a consortium effort all the way from raw resin, through filament manufacture, slicing, firmware, hotend, machine to move hotend etc. It’s something we’re already making headway and are collaborating with some big names already. It will happen. I don’t know when it will happen, but I’m trying my darndest to make it happen sooner rather than later.