Hi all,
Thanks to your suggestions in my previous post I am considering buying a printer with the diamond hotend from http://reprap.me (http://reprap.me/diamond-hotend.html)
It seems to be the ultimate solution for multicolor printing without oozing.
Does anyone own it and give a feedback?
I can’t find any real review of it…
Reprap.me propose a Duplicator 4 upgraded with the diamond hotend. Do you think it is a good printer?
Thanks
I’ve not see any “real world” reference to the head either and look forward to hearing all the good and not-so-good about it. The not-oozing part should make it a winner in my opinion.
OT: Does anyone know how to follow comments posted to this sort of post without having to add one’s own comment?
I mostly read people struggling to get it to work, but that’s largely firmware.
Multi-feed hot ends all struggle with retraction and jamming. When you push filament into one feed, molten plastic wants to flow up the other feed(s). That tends to cause them to jam. Basically the print tuning seems to be very challenging.
@Griffin_Paquette thanks! @Miguel_Angel_Salmer1 is really making awesome prints. I am more and more convinced about the diamond hotend
Did somebody actually try to ‘mix’ colors? Like RGB?
@Werner_Pirkl
RGB is for light-based mixing. For “solid” based mixing, one has to use CMYK, from my understanding.
@Fred_U You’re right it’s subtractive mixing, but doesn’t change the principle of mixing three types of filament to get another color. @Miguel_Angel_Salmer1 You already tried?
@Fred_U
You would actually need to add white as well, as theres no white substrate being printed upon. you might get away without the black channel and suffer composite-black, but 4 channels of WCMY would be a minimum.
@Miguel_Angel_Salmer1 thanks! It indeed looks awesome. For dual color, would you recommend a diamond hotend or a dual extruder printer (like flashforge create pro) ?
@Justin_Mitchell
That’s easily overlooked when one is accustomed to the flat printer world, where the white substrate is provided in the form of paper. Once you go beyond the three nozzles to a fourth, make it a dual head extruder with three nozzles each. WCMYK plus PVA wash-away support!
CMY mixing can give a pretty decent color palette, but like @Fred_U mentioned, “full color” requires CMYKW with black and white feeds. And even then you need very pigment-saturated filaments. What’s super unique about filament mixing that you don’t see in other color blending applications (like with RGB or CMYK) is the DILUTION effect from each filament’s bulk volume. So when you mix two colors, the output has half the pigment concentration from each input. That makes it impossible to achieve composite black, and you’re severely limited in the saturation values that can be achieved.
@Miguel_Angel_Salmer1 i was also looking at the Sigma but I was unsure if I could change the hotend later (when I will be more comfortable with 3d print) or not. I like the Big Box. I will contact them to see if they can sell a fully assembled dual head (or maybe one with their kraken… It looks very cool)
Has anyone considered the logistics of providing 6 filament feeds on a printer or accommodating 6 spools? Quite a challenge.
If you go for heavily pigmented filaments then I would imagine you need a 4+1 dual setup i.e. CYMW+K. You would print colour or black.
There’s also the question of whether current multi-hotends will effectively mix the filaments or just produce striped output.
@Neil_Darlow There are at least two or three actively or passively mixed 5 or 6 feed hot end designs out there that I know of. For example https://hackaday.io/project/3729-arcus-3d-m1-full-color-filament-printer
we are melting the filament anyway. let’s go with 1 filament feed and 4 pigment feeds.