Is there anyone using Dual Extrusion on a regular basis?

3D Printing
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Is there anyone using Dual Extrusion on a regular basis? I´m looking into doing parts for my OpenRC car where i want to use a low infill on most of the part but around holes and cutouts i need more material for added strength. Maybe even use a different material…
I do this somtimes for my own stuff but there is no use creating parts for dual extrusion and sharing if nobody can take use of it, then it will only be alot of hassle…

Any thoughts on this?

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Dual extrusion is largely a gimmick. Out of the nearly 12 total 3D printers that my hackerspaces members own, nobody has or is interested in dual extrusion.

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At the areas that you need more strength create small holes/slits in your design. This will trick your slicing software to create additional perimeters around the hole/slit, though if you make these small enough (0.1mm dia) they won’t show! Simples!

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Unfortunately dual extrusion /multi extrusion does not seem quite “mature” enough yet.

Maybe you could separate the different “materialed” parts into separate objects (as is often the case as far as I remember) but so they can be merged and printed in the same material for all those with single extrusion as a fallback ?
(this only works if not requiring “special” material properties like elasticity for certain parts, of course)

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The problem is largely that STL doesn’t support any selection of a “material”. It’s just a plain list of unconnected triangles.
AS far as I understand it Gnu-Triangle does support that …but nobody supports that format.
If a slicer could directly read a common CAD format you’d not only have a material selection per lumb but even perfectly round circles as no polygons are used ever.

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@Marcus_Wolschon if only there were a common cad format that actually had an open specification…

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@ThantiK yes. I completely agree.
(Tried to write STEP once…you can’t.)

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So what format except STL would you prefer. I always do STL as single parts or plates and then provide a STEP of the full assembly. I try to assume whoever will be downloading know little or next to nothing about CAD so I want to make it simple.

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Sounds like good practice.

Problem: There is no widely supported format to replace STL for multi-color/multi-material prints.

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Ok, i had to try anyway, i meant something like this: https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/117814474100552114108