MMU2S or Palette for PVA?  

RE: MMU2S or Palette for PVA?

@prusanewuser

I have never used Chroma, it's never appealed to me...   I didn't like Canvas, so it's likely I won't like chroma... 

I already have paid subscriptions to Simplify3D and Kiss Professional, plus Prusa Slicer on my Laptop... and Canvas in the cloud...   I am not in a hurry to have yet another slicer kicking round!

regards Joan

RE: MMU2S or Palette for PVA?

@david-w76

Hi David, I believe the tandem mmu2 and Palette2 solution would result in 8 filaments, as one channnel is dedicated to handling the output of the other device... 
and I am not sure that the Palette would be happy to have the MMU2 taking it's filament back, frequently

regards Joan

RE: MMU2S or Palette for PVA?

Hi @joantabb 

I asked Moasic twice how to use water soluble filament, they referred me to their Canvas cloud. However, I already told them that I do not want to use their Canvas cloud for privacy reason. Is it easy to use PrusaSlicer + PP2P to assign water soluble filament to the entire support or just the interface between support and the overhang? I think if using the MMU2S, I could do the selection easily under PrusaSlicer as everything is integrated by Prusa.

RE: MMU2S or Palette for PVA?

@prusanewuser

P2PP is a post processor, so you actually use Prusa Slicer to allocate the filaments, and then afterwards P2PP adds the palette specific codes to make Palette work! 

you just allocate PVA to extruder 4 and set up the parameters for either total soluble support , or preferably soluble interface only... 

regards Joan

RE: MMU2S or Palette for PVA?

Posted by: @joantabb

@david-w76

Hi David, I believe the tandem mmu2 and Palette2 solution would result in 8 filaments, as one channnel is dedicated to handling the output of the other device... 
and I am not sure that the Palette would be happy to have the MMU2 taking it's filament back, frequently

 

regards Joan

Agreed 8 colours on a single extruder printer, 9 on an IDEX.  There was an interesting test on YouTube where they hooked loads of palettes up to give 64 colours in total - it was only a POC and wasn't completely reliable - but likely to be more reliable than having to keep retracting as you said,   

Forgot to mention in my list of MMU2 advantages the auto loading - now that my MMU2 is working again I am finding this particularly convenient - even for single and dual colour prints, but only having 5 colours of one material permanently connected isn't perfect - especially with all of the complications of long PTFE and buffer feeds required to manually change each filament roll.  

May well switch back to the sort of non buffer solution that you mention just for the convenience of manual filament roll swaps plus the reduced friction, however so far I am quite pleased with a slightly tweaked version of this buffer solution https://www.prusaprinters.org/prints/3292-mmu2-filament-buffer due to the fact that it keeps things nice and tidy and keeps the air away.  Might build a second buffer and just do the manual colour swaps via ptfe swaps at the MMU.

RE: MMU2S or Palette for PVA?

Posted by: @joantabb

@chris-c-2

Hi CHris, 
I don't anticipate being home this year...   maybe early next year, however the British government's relaxation of controls over Christmas is likely to create a third wave of infections, which is not a pleasant thought

I don't know if you noticed, I tend to do my text printing Face down, because in my case this keeps the colour changes in the first milimetre, so the waste pile is only 1mm tall, and if a failure happens, it happens early in the print. so little time and materials wasted... if I did the ammobox lid the other way over the waste pile would be 60mm tall and a failure would waste hours of work and material in the model

regards Joan

Have you tried the 'eliminate sparse layers' option - as it seems to work quite well in the tests I have performed and keeps the purge tower very low if you just have a single colour print with some contrasting text on the top.

Where the geometry allows it though I agree that text on the bottom layer would probably give a better looking result.  

I presume the new top layer ironing option may well smudge text if it is on the top layer.

I think text, and having a different material for easier to remove  supports, and easier manual colour changes are going to be my most common use case for the MMU2/Palette - as I haven't got the patience or reliability for multi hour/day prints that the very colourful models require.