Outstanding Software & Hardware  

Outstanding Software & Hardware

After installing the MultiMaterial Upgrade I hesitated to use it for a few weeks. My Prusa, built in Czechoslovakia with Golden Hands, had been printing like a dream and I feared the consequences of my Shaky American Pink Hands tinkering with it.

I was Used to Simplify3D and Octoprint and PET filament. Now I had to learn new stuff and backtrack to PLA printing.

But you know what? This is magic.

After figuring out how to load filament into extruder #1 I printed a single-color experimental file. It worked fine. Now I was ready to load the other three extruders.

The Slic3r Prusa Edition software makes printer control easy. For a first four-color project I loaded the Fish Fossilz STL file from Thingiverse.

This is a jointed fish skeleton, a standard single-color STL file.

In Slick3r I selected the fish, used the Split command to separate it into nine parts, then assigned each part to an extruder by selecting it and clicking the Settings command.

Export the Gcode file, load it into Octoprint, hit Print and that's it.

The Prusa team has done an outstanding job in making a complex process simple to use, both mechanically and through software.

No need now for post-processing, no need for applications other than Slick3r.

I will use PLA for now as I get used to this exciting new capability, but I look forward to switching over to PET when Josef & company have worked out any remaining issues.