Re: Speed/Quality of MMU vs Single
I'm confused - Does the MMU replace the direct drive head and turn it into a (four-way) bowden drive or do the four motors just load and unload the filament from the direct drive head? If it's the latter, why would there be any significant change in resolution / quality or ability to print with flexible material?
The MMU Upgrade you can buy replaces the direct drive with a 4-way bowden setup with 4 motors. They load and unload and extrude the filament. Me and sebastian have two different approaches to make the printer to a MMU direct drive printer. In both solutions a direct drive motor is added to the 4 extruder motors. In my solution every motor loads, unloads and extrudes. In sebastians's only the direct drive motor extrudes, the 4 other ones load and unload.
One other basic question but - I am less interested in multi-material prints than just being able to software select single color prints without having to manually change out the filament (yes, I am lazy!). Is there any reason that this is impractical? What I mean is - with the current software can it heat up and use one filament without a great deal of overhead or waste / priming of the unused colors?
This also was my intend and it works pretty good. There is no real additional waste compared to the single colour style printer. Just the first extrusion line on the front of the bed is about 2 - 3 times longer (for the potential colour/material change if another extruder is used than beforehand). Considering the need to extrude waste material on a manual change too, I would even say the MMU produces slightly less or about the same waste as the normal model.
I will present my solution probably in late february/march.