Disabling the print cooling-fan during ColorPrint filament changing
Hi everyone,
I have a suggestion for a better user experience during the color changing at a ColorPrint: Disable the radial print cooling fan.
The thing is, that while the extruder pushes filament through to get the new filament coming out clean, the fan blows the extruded filament to the back over the whole bed. The filament lands somewhere in the back of the printer, what can cause mechanical trouble. Furthermore, if one has an object right behind the extruder, the filament gets blown onto this object.
Without the fan on, the filament would simply stick to the bed and fall off as soon as the printer resumes the print.
Best Regards,
Martin
Re: Disabling the print cooling-fan during ColorPrint filament changing
While this may sound like a good idea I'm not sure it could be implemented. How would the printer know what fan setting you had before it shut itself off? What speed should it start back with?
This would have to controlled in the ColorPrint application. Maybe ask what temperature and fan speed percentage you want when resuming printing. It can place the fan shutdown code as well as the new values in the GCode.
Re: Disabling the print cooling-fan during ColorPrint filament changing
Sequence of actions performed after M600 command is controlled by Marlin and Marlin knows exactly, what is actual fan setting. 🙂
However I personally like current operation of M600 (with cooling fan active) because it helps me get rid of flushed filament.
Maybe it would be useful to implement optional fan deactivation by command parameter (like M600 F0 for fan off and M600 F1 for fan on).
The same way (optional parameter) we could control beeps during M600 wait phase.
Re: Disabling the print cooling-fan during ColorPrint filament changing
Sequence of actions performed after M600 command is controlled by Marlin and Marlin knows exactly, what is actual fan setting. 🙂
However I personally like current operation of M600 (with cooling fan active) because it helps me get rid of flushed filament.
Maybe it would be useful to implement optional fan deactivation by command parameter (like M600 F0 for fan off and M600 F1 for fan on).
The same way (optional parameter) we could control beeps during M600 wait phase.
So you have some cool airflow going on with your printer. My flushed filament gets blown onto my printing area causing more harm than good. And yet the last extrusion right before printing restarts will allways stick to the nozzle and get onto my object. This is because the printing fan tears off the heavy blob but not the remaining material that gets extruded after you klick on "yes" to continue printing.
My suggestion would be to park the extruder a few cm more to the right, so that the filament is extruded outside the bed area onto the table / floor (or wherever you have your MK2 standing). As soon as the bed and the extruder moves, it would cut off the flushed filament.
... and than you don't need the fan active anyhow. 😉
Because there could be problems with the X-width the carriage can travel, because of measurement differences among alle the printers in the wild, the same calibration procedure could be performed that is used for the Z calibration: Move the extruder carriage all the way to the right until the stepper skips steps and than count the distance backwards all the way to the endstop.
And yes... disable this beeping... what an annoying sound!