Printing 3 colors (2 same layer) without MMU
Hi guys! I am really new on 3d printing. I started 3 mounths ago with an ender 3 v2 and now I just bought a prusa i3 mk3. I am trying to keep printing keychains that I used to print with the ender. The keychains that I desinged consited mostly on 3 colors, 1 in the base and 2 on the same layer (pic attached). I learned that watching this tutorial:
Now I cannot find the way to do that on the prusa. I want to know if its possible to do it without MMU and how can achieve that.
Thank you in advance, and sorry to ask something that maybe its really simple!!
Sure it's possible. You have to design your model so that each color is its own part. In PrusaSlicer you then have to set up a printer profile with multiple extruders, one for each color and assign the correct extruder to the respective part. The slicer will insert M600 gcode commands where needed to trigger a manual filament switch. For an example see https://www.prusaprinters.org/prints/51471-dual-color-lcd-cover-for-mk3s-no-mmu-required
limitations.
It is pretty easy to set the slicer to do this, but you are limited to printing layers of colors. Once you understand the limitations, you will be able to work around them.
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Chuck H
3D Printer Review Blog
Chuck, that's not quite correct. Yes, if you use the change color option in Prusaslicer, it's only color change by layer. But if you use the multi-extruder method I and @diem suggested, the color change can be at any point so you can have multiple colors per layer. I never did more than 3 colors for a few layers because the manual filament changes get tedious quickly....
tedious
Chuck, that's not quite correct. Yes, if you use the change color option in Prusaslicer, it's only color change by layer. But if you use the multi-extruder method I and @diem suggested, the color change can be at any point so you can have multiple colors per layer. I never did more than 3 colors for a few layers because the manual filament changes get tedious quickly....
That would seem tedious and waste a lot of filament.
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Chuck H
3D Printer Review Blog
Tedious. Yes. Wasting material? Not more than you would with the MMU, actually less.
filament waste
Even though I have beat the MMU into submission and get pretty reliable printing, there's no doubt it's wasteful on the filament. particularly for solubles or going from black to a lighter color and you have to squeeze out a bunch more to make sure you get no cross contamination.
I do wish prusa offered a proper multi extruder printer.