2018 Midwest RepRap Festival (THIS WEEKEND)  

Re: 2018 Midwest RepRap Festival (THIS WEEKEND)

I'm gonna leave this here.

Enjoy.

Re: 2018 Midwest RepRap Festival (THIS WEEKEND)

I'm gonna leave this here.

Enjoy.

MK3 MMU 🙂 Interesting design and a big change to the whole idea of changing filaments in MMU

Re: 2018 Midwest RepRap Festival (THIS WEEKEND)

I'm gonna leave this here.

Enjoy.

More pictures? please!!! any more information?

Dont keep it to yourself 😉

Re: 2018 Midwest RepRap Festival (THIS WEEKEND)

That's a clever design for selecting which filament will be driven by the gear.

Do they have one actually in action at the event? That would be a very good sign for getting it out the door in a few months.

Re: 2018 Midwest RepRap Festival (THIS WEEKEND)

Here is another shot of it from twitter/instagram (link below to original....not mine by the way). Looks like they have one all together and one open. Been watching #MRRF2018 like a hawk until something showed up.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BguUBjNjw2Y/

Getting excited!

speedbal

Re: 2018 Midwest RepRap Festival (THIS WEEKEND)

I thought it was the new MMU also, but one thing threw me off and I discounted it. The 2.0 version is supposed to have the capability to provide five filaments, this only shows four.

UPDATE:
i see it now, five white tubes, what threw me off was the four screws

Re: 2018 Midwest RepRap Festival (THIS WEEKEND)

I see five ptfe feeder tubes and five filament drive gears.

Re: 2018 Midwest RepRap Festival (THIS WEEKEND)

Question, that seems heavier/bulkier than I thought. Will that thing mounted on top of the frame cause any vibration that will affect the printing? I remember when I first say it that I would want to re-mount it above or behind the printer. Depending on how the filament is fed....

Re: 2018 Midwest RepRap Festival (THIS WEEKEND)

I don't think it would cause any vibrations or anything, the old prusa multi-material had four stepper Motors and was fairly bulky. This looks really big, but it is just a large 3D printed object with all all of the circuitry in it as well. I would say the stepper motors account for 75%+ off the weight.

There's also no MECHANICAL reason it needs to be on the printer, just remember, the longer the Bowden tube connecting the two,the longer it's gonna take to change filament.

It works very simply, there are three stepper Motors on it, one has a screw gear that moves the Bowden tube that connects to the printer and a filament sensor each. Then cutting straight through you can see the five extruder gears. All of that entire shaft will turn with one stepper motor. Up above that on the hatch is a cylinder shaped object with skateboard bearings at different angles. Depending on the rotation of the cylinder is which filament extruder gear will grab.

Edit: it has 2 screw+springs to do the tension for the feed gear(s). The orange one in the background behind the open one, is what it would look like on your printer. It looks NICE.

Re: 2018 Midwest RepRap Festival (THIS WEEKEND)

Question, that seems heavier/bulkier than I thought. Will that thing mounted on top of the frame cause any vibration that will affect the printing? I remember when I first say it that I would want to re-mount it above or behind the printer. Depending on how the filament is fed....

It is dead weight. When printing, it's a straight Bowden tube... With a box in the middle.
Only when changing filament would the feed gears engage.

Basically it's an automatic filament changer.
The extruder on your printer, will, I THINK, still 100% do the work when printing.

Re: 2018 Midwest RepRap Festival (THIS WEEKEND)

Cool concept. May consider buying it when they work out MK3's issues.

Re: 2018 Midwest RepRap Festival (THIS WEEKEND)

I hope they put it through some torture tests before the release it. Maybe use a print that takes multiple color changes at multiple layers.

Re: 2018 Midwest RepRap Festival (THIS WEEKEND)

My guess is it is not as heavy as the old one, for one you have one less stepper and 1 more color/Material going through. I would say it looks like it is taking alot from the Palette with out the splicing it looks it just cuts the filament and then uses the next filament to push the the previous one through the boden tube a clever way of doing it besides it is removable which is even cooler

Re: 2018 Midwest RepRap Festival (THIS WEEKEND)

Super cool and would be great to see it in action, can't wait for the knock at the door.

Re: 2018 Midwest RepRap Festival (THIS WEEKEND)

My guess is it is not as heavy as the old one, for one you have one less stepper and 1 more color/Material going through. I would say it looks like it is taking alot from the Palette with out the splicing it looks it just cuts the filament and then uses the next filament to push the the previous one through the boden tube a clever way of doing it besides it is removable which is even cooler

This is not my understanding of what I was told. Every time that it will change filament it will simply load and unload a new filament color into the direct drive extruder. It will print 100% like a normal Mark 3 Once the filament is engaged and when you want to change the color, it will simply unload the extruder retract and then feed a new filament in.

At least that is my understanding.

My understanding of the filament cutter, is that it is for cutting the blob that is on the end of filament so often when you pull it out of the extruder.

Re: 2018 Midwest RepRap Festival (THIS WEEKEND)

My guess is it is not as heavy as the old one, for one you have one less stepper and 1 more color/Material going through. I would say it looks like it is taking alot from the Palette with out the splicing it looks it just cuts the filament and then uses the next filament to push the the previous one through the boden tube a clever way of doing it besides it is removable which is even cooler

This is not my understanding of what I was told. Every time that it will change filament it will simply load and unload a new filament color into the direct drive extruder. It will print 100% like a normal Mark 3 Once the filament is engaged and when you want to change the color, it will simply unload the extruder retract and then feed a new filament in.

At least that is my understanding.

My understanding of the filament cutter, is that it is for cutting the blob that is on the end of filament so often when you pull it out of the extruder.

That would add tons of time to multimaterial prints if it is going to retract the filament ever material change wouldn't it!

Re: 2018 Midwest RepRap Festival (THIS WEEKEND)

My guess is it is not as heavy as the old one, for one you have one less stepper and 1 more color/Material going through. I would say it looks like it is taking alot from the Palette with out the splicing it looks it just cuts the filament and then uses the next filament to push the the previous one through the boden tube a clever way of doing it besides it is removable which is even cooler

This is not my understanding of what I was told. Every time that it will change filament it will simply load and unload a new filament color into the direct drive extruder. It will print 100% like a normal Mark 3 Once the filament is engaged and when you want to change the color, it will simply unload the extruder retract and then feed a new filament in.

At least that is my understanding.

My understanding of the filament cutter, is that it is for cutting the blob that is on the end of filament so often when you pull it out of the extruder.

That would add tons of time to multimaterial prints if it is going to retract the filament ever material change wouldn't it!

I'm not sure what the filament change time is. They did not have the unit working.

But stepper motors can spin over 1000 (better quality ones around 2000) steps per second. (that's 5-10 revolutions, for simplicity sake) I think it would add maybe 10-15 seconds over the old multi-material system. You still have to pull the filament, and put it back in, which I think will be about the same speed as the old mk2's. Just gonna have a couple of seconds to de-prime the boden feed tube, switch filament, and re-prime the bodwen feed to the bondtech gears.

Compared to a Pallete+ it would add a fair chunk of time.

PLEASE LET THIS THREAD DIE, UNLESS IT IS PERTAINING TO MRRP 2018 THERE IS A NEW MULTIMATERIAL THREAD HERE
https://shop.prusa3d.com/forum/original-prusa-i3-mk3-f30/prusia-i3-mk3-mulimaterial-at-mrrf-2018-t15185.html

Re: 2018 Midwest RepRap Festival (THIS WEEKEND)

Compared to a Pallete+ it would add a fair chunk of time.

Probably not, actually. Because of the long purge required for every change on the Palette+ plus the pauses for synchronization (Mosaic calls this a "ping" and they use it to detect where exactly in the print the printer is), the typical color change in the Palette+ probably takes over 30 seconds. I admit I haven't actually timed it, but it definitely takes a while.

Re: 2018 Midwest RepRap Festival (THIS WEEKEND)

Compared to a Pallete+ it would add a fair chunk of time.

Probably not, actually. Because of the long purge required for every change on the Palette+ plus the pauses for synchronization (Mosaic calls this a "ping" and they use it to detect where exactly in the print the printer is), the typical color change in the Palette+ probably takes over 30 seconds. I admit I haven't actually timed it, but it definitely takes a while.

I never actually saw the pallete do a color change while printing. If that's the case, that's a not a "downside" to the mk3.