Eliminating the Wipe Tower
How many people here are disabling the wipe tower on the Prusa XL for multi-material prints? The system preset has the wipe tower enabled and obviously that worked fine. But I've also tried with the wipe tower disabled and I have several prints now with zero waste. Changing between toolheads is seamless, no ooze and minimal stringing. Print quality is very good. Not perfect but similar to the MMU with a traditional purge/wipe tower.
But Prusa's blog on Eliminating the Wipe Tower makes it sound like a work in progress. I searched the forums and google but can't find much discussion. What's your experience on the Prusa XL without the wipe tower?
RE: Eliminating the Wipe Tower
Just started testing my 5 ext xl. First try multi color I turned off the craptastic prime tower but parked tool drools onto the nozzle seals and when pulled away left thin strings every time. Next try I did the same as I do on my idex… increase Retraction on tool disable by at least 9mm to retract out of the melt zone. No more strings… but a lot more testing to do. Chances are there will still be occasional gaps or blobs.
RE: Eliminating the Wipe Tower
BTW I post all my testing on multi tool priming and wiping on my google group; 3d Printing Tips and tricks. Google it… it’s free.
RE: Eliminating the Wipe Tower
With the MMU on a i3 you have the possibility to purge/wipe to the infill. With the XL, this option (I do not know, if it is available for the XL) should be the winner and eliminate the need of a wipe tower.
RE: Eliminating the Wipe Tower
Yes that is actually a default setting for the printer setup in PS for the XL 5.
Note though you don’t want to do perimeters from inside to outer or the infill pattern translates to the surface.
RE: Eliminating the Wipe Tower
Note… all of the preset materials are way too hot. Particularly PLA which when melted runs like water and as such is difficult to manage for an optimal prime. Lower the pla temp to 190-200 however pla is like wax. It has a very tiny temp range where it’s soft. It goes from solid to liquid very quickly.
If PS could do priming towers in a manner that made sense I would use them. A simple single perimeter circle tool path for each extruder used in the print. It doesn’t need to be large. Each material has its own circle within the circles making for a thin yet stable column with a one layer base.
but no… Prusa does it the way Prusa says it does it and they’ve ignored my feature requests.
One will find that we can diminish the strings and we can start in the infill, but one will still get random blobs on the outside.
RE:
Very interessting. I will give this a try, when my XL arrives.
Many of the reviewers use a wipe tower, i guess they have never tried to print without it. 😉
I think in many cases there is no need for the tower on a multi head printer.
RE: Eliminating the Wipe Tower
Unfortunately PS doesn’t do the prime tower correctly. The latest Cura does. If it did it right it might work better to use it for some use cases, but for many I’m finding it not necessary.
Please… be real careful about YouTube reviewers. Even some of the most popular all have to bow to the producers of the machines for their eval support or ad dollars. Most toobers are actually quite inexperienced if not incompetent. You have to always wonder exactly why they’re doing it. I guarantee that they always do it for extrinsic reasons. We only do our podcast for fun. Nothing else… but…I’m not here to push my podcast. Regardless, we PAY for all products we review. Our reviews are also long term and do not kiss up to people like Jo Prusa. Which is probably why he ignores us.
RE: Eliminating the Wipe Tower
Here is a more complicated multi-material print with no wipe tower. This is printed with Prusament Galaxy Black and Kingroon Dual Silk Red/Green. Default temperatures and retractions. No stringing and no blobs. This model requires over 100 tool-changes for the filigree and would quickly highlight any issues. This photo shows the model underside because the filigree is unsupported. This is essentially the "worst" side.
RE: Eliminating the Wipe Tower
Looks nice! I like the colors. I’m throwing every multi color file I’ve collected over the past 3.5 years with the E3d at my xl5. No priming. No wiping. It’s printing each real nice… as if it were simply an appliance!
all of the preset materials are way too hot. Particularly PLA which when melted runs like
On the contrary, it can pay to increase the default print temperatures to aid interlayer adhesion, especially for filaments with high pigment percentages.
A simple single perimeter circle tool path for each extruder used in the print.
Rather wasteful. That way you have to use every extruder on every level - if your part just has a set of legends on the top layer it makes sense to print the tower with whatever is printing the body and only heat up the other extruder(s) for the last few minutes.
Cheerio,
RE: Eliminating the Wipe Tower
Am I remembering right that with your TL-D3 you weren't able to get the retraction trick to work with a .6 nozzle, but that it worked great on .4? If so, it's interesting that you are getting success with the .6 nozzle on the XL. 🤔
Just started testing my 5 ext xl. First try multi color I turned off the craptastic prime tower but parked tool drools onto the nozzle seals and when pulled away left thin strings every time. Next try I did the same as I do on my idex… increase Retraction on tool disable by at least 9mm to retract out of the melt zone. No more strings… but a lot more testing to do. Chances are there will still be occasional gaps or blobs.
RE: Eliminating the Wipe Tower
I have .4mm nozzles on the TLD3 and the retraction when changing tools mostly works ok. An occasional blob now and then depending upon the material. Note I also use nozzle seal/blockers which actually also do a wipe not unlike the XL. Note Prusa doesn’t say anything, but one needs to make sure all five nozzle tips are clean. No material can be left on them or the load cell may not probe correctly. Also, it’s not a good idea to leave the five extruders loaded with pla. See my post on pla.
What I couldn’t get to work with retracting was the E3d toolchanger. When it retracted out of the melt zone a small amount of material stayed near the nozzle tip inside the nozzle. I got blobs and gaps no matter what I tried including .6mm dia nozzles as well as lined thermal barriers. As such I had to return to doing a prime and wipe with the E3d. Resulting in tool changes that take something like 30-40 seconds Vs the XL which will do a toolchange in something like 4-5 seconds.
I’m getting great results right now with the xL 5 and PLA. Tomorrow I’ll switch to PETG.
RE: Eliminating the Wipe Tower
On your first point: If you care that much about layer adhesion why are you using pla? PLA is the least rigid and strong of all fdm materials(actually hips and pvb are worse but they’re unusable and some forms of pc too), unless of course you anneal it, but then getting tight tolerances is almost impossible. IME with 11 years of formulations of pla 195-205 was always enough. 200c seems to work well with the spools I’m using right now, others may need more, some less. If not I would recommend a different material…. Actually I’d probably recommend a different material anyway. PLA sux.
on your second point:
There will still be use cases where a prime pillar could be useful and a prime pillar that assumes each material will bond is a false assumption. Sometime this week I’ll be getting around to testing PETG/pla together for full contact supports. The way ps does it’s prime pillar it won’t work. The way Cura does it would. Cura does a single toolpath circle for each extruder used in the print. Yeah it uses more material… so does having to print something over because it failed.
all of the preset materials are way too hot. Particularly PLA which when melted runs like
On the contrary, it can pay to increase the default print temperatures to aid interlayer adhesion, especially for filaments with high pigment percentages.
A simple single perimeter circle tool path for each extruder used in the print.
Rather wasteful. That way you have to use every extruder on every level - if your part just has a set of legends on the top layer it makes sense to print the tower with whatever is printing the body and only heat up the other extruder(s) for the last few minutes.
Cheerio,
PLA is the least rigid and strong
Where are you getting this from? PLA is one of the more rigid plastics and also one of the strongest - where it fails is in that it is brittle and doesn't handle shock/vibration well.
PETG, for example, is nowhere near as rigid although it *is* tough if you have got the interlayer adhesion right.
Cheerio,
RE: Eliminating the Wipe Tower
Where is this from? First hand experience at my 3d printing service company as well as arguments with a certain chemical Engineer who I initially disagreed with. It also comes from making 9 electric guitar bodies 7 of which failed because pla moves so easily. PLA is great for toys statues and other low tolerance use cases that are not actually functional. Leave it in the sun and watch it go soft. It then anneals and becomes brittle. Obviously you’ve never listened to the podcast. There’s no ads and it’s free.
PLA evades continuous pressure so of course your guitars failed but it remained rigid. It prints at much closer tolerances than most other filaments so is excellent for light-duty mechanisms and print-in-place parts. I have used it for safety critical maritime components that have survived over 5 years at sea - but don't expect it to survive UV light or high temperatures. Horses for courses.
Cheerio,
RE: Eliminating the Wipe Tower
PLA is indeed one of the most rigid and strongest filaments to print with ease and has decent layer adhesion. For many functional applications that doesn't help because it is very prone to creeping under constant load. However not all functional applications put considerable constant load on the part. Of course, low thermostability brittleness, failure mode, and UV-sensitivity can be issues too but that doesn't eliminate all functional use cases even if most of them.
Mk3s MMU2s, Voron 0.1, Voron 2.4
RE: Eliminating the Wipe Tower
Could you use the draft shield under skirt/brim to do similar? It would prime and possibly help with oozing thus stringing.
Note… all of the preset materials are way too hot. Particularly PLA which when melted runs like water and as such is difficult to manage for an optimal prime. Lower the pla temp to 190-200 however pla is like wax. It has a very tiny temp range where it’s soft. It goes from solid to liquid very quickly.
If PS could do priming towers in a manner that made sense I would use them. A simple single perimeter circle tool path for each extruder used in the print. It doesn’t need to be large. Each material has its own circle within the circles making for a thin yet stable column with a one layer base.
but no… Prusa does it the way Prusa says it does it and they’ve ignored my feature requests.
One will find that we can diminish the strings and we can start in the infill, but one will still get random blobs on the outside.
RE: Eliminating the Wipe Tower
Don’t know. How about you try it and let us know!