Filament Change mid-print XL multi-tool [non-current extruder]
I've seen many posts about filament change mid-print, but they seem to conflict with each other and when trying the suggestions I'm falling short.
I think the answer to my question is 'no' but hoping someone can confirm, or tell me how to do this. . .
I'd like to be able to change the filament mid-print on the non-current extruder but cannot find out how. The scenario is that I have a 2-tool XL and recently printed spherical objects using BVOH for support [which worked great!] but also wanted print in 2 colors. That led to a need for 3 filament types during the print on a 2-tool printer. Prior experience and confirmation on these forums tells me that if I insert a pause or filament change in prusa slicer, it only will allow for a filament change on the tool that happens to be currently in use. Elsewhere on the forum, threads suggested instead to pause the print on the LED panel and it would allow me to select tune and then select the 2nd extruder for a filament change. I saw where I could adjust flow rate on either tool etc, but nowhere could I find a way to select the non-current extruder to do a filament change. Is this possible?
I'm sure there will be responses that I can wait until the 2nd tool is active and change it then, however the 2nd tool was busy with support material for the first 3 hours of the print, then wouldn't be active again until I needed the 2nd color approx 6 hours later. I was hoping there would be a way to pause the print, select the 2nd tool and change filament mid-print so I didn't have to be available at 1:00AM or whatever time that 2nd tool would again be active.
Is that possible? If not, can I put in a feature request somewhere that they think about that on a future firmware release?
Thanks in advance.
RE: Filament Change mid-print XL multi-tool [non-current extruder]
I think the answer to my question is 'no' but hoping someone can confirm, or tell me how to do this. . .
I think the answer is to upgrade to the five tool version. That's my answer anyway.
RE:
You can change filament with the M600 command in prusa slicer but it works only for the tool 1. Or you try the 2.7.2 alpha2 which changes the behavior of the m600 command. I haven tried the alpha so can't give you any tips.
"Previous implementations of color change for multi-tool printers left picking the right tool on the firmware and user. Also, M601 (pause print) was placed instead of M600 (color change), which is how it was intentionally implemented for MMU. That case issue especial on our Prusa XL printers (#11516, #11517, #11600, #11792).
This proved to be insufficient for multi-tool printers, mainly because there is a special sequence of extruder movements that need to be done before parking the tool, and PrusaSlicer depends on it.
Based on this, we implemented picking the tool on which the color change will be performed. After the color change, it picks the previous tool (if the tool for which the color change was performed no longer prints on that layer).
Along with this, we are now emitting the M600 (color change) for multi-tool printers instead of the M601 (pause print)."
RE: Filament Change mid-print XL multi-tool [non-current extruder]
If you select a layer in the slicing preview, then right click, you can do a "Add color change (M600) for Extruder x". I have not tested this and vaguely remember some Youtube video (possibly 3d printing nerd ???) where it did not work as intended. I'm sure this will be fixed and maybe already works in the latest alpha.
I tried color change from the panel via the tune menu tonight, and it did not let me choose the tool, defaulting to the current one (which of course wasn't the one I tried to swap). There's no way to interrupt the process once you clicked on it. Also it squeezed an ugly blob of filament into my print after the change, for no apparent reason. It wasn't the trailing line of filament you normally have, I held onto that and pulled it off right before it reached the print. But then it sat there for a second or two and spat that blob out. It looked like it's doing another purge. So this is currently mostly unusable unless you're lucky and it dumps into the infill like in my case.
RE: Filament Change mid-print XL multi-tool [non-current extruder]
I'll have to give that a try. I didn't realize you could select the 'non active' tool for the color change. The downside is that it will be at a specific time in the print I have to change it, whereas the other way I had an 8-hour window I was hoping I could just manually make the change anytime during the 8 hours between when tool 2 was printing supports with soluble and when it would next need to print a 2nd color. This looks like it would be an acceptable trade-off. Thanks for the tip!
