The great thing here is finally having an off-the-shelf 2.85mm dual-gear solution.
You still have the problem with 2.85mm having a significantly greater cross-section of material that will always be slower to go from one state (liquid, glass, solid) slower than 1.75mm. If the softened, hot material ever leaves the fully-constrained path, it’s liable to expand and squish out, causing a jam.
The description of the Meteor says it’s designed with a very short path specifically for use with flexible filaments, and where 2.85 had the advantage (with flexible filaments) of being stiffer than 1.75mm, the Meteor 2.85mm should really be about the best thing if TPU is your filament of choice. Being direct drive, it should also be fine for the shorter retractions with other filaments, with that advantage of the large gears.
I agree.
One thing I noticed while calibrating my M175v2 is Slice Engineering suggests the retract distance should be the nozzle diameter. Bondtech suggests 35mm/s for retraction speed. Using those values, doing some retraction test prints helps nail this down further, depending on your material.
I have an Ultimaker 2+ so at least I have two consumers of 2.85mm material. However, the 22 other machines are 1.75mm. I very much like using the large 3kg spools of 1.75mm material on the big prints the XT with the M175v2 can print.
I’ve got a 1.75mm Voron 0.1 and my heavily modded Taz 6 can do either size no problem. I’ve actually been pretty happy with the aerostruder now that it’s dialed in. I’m still keeping my eyes out for clearance 2.85mm filament (especially TPU) but I don’t expect to try and do anything like the Meteor on my home machine. I’ve swapped my work Mini2, Taz6 and Pro dual all over to 1.75mm (and my prototype dual Hemera print head for the pro is already working much better than the dual Aerostruder ever did… I just want to get it using IR for bed leveling instead of the microswitch it uses now). I’ve still got a couple 2.85mm toolheads for when I have enough 2.85mm filament for a project laying around to warrant swapping out the M175v2, but since I haven’t mounted a touch sensor to the 2.85mm toolheads, it’s back to washer-based leveling when I do that.
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