I’m awaiting the arrival of my first 3D printer, the Lulzbot Mini 3D, and I wondered if anyone who has used one could answer questions. I’m relatively new to 3D printing, so pardon my rampant display of ignorance (but if ya don’t ask, ya don’t learn).
When doing a print, is it viable to stop the print and change to a different filament color / material? For example, I am printing an enclosure and I want to stop to change to a conductive filament for wiring, then change back to finish the enclosure. Obviously this would be child’s play with a dual extruder (hint, hint), but the Mini 3D currently has a single extruder.
The printer does have an option to change filament while printing, you just use the LCD to navigate to this command. Just keep in mind that you will have to watch the printer and change it when you need. Also make sure that you set the temperatures correctly before changing filament.
I would highly recommend just getting used to printing with the printer normally before trying anything like this. I made the mistake on my first printer of moving to fast and it cost me more down the line. Start slow and really get to know the machine.
uh,??? the mini doesn’t have an LCD screen. He would have to do it via software.
If you’re using slic3r, not sure if CURA has this option, you could pause the print ans swap filaments, but it won’t be a straight change, the overlap of the filaments will make a line or two of “mixed, melted” melted filaments until it pulls in the new filament… so if you swapped two colors, you’ll have a few lines or a section of a line or layer that will be a mix of the two colors…
Ya, you can switch colors at different layer heights with Cura pretty easily.
Switch to Expert mode: “Switch to full settings…”
Load the filament profile .ini you want to use, e.g. HIPS normal.
Go to the plugins tab.
Double click “Pause at height”.
Set the height at which you want to change the filament color. I set the head to park at 0,0 and retraction at 0.
If you want to do many colors, just keep adding “Pause at height” sections and the heights at which you want to pause.
Go print your thang.
When it pauses it will move the head to 0,0. Note it does not lock the motors (it probably should) so you have to be a bit ninja and load it without moving the head.
Put in your new filament and extrude out the old color by manually spinning the large gear (without moving the print head).
Hit resume. I don’t know what exactly it is on Mini offhand, but it will come up in Cura. On the TAZ, just click the LCD if you are printing from SD card.
I’m wondering if it’s possible to add an LCD screen to the Mini. Hmm, need to look into that. I’d like to think that there might be some way to massage the GCode and Cura to allow me to insert that as a normal part of the operation. Time to do some code digging…
