Dual Extruders and the AO-100

Development Hardware
1

Here’s some information on our AO-100 and the dual extruder setup.

The earlier work can be found on our development server. You can find some Slic3r configs and scad files as well.


sjkelly has a nice setup on Thingiverse: AO-100 Dual Material Setup

Sound made Fan mounts for sjkelly’s dual carriage for cooling the hot ends vs the printed part.

Marlin dual firmware (from latest git, no special branch/fork)

Here is the “Quick and dirty” docs on how this was done.

jebba: crispy1: see the source here: > http://devel.lulzbot.com/AO-100/hardware/dual/biz_card_code/ > In particular the difference() in here: > http://devel.lulzbot.com/AO-100/hardware/dual/biz_card_code/biz_triple_lulz.scad
crispy1: jebba: so it looks like you build the STLS to properly overlap when brought into slic3r’s plater at the same coordinates?
jebba: crispy1: kind of like this:
jebba: 1) grabbed biz cardholder off thingiverse. Any of them will do
jebba: 2) convert our font to openscad
jebba: 2) convert font with OpenSCAD-Font-Importer …
jebba: 3) do mini file that has the STL in openscad
jebba: Like this line:
jebba: color(“green”) import(“PlainBusinessCardHolder.stl”, convexity=5);
jebba: Then you render that.
jebba: Then bring in the text and move it around changing the values at the top until you have it how you want.
jebba: So you can F5 and see the biz card + the text exactly how you want the final piece.
jebba: Then uncomment the difference() line and render/compile it.
jebba: This took forever with openscad current, so i grabbed the latest git and it was reasonbly fast.
jebba: Then export the STL, which will be the card holder with holes in it where the text is.
crispy1: jebba: sounds like quite a quiteflow
crispy1: *workflow
jebba: Then comment out the bizcard holder itself
jebba: and render just the floating text
jebba: then export the floating text as an STL
jebba: then go into slic3r and do: Combine multi-material STL files
jebba: do the biz card first, then the text.stl
jebba: then export that as an AMF.
jebba: Then load the AMF into slic3r itself, and export the gcode.
jebba: Then print with pronterface.
jebba: crispy1: and you’re done!

2

Holy crap! I was working on a similar design for my AO-100! This is perfect but how much build area do you lose?

3

We’ve actually been doing this for quite awhile. The original carriage was by sjkelly and is on thingiverse:

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:28687

I have a few more photos here:

http://devel.lulzbot.com/AO-100/hardware/dual/dual_color/biz_card_hires/

This one is ABS letters with wood holder:

http://devel.lulzbot.com/AO-100/hardware/dual/dual_color/biz_card_wood_abs/

And a quick & dirty HOWTO on how I did it:

http://devel.lulzbot.com/AO-100/hardware/dual/dual_color/biz_card_code/

We have a dual mount for the TK-0 too, but it has only printed a few parts.

For the AO-100/AO-101 the bed size narrows to 164 x 200mm.

4

How can this setup be used to build supports out of one of the water soluble plastics like PVA? Do you need a special slicer program? We have been searching but can’t seem to find much info on it. We mainly build with ABS, not sure if that matters.

5

I don’t know of people using PVA successfully. HIPS can be used and breaks off reasonably easily (unless made too thick). The slic3r software supports multiple extruders and support.

6

Would you guys mind putting up the steps/tutorial of how you did the dual extrusion conversion? I have the lulzbot ao100 and I’ve been looking into dial extrusion for a while on this printer and this is the only thing i found on the topic! Btw great job with the conversion!

7

Here’s some more info on dual:

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:28687