Dual extruders on ramps 1.4

Hello, im wondering how people run dual extruders on a ramps 1.4? since an extra extruder will add a 6th stepper motor?

-Andreas

Hi, I put four extruders with ramps 1.4 without adding steppers. With my marlin and a card to 8 relays can control up to four extruders with only two drivers.
Otherwise you can mount another external driver taking three free pins to control it.

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Hi Andreas. The ramps board is already set up to allow for two extruders. E0 is your first extruder, and E1 is your second extruder. I use marlin firmware, and in the configuration.h file you control how many extruders you have, using the following (at line 65 in mine):

#define EXTRUDERS 2

You then need to use a slicing program that can also handle two extruders. I use slic3r and it works great. You can use one extruder for filament, and the other for support material, or use a different color filament in each extruder. I usually use two different colors so I can get multi-color parts.

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Anita
3dbotshack.com

Hello everyone,
Could you please attach you configuration h file for the dual extruder set up for the 3d printer. I will be very thankful to you.
Thank you very much.

i will post if you really want, but the two main things are these lines:

\\these change your board to recognize it has two hotends and a heated bed rather than a hotend, a fan and a bed
#ifndef MOTHERBOARD
#define MOTHERBOARD BOARD_RAMPS_14_EEB

\\simple stating you have two hooked up
#define EXTRUDERS 2

\\the distance between your two nozzles, in my case its 30 mm on the x axis, the first extruder is 0,0
#define HOTEND_OFFSET_X {0.0, 30.00

and dont forget your thermister for your second hotend

I tried with it but its not working . Please post the file.
Thank you very much

there ya go

thank you very much for posting the file, i will try with it.
thank you very much once gain.

Quote
DaGameFace
i will post if you really want, but the two main things are these lines:

\\these change your board to recognize it has two hotends and a heated bed rather than a hotend, a fan and a bed
#ifndef MOTHERBOARD
#define MOTHERBOARD BOARD_RAMPS_14_EEB

\\simple stating you have two hooked up
#define EXTRUDERS 2

\\the distance between your two nozzles, in my case its 30 mm on the x axis, the first extruder is 0,0
#define HOTEND_OFFSET_X {0.0, 30.00

and dont forget your thermister for your second hotend

Does this imply that I have to give up something like bed heat if adding E1, or is #define MOTHERBOARD BOARD_RAMPS_14_EEB just a good starting point to get all this working?

On a ramps you have 3 mosfet

so you can turn on 3 devices

Pick any 3:
fan
hotend 0
hotend 1
heated bed


Its easy to add more mosfets, but then it starts getting non standard as to how they are connected.
So you need to make custom pin files...

Quote
MagoKimbra
Hi, I put four extruders with ramps 1.4 without adding steppers. With my marlin and a card to 8 relays can control up to four extruders with only two drivers.
Otherwise you can mount another external driver taking three free pins to control it.

Would like to see how you did this