Anyone know how to upgrade to dual print head?

I've had my Makerfarm I3 8" RAMPS .50mm head...for about 2 weeks now and love it, but I'm starting to realize that I need a dual extruder setup so I can print support material. I've emailed Colin at Makerfarm and he says he working on one, but not idea when it will be ready.

Has anyone done this, can it be done with my setup? Any info would be much appreciated.

The plywood carriage likely will need to be replaced with a printed part. You only have one hole in the plywood. A dual extruder is going to need two holes. You also will (probably) loose X travel distance when you do the conversion. Most installs seem to take out an inch or two. The alternative would be to rebuild more than just the carriage. Rebuilding the frame gets you into essentially a whole new printer. There might be a cute trick to get use an overhang past the X motor carriage / idler carriage. I've never seen that done. I think you would want to wait for the laser cut plywood for something that crazy.

Unacceptable...that's not what I wanted to hear, even though you are probably correct. Thanks for the info!

Yup I hear you. It's one of those nasty things, you can't always get what you want.

The neat thing is that the plywood in one of these isn't the bulk of the cost. Even if you had to replace all of it, the upgrade price might still be pretty reasonable. That of course assumes an upgrade kit would be available.

I've contacted Colin from Makerfarm and he assures me he's working on a dual extruder upgrade for my printer but there's no ETA. I found the thread where a guy converted his to a dual head extruder (the same one you can print from thingiverse) and emailed the info to Colin. he says it should work as long as it will fit my frame. I might lose a little height but I think it would be worth it. I'm thinking of buying another .50mm extruder and stepper motor and giving it a try. If it doesn't work maybe I'll get lucky and the Makerfarm upgrade will use the same extruder/stepper motor and I'll already have those parts.

Here is the info I found for anyone interested. Hopefully all the links work.

Original thread:
[forums.reprap.org]

Instructable from the same guy:
[www.instructables.com] 

3D printed pieces:
[www.thingiverse.com]

I think you will need to be very careful about which hot ends you use with that extruder.

If I get the exact same one that I currently have, wouldn't that be best?

He is using a hot end that does not look like it mounts the same way most hot ends do. That may just be his pictures. The way I look at it, for a standard J-Head you would still need to fabricate a machined aluminum plate to go under the extruder. I could be missing something in his description. I'm afraid that his clamp mount with printed plastic would soften to much with a standard head. You also would need some sort of fan mount (and fan) to pack two normal hot ends in that amount of space.

Here's my thinking:

You have two hot ends with their tips at 200 to 230C. The printer is just sitting, not printing. The heat is going to work it's way up the hot end. In a normal J-Head or Magma the first thing it hits is a plate that is rated to take some temperature. It may be aluminum, plywood, or high temp plastic. With two hot ends in the same space, you have twice the tip heat as with one. That's twice the heat running "up" towards the extruder. You probably need twice as much heat dumping capability as with one extruder. It's not just the printed parts you need to worry about, it's the filament as well. You don't want mush at the top of the hot end.

I guess I'll just wait for Colin's upgrade.

There's no reason not to try it *if* you have the time to mess with it for a while. I'm guessing that it's not going to be a slam dunk to drop than onto the printer. You may have a few sets of hot ends lying around spare when you are done....

One other thing to consider - when your second extruder is idle it's likely to drip. That's what has people building dual carrage / dual extruder printers.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/08/2013 11:10AM by uncle_bob.

Would it not be possible to set up dual nozzles on the x-carriage with bowden tubes running to remote extruders? That should preserve the x and z travel distance, would it not?

You could go to a Bowden tube setup. It would involve major changes to the carriage. Since it's a plywood part you either cut it or design a "clone" printed part from scratch.

Glad someone started this thread. I have been reading for a week about doing a dual extruder on my makerfarm i3. Also been reading about the pain of using support material, think things are difficult printing with one material?

I may give that dual extruder a try. Bob, he uses E3D hotends.

Just a bump to hopefully keep this thread alive. I haven't let the dream die yet, hopefully with a little more info and help we can make it happen.

I'm looking at doing this as well. We could use something like this [www.thingiverse.com] only modify the version that is going onto the carriage to hold two of them instead of one. We'd need to modify the carriage to have two holes instead of one. Or [www.thingiverse.com]

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/25/2014 11:03PM by mlapaglia.

I'm very interested in a dual extruder too for my Makerfarm i3 8". Have you guys see this: Dual extruder for Prusa on YouTube

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Prusa i3 8" (Makerfarm) / Dual Hexagon 0.4 extruder

Hey everyone,

I too am looking at trying to do dual extrusion on my 8" makerfarm. I'm considering the notion of trying a dual boweden extrusion setup. I was wondering if I just printed two of the following:

[www.thingiverse.com]

modify my carriage and have one in front of the other versus side by side? Does anyone see any problem with this? Any input on the bowden design all together? I'm currently using the wade extruder. Thanks!

Not to revive a dormant topic (and with my first post, no less), but...

Here's what I came up with for this problem: http://www.flywheeldesigns.com/blogs/news/17259223-making-dual-extrusion-for-i3-prusa-easy

And the video of it on an early print: https://vimeo.com/107337936