E3D Chimera on a delta?

Hi guys

My delta printer is up and running and now I want to upgrade to a dual extruder so I can use dissolvable support material, i was thinking of using the E3D cyclops due to it having 2 in feeds and outputting through one nozzle (does away with the pesky offsets), however, I was able to speak to E3D themselves at this years TCT and they told me that they had issues using cyclops for with dissolvable material due to it not purging correctly and basically mixing with the standard plastic causing the whole model to collapse when the dissolvable material had been dissolved. Not having experience with this hotend I would have to take their word.

So this leads me to the E3D chimera, but I've heard that the effector on a delta 'tilts' while moving and a second nozzle would then drag on the print.

What do you guys think? Anyone running dual extruders on their deltas?

I have used dual extrusion on a Cartesian printer. My observations on that machine are:

1. You need to get both nozzles at exactly the same height (unless of course you have auto-lift, or something else that raises the non-printing nozzle).

2. Even with both nozzles at the same height, when the non-printing nozzle passes over filament that has just been laid down by the other nozzle, it leaves a mark. The closer together the two nozzles are, the worse this is.

I have also observed that on the two deltas I have built, it is difficult (but probably not impossible) to avoid getting a small amount of effector tilt as the effector translates in the XY plane.

Therefore, when I convert my delta to dual extrusion, I plan to add a mechanism to rotate one of the carriages about a radial axis between two positions a few degrees apart. This will in turn tilt the effector, allowing me to raise the non-printing nozzle perhaps 0.5mm higher than the printing nozzle.

Have you considered using the E3D Cyclops?

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Large delta printer [miscsolutions.wordpress.com], E3D tool changer, Robotdigg SCARA printer, Crane Quad and Ormerod

Disclosure: I design Duet electronics and work on RepRapFirmware, [duet3d.com].

Hi dc42,

Thanks for the reply, I am very tempted to just try the E3D cyclops but if E3D themselves are having issues using it with support material then I may end up struggling. They told me that when the cyclops was printing (lets say ABS) then as it was extruding that layer then a tiny amount of the dissolvable was 'coating' the ABS, this meant that once the print had finished it had a thin layer of dissolvable material on every single layer. Once it had been dissolved then the part simply fell apart.

I want to try and keep the effector light so I'm not to keen on the idea of a tilting mechanism. I have an dual extruder i3 so i know how difficult it is to try and not get the unused nozzle to drag over the print. Apparently the cyclops is fine with standard filament just not the dissolvable.

The tilting mechanism I plan won't increase the mass of the effector, because the entire mechanism will be mounted on one of the carriages.

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Large delta printer [miscsolutions.wordpress.com], E3D tool changer, Robotdigg SCARA printer, Crane Quad and Ormerod

Disclosure: I design Duet electronics and work on RepRapFirmware, [duet3d.com].

David,
your firmware already has provisions to work with more than one auto-calibration plane. One problem less

Do you want to rotate the carrier or would it also work with excenter rod ends?

Regarding the Cyclops: I can imagine with a decent retraction of the support material and a lot off nozzle flushing with ABS in a waste area you would be able to print clean parts.
I've seen the Volcano and Cyclops are already cloned. Try one of the cheap clones, before you waste a lot of money.
-Olaf

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/26/2015 03:58AM by o_lampe.

I'll be interested to hear how you go, I've got a chimera clone on order. I hope it's able to be set up properly on my delta

I've often thought that setups where the hotend hangs below the plane of the rod ends is not set up well (including mine!) To my mind, you want to have the centre of mass of the hotend and fan arrangement in line with the rod ends, this would mean that when you move the effector around fast there would be no reason for the effector to tilt. I know that some effectors are set up like this, it makes sense to me. You also get a smidgen more build area

Reading on with interest, carry on chaps

I also recently thought about chimera on delta. did the e3d guys mention what support material they were using? since there are multiple options the questions is if they all behave the same?

i agree with olampe that pulling the support of of the nozzle far enough and then purging should reduce contermination to acceptable levels. if the material is so liquid that its keeps flowing in even ewhen out of the hotzone thematerial seems weird anyway.

the head tilting mechasim could also be used for bed probing btw. i wondering why this isnt supported in firmware already, there is already one delta company that does it and if were just on it head tiltung could be useful for this [3dprintingindustry.com]

I order a cyclops legendary pack so it comes with the chimera ends also. It should be hear in a week or so.
I dont plan to use support filament tho, just dual color.
But i was on a thread and a guy said his cyclops work pretty well for HIPS and ABS. You also use a purge tower to make sure there isnt mixing.
But as said i havent try this just read it.

I heard about alot of nozzle drag on kossel/deltas due to the till of the effector while moving. But i also heard of people having very well built machines and not having problems..
So idk about that one.

But if you get a legendary pack your be able to switch between them and see which works best for you.

Hi guys

Can anyone point me in the right direction for finding these clones?

Thanks

aliexpress but be careful what you buy, the article descriptions are not very good.