Feature proposal, rotation of printhead around the z -axis

For printing ceramics, pastes and cement (and possibly other materials) to use a rectangular hole in the nozzle.
Determining proper angular orientation of this nozzle head in relation to nozzle head/bed movement.
Will be great if this functionality can be added to Repetier firmware.
(I also posted this to Slic3r)

How is that supposed to work? Do you have a stepper motor and end stop for orientation start or a servo with angle feedback or a self calibrated servo? What is the angle change (+/- 45°)? I also fear that this would require a stop and go process between each line, since we would need to wait for the orientation change, so no path planning and smooth moves any more. Not sure if that is important in that case.

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I do not exactly know how it will be implemented - maybe someone else can help out here.
I think you will get the idea in the following videoclip where they use it for concrete printing but the principle can be used on plastic or any other material.


[www.youtube.com]

The solution looks quite special and the direction is changed continuously over the print to get smooth curves and no artefacts from pausing. So it would require a slicer that adds an additional coordinate for orientation and a firmware that interpolates the a 5th axis along with x,y,z and e. The interpolation part is quite easy as it is simply one more dimension but writing a slicer for it is a different story, especially if you do not want special cases like the wall in the example video. And it all depends on the machine itself and how to control orientation. So to make it short - it is possible to add the functionality but that should be done by the machine producer. That is nothing I would want in the main stream version.

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Thank you for the quick reply - it dampened my enthusiasm for a rectangular nozzle.