Dual extruders

I am in the process of rebuilding my printer, and am toying with the idea of adding dual extruders.
Are there any advantages or disadvantages to this.?
Or is it a ego thing.?
Thanks.

The fundamental issue with conventional dual extrusion using 2 nozzles is that the non-printing nozzle always interferes with the printing nozzle at certain places. There are a few ways around this:

1. Use some mechanical means to raise the non-printing nozzle a little.

2. Use dual independent X carriages (IDEX) so that the head with the non-printing nozzle can be parked out of the way.

3. Use tool changing. See E3D's blog.

4. Use a mixing extruder such as the Diamond. These have their own quirks and need to be handled well by the firmware. See [somei3deas.wordpress.com].

HTH David

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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].

Thanks for the info David.
It hardly seems worth the trouble.

Doubled up

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/22/2018 12:08AM by erniehatt.

I forgot, there is another approach, which is to feed different filaments into a single hot end at different times. The main problem with these is that the filament tends to jam either when retracting it or when re-inserting it. Prusa's latest multi material system removes the not-in-use filament completely, and cuts off the end before re-inserting it.

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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].