Submitted 3 weeks ago by 31ank@ani.social to 3dprinting@lemmy.world
I’m looking for a multi-material printer that can also handle TPU.
AFAIK are most multi-material systems not made for TPU, so printers like the BambuLab P1S with AMS or Anycubic Kobra with the ACE Pro won’t work (I would like to have a printer where I can just load TPU without disconnecting anything. And I know BambuLab has a TPU for AMS, but 40€ for 1kg is a little much).
The only printers for hobbyist that really support it are the Prusa XL or BambuLab H2D, or did I miss any?
I just got my Elegoo Centauri Carbon and it’s a huuuuuuge upgrade from my old Ender3. This doesn’t directly answer your request because it’s multi material isn’t even released yet and I don’t know the specifics of what it will support (the details might be out there I just haven’t looked). But I would recommend checking it out, from what I understand it’s meant to be a bamboo competitor at about half the price.
I have access to a BambuLab P1S at work and it’s so much faster and produces better quality prints than my Anycubic Vyper, it’s astonishing what happened the last view years thanks to CoreXY. I will check out the Elegoo, thanks for the recommendation!
For what it’s worth, I regularly print materials not supported by the AMS on my Bambu P1S and it’s quite painless. There’s a spool holder on the back of the machine that you can load directly to the extruder bypassing the AMS. Of course, if your goal is do multicolor prints in TPU obviously that won’t work.
I’m super happy with my formbot Marathon IDEX, works perfectly fine with TPU (though i did have to adjust one screw guide in the extruder so it doesn’t eat the filament). it’s not very well known, since they don’t hand them out to influencers etc. The discord is pretty active and lots of helpful people there.
made with all standard components, regular Klipper firmware, so i know i can replace parts if anything ever breaks.
And IDEX in mirror/copy mode for printing multiple parts at twice the speed is great when you need it.
My bambu AMS doesn’t work with TPU so I don’t think multimaterial has much benefit in this use case. Basically I have to put the tpu on a spool at the back and disconnect the tubes from the AMS.
I do find multimaterial handy for PLA/PETG although AMS can be annoying if a piece of PLA snaps which often happens.
I’ll start with I’ve never actually tried using tpu despite having a roll. I also have a second non mmu printer.
What I do know is there there are multiple levels of softness with tpu. I think I was watching a video about the Prusa Core One, talking about how it handled tpu, and they needed to step up from super soft 60 to less cooked spaghetti like 90 just to feed up the tube and to the print head.
I also remember the MMU settings in the firmware have a material type option per input. I don’t recall if TPU is on the list, but most others are fine without changing this setting, so maybe?
Also remember there is a problem with mixing material type in a single nozzle. The purge is not full and will change the chemistry/behavior of the plastic.
The new multi nozzle Bambu suggests using the alternate single filament nozzle for a different material type.
I think it was a video about the h2d from 3d printing nerd talking about this.
I currently print TPU 90A with my Anycubic Vyper and it works great even thou it’s a bowden setup. It’s IMO a great material if you need something that is kinda soft, you should really try it out! But from what I read the MMU doesn’t really like TPU, but I think there are multiple versions of the MMU so maybe the newer ones are capable of handling TPU? Gonna check that again.
Also I thought I read somewhere that TPU/PLA didn’t have the same problems like PETG/PLA or PLA/ABS/ASA, but I will check it again. Thanks for the input!
Bluewing@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
The only other one I know of, outside of a dual exturder Voron, is the Qidi I-Fast IDEX printer. It’s expensive, somewhat over $1000, but it has a lot of goodies too. 350C extruder, heat chamber, and a decent sized build volume to print just about any engineering filament.
31ank@ani.social 3 weeks ago
Thanks, didn’t knew about the Qidi. And even thou its 1k€/$, its still a half the price of the BambuLab or Prusa!
Bluewing@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Their Plus 4 printer is supposed to have multi material box -a la AMS- some time this year. But there hasn’t been much said about it since the release of the Plus 4 model.
Postmortal_Pop@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I’ll second qidi, I got my x-pro back in 2018 and it came with instructions on tpu before you could reliably get tpu filament. My box has been printing like a dream ever since and they’ve even helped me do a bunch of custom mods. Last time the provided full spec measurements for thee extruder head to me, before they they provided custom cura specs for a machine modified with my custom kit to help troubleshoot an issue I was having. Literally, they modded their own machine with my files to help me out.
Best company I’ve ever worked with.