Like every year for the last decade it was time for the annual thanksgiving dinner place card project. I had wanted to learn “configurations” in CAD anyway and learn Fusion’s project sketch to surface. I decided on personalized votive holders with LED candles. There are 30 of these I made on the prusa XL. To keep the theme the materials are corn colored and the green is some natural plant dye all from Prusa’s Eco line.
So it’s one design and 32 configurations after importing a text file of names into the configuration (you can get super fancy with python to pull from a database or something) the project to surface lets those maple leaves go through the cylinder normal to both surfaces. I’ve now used it for other projects and it’s super useful. Both OnShape and Fusion have the configuration while only fusion has the project to surface.
I crossed out the bizarrely wild number of 27 m^3 of filament (way more than is in my house), Especially in light of the 34 g of filament used (not even aerogel is that low density). But 222 flawless tool changes (unlike a Bambu it doesn’t use the same nozzle so no purging, it switches entire extruders) which lets the printer do funky things such as different nozzle diameter and wildly different temperatures, like when I print PLA and TPE together). I have ultra hardened nozzles on the first 3 extruders and normal brass on the last 2 (depending on what I am printing)
I believe like the new prusa INDX that the H2C is a nozzle switcher, which is worlds better than a filament switch like the bambu AMS or prusa’s MMU, but different than a tool hanger since the H2C has little modules of the heat block and nozzle that switch around, where the XL has essentially 5 complete extruders/hotends it swaps (and at formnext announced the first pair of non-FDM tools - a real 2-part silicone extruder and a pick-n-place tool head that will place embedded hardware (nuts, inserts) in a printed part automatically. On the bambu they all must be the same size since the share the extruder. Technically the xl could print in 1.75 and 3mm filament simultaneously (you can’t currently because the heads currently only are sized for the more common 1.75, but since they independent and complete could support that
Huge chunks of this would derive little benefit from a fine nozzle, and the extruders while they may claim some huge throughput, the nozzle has a huge effect on that even if the gears can push through enough plastic through the heater then it goes into a tiny nozzle where it can’t compress enough or you get weird effects of high pressure extrusion. So instead have on extruder running a 0.8mm nozzle for the huge honking slab sections and the usual 0.4 or 0.2 for the details.
The one I use it for is when I am printing with Tungsten Filled PETG, a 75% by weight mixture of tungsten powder and PETG used for radiation shielding. It is insanely abrasive and will even tear a hardened nozzle to pieces, and one factor is the larger nozzle means less abrasion since the wall lets more volume not touching the wall.
I do a lot of complicated multmaterial printing with materials with extremely different temperatures, often flexible and other engineering materials.
