Question New dual color filament

[DrNezbit]

Has anyone tried this or seen it in person?

AMOLEN 3D Printer Filament, PLA Filament 1.75mm Dual Color Filament, Silk Red Green 3D Printing Filament 1KG/2.2lb

https://a.co/d/48k6UBP

Video:

https://www.amazon.com/ive?ingressType=dpimageblock&productAsin=B09YT9J6SC&viewData=%5B%7B%22videoId%22%3A%2202bf23f13c7e4778a7a58765a108a6ac%22%7D%5D&ref=dp_ib_7_ivx_share

Curious if it is as awesome as it looks before I look into ordering some

 

[DrNezbit]

So I got a bit of a jam near the end. Not sure exactly what happened, looked like the extruder came to a part that was too small maybe, or just couldn't grip for some reason. At 150% extrusion it seems to print nicely until it didn't though, so definitely will have to try to print some more and keep an eye on it while printing. Seems like the tube helped keep it alined though. I had put it onto an old empty spool to print it from, so that may have helped too. Will see if the color changes at all as it cools down

 

[DrNezbit]

Oh, I also noticed that on the bottom you can really see the dual colors, so I used a small microscope to look up close. Was interesting how it slightly changed inside of the X and Y

 

[Eric]

That's really cool! The heat sensitivity is a really cool addition while being able to keep to a color scheme with the other color.

 

[DrNezbit]

I think next time I'm going to try the smaller half the darker color. My slicer says that it's 7 layers total, so I inserted the filament swap between layer 3 and 4, but that gives me one extra layer of the second color I print in the filament. I think that may be why the green overpowered the pink/purple so much. That or possibly the orientation I printed the cube in. Looking at the bottom it's interesting how it changes which color is visible depending on the print direction. Do the bottom of your dual color prints show the same color change? I'm curious if you have more of a rolling change around the circle instead of such a sharp one in my 90° corner

Also, it didn't seem to change too much as it cooled off. Not as much as I was hoping at least

 

[Eric]

My first layers have been more of a homogenous mixture than the walls but ill take some pictures today to show what I mean. I am going to try that new release candidate of prusa for it next time as well. I think the adaptive line thickness of the new arachne engine will help make these spirals more solid while leaving gap fill off, mine was 8 layers so i got a 50/50 split but I sliced with my profile in prusa and not sure what made the difference. Maybe the first layer height is causing that? I would think 7 or even 8 layers should be giving us under diameter filament. 8 layers at 0.2 should give me 1.6 diameter and I would think you would be closer 1.4 with cura but first layer height could make up the difference.

 

[DrNezbit]

Oh, yeah, I think I do have my initial layer a little thicker. Will have to check that and see if is

Edit:
Initial layer height was set to .03, dropped it to .02 and sliced into 8 layers. This time I also remembered to remove the brim so I won't have to wait 20 minutes to make sure the actual filament starts printing correctly

 

[DrNezbit]

So I tried out some silver and copper, but apparently my layer settings didn't change, so there was still one extra layer of the copper

(realized about half way into the print it was still off) but I printed a mushroom cap at 50% with it as another test. Looks like I've got over extrusion at 150% I think. I'm not sure exactly, but it turned out pretty well otherwise

The z seam seemed to really build up at the end

 

[Eric]

That looks really cool! I bet there is some real magic in the ratio of the colors too. Like maybe 6 lines silver to 2 lines of copper or similar setups with a base color and "highlight" color.

 

[DrNezbit]

I'm going to try again in a little bit and drop it to 140 like you said you used, but with this one next time (after it finished printing, took that picture because the color combination was so neat)
It also has an even layer count of both colors. Was printing a few test filaments to dial in my settings for them. I think I got them with that one, so I printed another of the green and pink/purple for my third test print from it. Hopefully 140% fixes that massive z seam

 

[DrNezbit]

So I actually ended up dropping down to 120% at the end because it looked like it was bulging again, but it turns out it was actually printing well for me at around 130%. It wasn't actually bulging like I thought but insetting a bit instead. I'm super happy with this one though and can't wait to try the green and pink/purple again now that I have the filament sliced right

 

[Eric]

Now that one really came out well aligned!

Here is those bottoms of the vase earlier, it definitely has the effect when viewed from the sides but has a hashed look from above.

 

[Eric]

I just downloaded that alpha release of prusaslicer and rescliced the 130mm model but with filament swaps at the layer 1/8, 3/8, 4/8 layers to play with the ratio.

Seems to be the witch doctor/joker color scheme but I like it. Printing 1/8th purple silk 7/8th flourescent yellow.

 

[DrNezbit]

Wow, the bottoms look pretty neat. They got a good solid angle for each color. That is going to be neat to see how more filament changes change the outcome. Here's the thingiverse link for the mushroom I'm printing

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5264387

I scaled them down to 50% for the smaller ones, shouldn't need supports. I was curious about how something with a lot of angles might turn out, like this

Threaded Container by Engineering_Aesthetics

~>~~~~~~~~~>~>~>~> Please Post Your Makes <<<<~<~~~~~~~~~<~ Screw Container:Container for baubles, parts etc. Threads are designed to spin freely until locked but still be easy to open. Update 4/19/2018:STEP files posted

www.thingiverse.com

I think that outer texture might turn out really cool

 

[DrNezbit]

Ok, lol, so I like this so much that I think it would be amazing if we scaled the filament model up to like 2.0mm to give an even 5 layers of each color, then extrude it through a 1.75mm nozzle to smooth it out and reduce the diameter to actual filament size. Wouldn't that be amazing to be able to create your own color combinations and have them be the same quality as regular filament. Could even possibly take orders to sell custom color combinations, or let people print their own and bring it in to be smoothed and resized maybe

 

[Eric]

I think that extruder setup that the Mountain Dew bottle system uses would be perfect to adapt to that. I will have to take a look at my parts bin and see if there is the right parts to make an isolated extruder, I think I probably do though!

The prusa alpha release with Arachne engine did a great job of eliminating the hole left from turning off gap fill. With prusa you could just leave the gap fill on but the way it's done is usually zig-zags and I think it would be likely to not come out as consistently as this the variable perimeter widths of Arachne. The short zigzags of gap fill are pretty jerky movements that with short runs make the printer vibrate so I usually try not to use them if possible.

Prusa alpha on the left and prusa 2.4 on the right, the gap fill hole is very noticeable on this end that was pulled out of the extruder, it can also be seen anywhere you cut into the filament but is a smaller looking hole there.




Thinking about your idea more, I think we could theoretically make full spools. Say you use a belt printer and just put out a single continuous line about the size half of the filament, so a 0.6-0.8mm nozzle and appropriate line height of the first color, use the fil-a-winder (which reminds me I need to post about!) to spool up that too small filament and then do another run of the other half, Feed both halves into the extruder/smoother run and get the final, fused, full roll filament by winding it with the Fila-winder on the outfeed side. It would be a labor of love but I could see that being an interesting and worth-while experiment for the right filament combo!

 

[DrNezbit]

Wow, that would be super neat. Would take a lot less time too then trying to print a bunch of layers or multiple strands and trying to fuse them together.

 

[DrNezbit]

Would the filament fuser/extruder also be able to handle a fully printed strand of filament like we're making now? Like if we printed it bigger would it be able to compress it a touch and smooth it out? I'm thinking to make the base project easier for people to do with a standard build plate. The design maker said they could resize it for specific needs if asked to in the comments. I'm wondering if they would be interested in our idea and make a slightly larger diameter for our purpose, or maybe a half model that people could print to fuse together as one as you're talking about. Maybe give people an option in the modeling for a continuous strand also with that purpose in mind.

I've fused together the ends of printed filament that I've printed off of with a small piece of tubing and started winding it on my empty spool. Will definitely be an interesting larger print with multicolor and color changing at layers when they switch. Fusing it takes practice with the tube, this is how I saw it done:

It seems to work so far, but I haven't printed it yet. I'll be watching closely for snapping where it's fused when I do print it. Was thinking that fusing would be a lot easier if you can melt them solid with a nice bulge in the tube and then run it through the extrusion to clean and help reinforce the fusion.

 

[Eric]

I think the PTFE tubes for the extruders are usually 2mm ID so we might have a little trouble feeding it through at first but it will extrude it at the smaller size fine. You can also change the filament diameter by pulling it while it's extruded but you need to measure it with a laser and adjust the pulling to match the laser diameter results.

I have seen the fusing method using PTFE tubing, I think if it was paired with a electronic heating to masterfully heat the tube to the right temp to allow it to melt the filament and then cool before removing you could get a really solid bond, I have not been real confident in the bonds I made with a lighter and the tubing by hand but I think the technique is solid just needs more practice on my end.

 

[DrNezbit]

Neat, yeah, a lighter and bit of tube isn't ideal, it's what I used too. I would definitely be interested in seeing how to set up the extrusion part of the soda bottle recycler, but I can't seem to find a diy version. If you already have something similar set up to this, it looks like you may be able to print a different style holder to feed the filament into it.

It

 

[Eric]

I just whipped a 2mm version of the coil in fusion 360. It turns out there is a coil button so only a few minutes of playing with the numbers and I was able to get something very similar.

It's 160mm in diameter so it should make a bit better use of the build plate than the ones in the original thingiverse file. I have not tried using it yet though, I am still printing the last of the ratio tests.