Dual Extruder Upgrade

[nirfriedman]

Hi All,

I recently bought an M2 (V4 single extruder) and also the dual extruder upgrade kit. I would appreciate some comments/recommendations from people who gone through the process. How long did it take to install the kit? how much pain was it to get things working again afterwards? Any suggestion beyond the assembly instructions provided with the kit?

Thanks!

Nir

[sckibbons]

It took me a few hours. Just take your time and read the directions carefully. After you get the hardware all set up, make sure to check out the wiki link below. This should help you get setup.

http://makergear.wikidot.com/dual

[nirfriedman]

It took me a few hours. Just take your time and read the directions carefully. After you get the hardware all set up, make sure to check out the wiki link below. This should help you get setup.

http://makergear.wikidot.com/dual

Thanks! this will wait for next weekend I guess.

[nirfriedman]

ok. so I went through the assembly instructions, and I have minor comments that I will send MakerGear support (mostly that pictures of black parts and black wires against black background are not that informative...)

Now I understand (from the wiki, not from anywhere else) that I need to upgrade the firmware. Is the recommendation to stick to Arduino 1.5.5 is still relevant or are the new versions stable?

Before I realized that I wanted to test the extruder. I managed to see that the tension of the extruder filament guide was totally off, and was happy to find a thread here that explains how to tune it (would have been nice to get that as part of the instructions).

However, it seems that the filamenet is not getting into the hotend. As far as I can tell I don't have any play in aligning the guide to the hotend when I install it. Any way of checking that???

What checklist of other stuff I need to go through, such as checking that the wiring is correct and so on?

[nirfriedman]

However, it seems that the filament is not getting into the hotend. As far as I can tell I don't have any play in aligning the guide to the hotend when I install it. Any way of checking that???

With a quick reply from the (amazingly responsive) MakerGear support, I found out that you can tune the angle of the filament guide. removed the fan, untightened the two screws that hold the guide, and then carefully extruded filament and guided it to the right position. I then extruded about 100mm. At this stage the filament was holding well at the guide and in the hotend. This helped maintain the position when I tightened the screws back on. Now it works nicely.

[jsc]

While you probably should use the supplied dual extruder firmware uploaded with 1.5.5, I recently put together a version of the latest released Marlin (1.0.2) that you might consider trying if you want to live on the edge: viewtopic.php?f=9&t=2708

It turns on/off the extruder fan at 50C, and includes a workaround for the missed steps issue, so you can use 1.6+ to upload it.

[nirfriedman]

While you probably should use the supplied dual extruder firmware uploaded with 1.5.5, I recently put together a version of the latest released Marlin (1.0.2) that you might consider trying if you want to live on the edge: viewtopic.php?f=9&t=2708

It turns on/off the extruder fan at 50C, and includes a workaround for the missed steps issue, so you can use 1.6+ to upload it.

Thanks! Getting the thing to print properly is sufficient challenging right now, so I will stay with the stable version. Looking forward to upgrade when the new one is less of "living on the edge"