Any help with suggested settings? (two colours/oozing)

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no3dprintexperience
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Any help with suggested settings? (two colours/oozing)

Post by no3dprintexperience » Sun Apr 17, 2016 4:37 am

I'm trying to print in dual colour PLA and struggling with what I think is primarily oozing. There is a photo of a print I did today attached. If anyone has any suggested settings to try and clean this up, I would appreciate them! Thanks in advance.
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IMG_5436.JPG

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Jules
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Re: Any help with suggested settings? (two colours/oozing)

Post by Jules » Sun Apr 17, 2016 5:38 am

Yeah, it's oozing, and it's the curse of dual color printing from two nozzles simultaneously. That actually isn't a bad result.

1. There is a way to do that type of print much more neatly, but it entails redesigning the puck. You would recess the lettering, so that the top two or three layers are all green, with the letters essentially "cut out" of those layers. Then you create two "Processes" in S3D, with the first Dual process (both nozzles) for the bottom layers of the puck and the second Process (green nozzle only) for the top layers. The second process will start at whatever number the first one leaves off from, and in the interim, you would clean the inactive nozzle as well as you can with the tweezers.
(I've not yet done it - it really bumps up the complexity level, but it's possible. You can read about it on the S3D forum.)

2. Or, you can very easily use a single nozzle for dual color printing (only on that particular kind of print, where you have text or a design of a different color with a surrounding background) by manually inserting a pause into the G-Code for the file, printing it from the SD card, and when the machine pauses, you go over and change out the filament, then resume the print. (That's the way I do it, because it's much easier than fighting the oozes and smears.) In the second method, you would raise the text above the bottom green layer. It gives a very neat and professional looking result.
stop sign bookmark1.jpg
Instructions for Pausing a Print are here:

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2132

But if it has to be a completely flat surface.....what you see on your puck is pretty much standard. Dual color printing generally looks better from the sides than on the top and bottom surfaces, unless you make some design modifications to accommodate it. :|
Last edited by Jules on Mon Apr 18, 2016 12:12 am, edited 1 time in total.

no3dprintexperience
Posts: 17
Joined: Mon Mar 14, 2016 2:03 am

Re: Any help with suggested settings? (two colours/oozing)

Post by no3dprintexperience » Sun Apr 17, 2016 1:10 pm

Thanks, Jules. Unfortunately what you see is the bottom layer because the disk design has some connector features built up on the top layers. Maybe I will try to redesign that component and see if I can come up with something better. I'm hoping to be able to make the dual extruder design work because I have to print so many of these that pausing/changing filaments for every one is going to be pretty impractical, but I appreciate it is an option!

no3dprintexperience
Posts: 17
Joined: Mon Mar 14, 2016 2:03 am

Re: Any help with suggested settings? (two colours/oozing)

Post by no3dprintexperience » Sun Apr 17, 2016 3:15 pm

Is this the discussion on the S3D forum you were referring to, or is there a more detailed one I couldn't find? https://forum.simplify3d.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=4718 I'm not sure I understand the solution he refers to finding.

I adjusted my retraction, extrusion multiplier, wiping, and temperature settings and saw some definite improvement. Not sure if there is anything else I could do to get better than this other than rethink the whole design.
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Jules
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Re: Any help with suggested settings? (two colours/oozing)

Post by Jules » Mon Apr 18, 2016 12:25 am

no3dprintexperience wrote:Is this the discussion on the S3D forum you were referring to, or is there a more detailed one I couldn't find? https://forum.simplify3d.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=4718 I'm not sure I understand the solution he refers to finding.
Sorry, misunderstood your earlier reference (just reading through too fast).....

Yeah, that's one of them - he's created two processes for it. It's essentially what we do by inserting a pause into the code, but he carries the base color up into the letters for a few rows so that there is no dragging of the dark nozzle across the lighter base color. For that example, he raised the text above the surface.

Other things to study up on are anything to do with multiple processes.

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