If optimizing for 2 material setup, and, if you’re ok with pros/cons of Bowden Extruder instead of Direct Drive, then, have you considered two simple hotends on the gantry, with the 2nd hotend mounted to be moved vertically by a solenoid. Depending on whether solenoid is energized, either 1st or 2nd hotend would be closer to the bed. There’s a few simpler cheaper IDEX printers out there that use this approach, I can’t recall their name(s) though. This enables poop free printing, less purging of material since nozzle isn’t shared, just need some wiping/priming. Maybe faster print times than Chameleon/ERCF/etc… (since no purging, significant toolhead changes, or filament swaps).
Frankly, if all you want is dual material printing and don’t need huge volume, you can get machines like the FlashForge Crator Pro which has dual independent direct drive extruders and isn’t terribly expensive. There are downsides of inline dual H-bots, but for that particular application they’re remarkably good and pretty simple to use and maintain.
I have maintained FFCPs for a long time, have upgraded them with special extruders for super flexible or hight temp- none of which would be what you likely want.
Since I work on them, I periodically look on Craigslist and regularly find low usage FFCP dual machines for sub $100- sometimes in the $20 to $40 range. (Which is basically “This is still workable, but PLEASE come take it off my hands.”)
I have bought, refurbished, and given away at least half a dozen to printing newbies.
Just something to consider. The cost of entry for dual material printing doesn’t need to be expensive nor overly complex.
I love reading your build threads, and I hope we never lose that spirit of open and helpful sharing. There are plenty of online communities that would pick apart every little mistake or work hard to bring a user down.
For every user like JJ that posts without fear, there’s dozens, maybe hundreds who lurk silently and learn.
The truth is that while you struggle at times (We all do.), you are persistent and creative and willing to learn and get your hands dirty. That’s why you succeed.
It’s OK for some to say that they don’t think they can follow just yet. After the builds start arriving, the lessons are learned, and the documentation and build threads are populated then those folks can follow along.
Please keep on being you.
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Transparency allows us to gauge not only our ability, but the time involvement and simplicity or complexity of the build. Thanks for sharing your experiece!
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Actually, no. At one point I considered an IDEX conversion of an i3 clone that is ready to be retired, but wasn’t sure how to handle (tune) the nozzle offset. A solenoid with enough travel to offset setup tolerances seems like a really good idea. I am probably still leaning toward a separate feeder so that when it breaks I can just bypass or trash it, but this is food for thought.
Thanks for the tip!
I looked and don’t see anything close and cheap enough ATM, but I’ll keep an eye out.
I’ve never owned a Flash Forge machine but have repaired a couple. They have impressed me with overall quality and functionality despite the abuse inflicted upon them at a local school.
Reading through some of the replies here, while going through “unread” in my list, and thinking what a cool thread, only to be reminded that I started it…LOL!
In the time since starting the thread, I switched my main printer from a heavily-modded Ender 3 Pro to a Prusa MK4 (got the official enclosure as well).
So the most likely path for me if I go multi-color/multi-material is the MMU3, but I’m still holding off for now, mainly because I don’t have a lot of need for multi-color (I want multicolor, but I don’t need it), but also because with the Core One on the horizon, I’m thinking I will pick that up once it’s had a chance to work out the initial bugs, and either go MMU3 on that, or convert my current MK4 to multi-color.
Thank you all for making this such an awesome thread!
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I am still sitting on the fence on that too, but I can say that the “S” upgrade has been impressive!
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I have the MMU. Not that you don’t know… Two colour prints with V1 Logo… I am also now saving some money for the upgrade I suppose… 
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Just make sure to read up on the MMU and the MK4s upgrade…I’ve seen a bunch of mixed information in terms of compatibility, particularly with the CHF nozzles. I’m guessing that may have settled down by now, and probably is mostly a matter of refining the print profiles, but it’s one of the reasons I’ve held off.
Love Prusa’s stuff, and my experience with the MK4 has been great, but seems like there’s usually at least some period of teething with any new release, and I’m OK with waiting that out…
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I have them both. I changed the 0.4 and 0.4HF profiles to work with 0.6 and 0.6HF respectively. The only drawback is the wipe tower gets a loooot bigger. So it makes sense for bigger prints to change the nozzle to the non-HF.
And no, 0.6 is, after a year, not officially supported on the MK4(S)… but the 3.9 or whatever that is…
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