Ideal for 3d printer multi filiament

That's a cool idea!

That is a great idea.  I could see a couple things that would cause problems.  You would have to find some easy way to feed the filament into the geared extruder as this can be a pain and not easy to do.  I could also see an issue with getting the colors to change when needed as there will be a little filament left in the extruder before the next colors gets fed.  A rotating head with multiple hot ends might work better but then your looking at having to mod the firmware.  Still a great idea.

Nate

That is a great idea.  I could see a couple things that would cause problems.  You would have to find some easy way to feed the filament into the geared extruder as this can be a pain and not easy to do.  I could also see an issue with getting the colors to change when needed as there will be a little filament left in the extruder before the next colors gets fed.  A rotating head with multiple hot ends might work better but then your looking at having to mod the firmware.  Still a great idea.

Nate

Initially I had the same idea after watching the episode on the Double Decker Printer.  My second thought was a bit different and more along the lines of the Double Decker Printer but still quite different.

Instead of building the Y-carrige  with the extruder locked into the carrige, have it where it can be inserted and removed like a desktop injet cartridge. 

The inside of the extruder cartridge is where it becomes a bit more complex. 

To start you would include the extruder, the idle wheel, filament clamp, and a drive gear.  Now one or more cartridges may need to be idle at several points during a print.  To acomodate this you would need to retract the extruder and the drive gear.  Using a drop spring mount inside the cartridge along with a servo or set of servos to press the extruder down would see to extending and retracting.

Then comes the y-carrige.  The drive motor would transfer power to a drive shaft which would transfer the power to the drive gear inside the extruder cartridge when it's not idle.  Then horizontally several docks would allow an extruder cartridge to be locked into place.

When printing, a "core" filament should be printed first for each layer.  To switch to a new filament, retract the current print head, move the y-carrige to line the dock for the next print point, drop the new active dock, resume printing layer.

Updated Thoughts:

But still... hmmm...Rotating...rotating....ROTATING!

Instead of a 3d square grid, why not a cylindrical  building system?

The build table would be built like a turn table surrounded by z-axis towers each on their own turn table.  A curve or arc arm mounted on the z-axis tower would hold the extruder.  These arms will need to be long enough to reach over the center of the turn table so that the center of an object could be filled.

This would replace the x and y-axis with a polar grid being drawn by an arc.

Message was edited by: Matthew Scott