Pontiac 2D multicolour sign on my V3SE with PEI bed
Sunlu PLA+ in White , Red and Klein Blue.
u/aydopotato — 5 days ago
u/aydopotato
Hi all,
I've seen a number of people asking how to do multicolour prints without a CFS/AMS/MMU system and there seem to be a number of misconceptions in a few comment sections about the capacity of current slicers to allow for this.
I am printing on an Ender 3 v3 SE and using Orcaslicer. I believe this guide should also work for Prusaslicer and Bambustudio as they are all similar enough at the moment.
Initial set up
For either of these to work you need to have some code in your pause and filament change settings for your printer in your slicer.
Edit your machine settings in your slicer, go to Machine G-Code and check the 'Pause' and 'Filament Change' sections:
You may need to experiment with finding the appropriate command to pause your printer. for me it is M25.
My current filament change code is as follows, I have tried commenting it to explain how it works.
M300 S440 P200 ;Beep three times
G4 S2
M300 S660 P250 ;Second beep
G4 S2
M300 S880 P300 ;Third Beep
M25; pause and move to X0 Y0
;Change the filament manually during this pause
;Press 'Resume' on your printer to resume
;After resuming the following code will do a little purge/wipe of your nozzle.
G1 Z2.0 F3000 ;Move Z Axis up
G1 X-2.1 Y20 Z0.28 F5000.0 ;Move to start position
M109 S[nozzle_temperature_initial_layer] ;Wait for nozzle temp to stabilize
G1 X-2.1 Y145.0 Z0.28 F1500.0 E15 ;Draw the first line
G1 X-2.4 Y145.0 Z0.28 F5000.0 ;Move to side a little
G1 X-2.4 Y20 Z0.28 F1500.0 E30 ;Draw the second line
G92 E0 ;Reset Extruder
G1 E-1.0000 F1800 ;Retract a bit
G1 Z2.0 F3000 ;Move Z Axis up
G1 E0.0000 F1800
The two methods for multicolour printing:
- Pause at layer and change colour for the whole print at the start of the layer.
- Have the slicer insert filament change code and print the different parts of that layer by colour.
Method 1: Pause at layer
After slicing your model, find the layer that corresponds to where you want to change colours and add a pause by right clicking on the (+) on the right hand side and selecting add pause. This will insert your pause GCODE from your machine g-code settings.
When the printer pauses, swap out your filaments and hit resume, and it will resume in the new colour. This is good for things such as raised details like text or symbols on where there is a clear change point.
Method 2: Let the slicer do it for you.
Either model your model with seperate parts, or paint your model using the paint feature in the slicer to identify your different coloured pieces. For this example lets take a look at a coaster I designed in Fusion360
I have modelled the parts I want printed in gold silk PLA as a separate 0.4mm high piece, which is subtracted from the main coaster model. In the slicer I simply apply my two filament types to achieve the colours I want. You can also force the slicer to slide the filaments in a particular order using the button below.
Now when I slice this model, the slicer will add in my filament change g-code between the different colours automatically.
Preview of the print before first colour change:
Preview of the print at the second colour change back to white:
That's all there really is to it.
Happy to discuss in the comments or let me know if I've made a mistake.
Happy printing everyone!
u/aydopotato — 19 days ago