So, yesterday I began the task of upgrading Dual 1.0 to Titans with Hybrid. Primary goal really was to get back to printing as soon as possible with a single direct Titan, then add in the second bowden Titan at leisure. This is the set of steps I captured - roughly. As I speak - the Titan is printing, and the second extrusion system is dangling over the edge of the printer with the hot end cooling fan running. Upgrade Dual 1.0 to Dual Hybrid w/ Titans Printer remains operational 1. Print the following parts X Carriage Back Clamp (can re-use front one or print e3d extruder IR mount Dual Cooling Fan Mount (non-volcano) 2. Build Titan to e3d extruder 3. Build Titan to back of case Begin decommission 4. Remove filaments from hotends 4a. Remove side cooling fans and clean hot ends while hot (cool to between 130 and 170 to pull away in clumps) 4 m3 square nuts 5. Cut all cable ties to x-carriage assembly 6. Remove fans from hotends 8 phillips 7. Remove IR sensor 2 m3 square nuts 8. Power off - ensure temp of hotends below 40 9. Remove hotends from x-carriage 10. Remove x endstop switch 2 m2 screws 11. Remove all equipment from hot end. Set down. X-Carriage swap 12. Unscrew 4 m4 screws to release top section 4 m4 screws 13. Remove front clamp 2 m3 screws 14. Loosen tension 15 remove grubs 16. detach pulley 17. wangle lower x-carriage free 18. cannibalise old x-carriage 18a remove 4 grubs 4 m4 nuts build into hybrid carriage 18b remove tensioner assembly build into hybrid carriage 18c almost impossible to remove all 8 clamp nuts remove 4 easily grab 4 from spares build into hybrid 19. Attach x-carriage to bed and push bearings into place 20. attach front and back clamps if you printed in PLA - now you wish you hadn't. unpleasant cracking sounds during tightening. very light tightening!! note to self - reprint clamps in edge 21. swap IR sensor to new mount 22. replace x-axis idler "canon" for M3 12mm - set for roughly right position (can be tweaked later) 23. move all content for right extrusion away from the machine (rats - broke the cooling fan black connection - luckily only need one cooling fan now) 24. fit left extrusion items (which include the IR sensor connection) part cooling fan assembly not up to date for hybrid on wiki 25. tension x belt power on 26. check temp can be set for fitted extruder (in my case 0) 27. load RC6 Dual Hybrid MBL from Alex 28. reset and test auto home 29. tune esteps 30. load first print.
Not entirely. The hybrid head in the BB 1.1 design is two v6 hotends, one direct driven by a Titan, and one bowden-fed by a Titan. So it's a hybrid of direct drive and bowden.
Got it. I can't seem to determine which is best to bowden or not to bowden,,,that is the question. LOL. With your set up you're covered.
I think "it depends" is the answer. I can't fully list the advantages of both, but the ones that seem clear to me are: Bowden - weight removed from the x-carriage Direct - better handling for a wider range of filaments This doesn't really help make the choice of which nozzle to use for which though ...
I think the intention is that the direct extruder is used for the main filament when doing a main material + support print, and obviously if you were printing a mixed material print with a flexible material you'd use the direct for that as well. From my personal experience I think the difference is somewhat overstated. I've printed flexibles with a Bowden just fine (admittedly very slowly) and with an extruder not at all optimised for flexible filament. However that's only my personal experience and maybe the difference is more pronounced with better equipment than I've used.
Interesting input @Sarah Nicholson . I had assumed that support material would be more tricky - hence on the direct.
I think the logic is that a perfect finish doesn't matter for the support material. The only dedicated support material I've experimented (disastrously) with is PVA, and the difficulty in printing with it relates more to the fact it doesn't like being held at temperature in the melt zone than in feeding it.
I think there's a similar concern for Scaffold. Perhaps @PsyVision can comment as he's at least used scaffold.
Hmmm, I've only done one serious print in it and didn't really have any trouble, it was either being printed with or the dual retraction pull had taken it out of the hot end, it didn't jam at all. Comparing my print to Greg's though shows that he had nice perfect lines of scaffold support and mine was a bit poorly printed, so definitely needed more setting tweaks.
Have now switched all my PLA parts to PETG. Much greater level of comfort when tightening the screws. Just a little concerned that we now don't screw down at all four corners on the hybrid. Also feels like there's not obvious reason we don't use a X+ stop. All the cable runs are in place and there's a clear plug for it on the board. I did accidentally run the X a little too far to the plus and cringed when I heard the ripping sound of the Titan being pushed upward. No damage I think, but it did get me thinking about X+.
Right. Have just (finally) got to see some filament come from nozzle of the bowden-fed hotend, so I can finally list out the steps I took to complete this in-place upgrade. In the end, I completed the upgrade from 1.0 dual to 1.1 hybrid titan without removing the base. After the steps at the start of the thread, I had a working direct drive hotend and a set of parts (for the right nozzle) hanging over the (right) side of my BB. The only real thing I needed to do was to move the power cable for the motor to the new location at the back of the BB. I started by cutting a small hole in the braided sleeving right next to the titan mounted at the back, and pulled through my motor cable to that point. At this point I had a massive long cable protruding from half way up the sleeving at the back. Before thinking about tiding this I cut about 8 inches or so of thinner braided sleeving and put that on the motor wire. I then fed that motor wire through the round hole next to the lower left of the titan. In hindsight it would have been nice to have it slightly further away, but it's operable anyway. I carefully heated the fraying ends of the braided sleeving to help reduce further fraying (don't melt the motor wires) and used a cable clip to hold them tight. Unfortunately heat shrink (of a sensible size) wont go over the end of the motor cable and I couldn't be bothered to remove that piece and add it back; it's not a task I'm familiar with and would probably be missing the right tools. I then plugged this in to the motor. Then I pushed the long cable back into the larger sleeving until the braided part on the shorter wire was inside. A little more heat applied to seal that braided hole and some more cable clips to make it tight. Then I moved to mount the hotend. After a few tries, and then finally looking at the destructions on the wiki, I figured out how to run the cables. This meant I needed to re-route my right side hot end cables out to the right and back and behind the carriage. I took care to make sure that at the right extremity, the cables would push nicely under the motor mount. Oh, while I did this I also re-checked the PTFE on that side. I end erred originally, simply cutting a piece that was 7mm longer (for Alex's raised extruder mount) than the original 66 for the dual x-carriage. When I went through the instructions I realised that the PTFE must go much further into the titan than I had thought. It tooks like it goes all the way to the top of the blac filament guide, whereas I had probably cut it to the top of the metal piece. Anyway, if you're using Alex's mount, you need a 90mm piece of PTFE. One again I used a craft knife to profile the entry way into the PTFE tube just because it seems like a great idea (was probably what allowed my short piece to work at all). After finally getting all the wires tidied I mounted the bowden fed hotend. At some point I realised I'd flipped something over. My pairing of extruder to hot end had changed so I swapped E0 and E1 on the Rumba. Sorry I can't be more precise about that. I then had massive problems getting the bowden fed-filament to get to the nozzle. After a bit of analysis and some measuring, it seemed it was getting caught at the heat break. I checked and rechecked several times the tube fit and the collet, all to no avail. In the end I gave up and fitted a fresh heat break I had bought previously because I felt I might have bent the original one slightly. To the eye, they're both identical, but with the fresh one I can finally get the bowden-fed filament to nozzle. Now it's back to the fun and games of levelling the nozzles!
how were you able to pull the bowden motor cable through without cutting the heat shrink? i cant figure a way to do this beside cutting the heatsink fan and then reapplying the heat shrink edit: so it looks like you did cut the heatshrink of the larger group of wires (for the left extruder) and then use that one for the right extruder and then im assuming you swapped the wires on the rumba? or maybe im just overthinking it
I had to cut the heatshrink yeh. So far I haven't added it back. It's painful adding heatshrink on to cables that have stuff attached. Perhaps I should use some electrical tape instead ...
See, that's why my "incident" with Nylon 910 is now turning into an advantage. Sheared that whole right extruder stuff right off, so now much easier to do the wiring change!
