I’m new to Sovol having received my first SV08 yesterday.
Initial installation very smooth and first print worked very well.
The machine was purchased for a multi colour parallel printing project I am working on.
The first stage is to add a second gantry - that can hopefully be used in parallel to the first gantry to up to double print speeds.
I have made a start of the design of the changes required to double up the belts, motors and extruder.
I think I can run the 2nd set of belts 2.5mm inside the existing ones with quite a few changes.
Will probably have to change the control board to a Duet3 - as I think I need RepRap firmware for this sort of Multi Axis, Multiple Motion System project. Once proven may try and make some changes to Klipper to allow the existing board to be used.
More details here if anyone is interested.
Picture from a different angle - with updated routing around the steppers and more detail of the 2nd gantry
1 Like
How would this deal with filament retract in case of parallel printing, when lifting one head will affect Z position of the other?
1 Like
Thanks for the comment.
You are correct that z hopping is an issue and is the reason why my first iteration of this multi gantry design was only going to have normal idex functions like colour change, mirror and copy modes.
However following on from the comments by @8MEKAN8 on this video Idex youtube video I decided to make the 2nd gantry fully independent.
I have considered having a completely separate flying gantry with its own 4xZ motors above the main one with the print heads sticking through.
However, in the initial implementation I am planning on including what I am calling independent Z Hoppers.
These small steppers on each extruder will allow the main Z gantry to stay stable for the whole layer - (which will counteract some of the impact of the extra mass on the flying gantry).
The z hoppers on each extruder will be used for small secondary Z moves - a) for travel move Z hopping, plus b) for individual head level bed mesh adjustments.
As well as enabling double gantry parallel printing I think they will also help with creating extra Idex modes for the two extruders I am planning on putting on each gantry in phase2 of my upgrade plan.
Nb/ the diagram I posted above doesn’t include phase2 - but if you are interested in this then see my post on the duet forum or my youtube animations.
1 Like
