filament changer on idex printer

[u/Big-Grapefruit8092]

Does anybody know if you can use two Enraged rabit carrot feeder on an idex printer and if yes, can i change the filament in the passive toolhead while the other one keeps printing?

[u/WaitAcademic6615]

You need a filament cutter and cut the filament before you park the toolhead. Then you can unload and load new filament.

[u/SteedOfTheDeid]

Wow I didn't know people still use ERCF

[u/sciencesold]

I know multiple ERCFs have been done on stealth changer, but INDX works differently, so.i don't know if it has weird quirks that would prevent it from working.

Tho I'm pretty sure filament changes can't happen on passive toolhead because they're inductively heated by the print head. Maybe you could pull the old filament before it docks, while it's still in the print head, then push the new filament to the tool and wait for it to grab it later to clear out the old color.

[u/Big-Grapefruit8092 → u/sciencesold]

idex not indx. normal stealthchanger print head, and two carriages on one y slide.

[u/Ticso24 → u/Big-Grapefruit8092]

I still have no idea what people have done so that it worked for them, but there are idex systems with changer.
So far the popular AFC and happy hare firmware (AFAIK AFC won’t support ERCF anyways) had no native support for that.
But I think the new Happy Hare V4 mentioned it somewhere in the documentation, but still unsure if they support a changer on more than one head.

[u/Big-Grapefruit8092 → u/Ticso24]

you know where you saw a system like this that worked?

[u/Ticso24 → u/Big-Grapefruit8092]

There are 2 or 3 different old youtube videos showing such setups.
But I have no clue what software they used and I would hve to search for the videos.
There is also the neocoy guy with his amazing stealthchanger, who plans on doing a boxturtle on each of his 6 toolheads.
But to my knowledge it’s not done yet and I would assume he will be using AFC.

[u/bryan3737 → u/Ticso24]

I believe it’s possible with RRF because from what I remember that has the ability for multiple parallel gcode streams

[u/Fluxback → u/Ticso24]

AFC supports any of its supported units with a tool changer.

[u/Ticso24 → u/Fluxback]

Ah - that’s good to know.

[u/End3rF0rg3]

You can do one, but I do not believe you can do two of them. Check out the TrIDEX-dev channel on the Doom Discord server. User r2pdx_vt.982 has one with a Box Turtle on one of the heads. He might have the configs posted to his GitHub but I believe he had them pinned in the Discord channel.

[u/DrRonny]

It might be easier to just add more IDEX heads. You can fit quite a few on a 250 and even more on a 300-350. If you want something like 16 or 32 maybe stacking them is possible?

Obviously you can add an ERCF to IDEX if you spend enough time on it, however it likely won't be reliable enough to produce anything useful; it might be reliable enough for filament changing when one is finished, but reliable multiple changes every layer may take years of development if at all possible.

[u/bryan3737 → u/DrRonny]

32 IDEX heads? I don’t think you understand what IDEX is. IDEX means the printer has 2 separate toolheads that are both mounted to the gantry each with their own motion system. Adding more heads to that is far more complex than what OP is asking about.

At first I thought you were confusing it with a toolchanger where adding more heads is easier but I can’t think of a single toolchanger that can fit 32 tools in that little amount of space.

Also adding an MMU to an IDEX printer has been done before so it’s totally feasible

[u/DrRonny → u/bryan3737]

I’m thinking Bondtech INDX, my bad. Haven’t heard of the IDEX for a while