Now that I have the MK3 I’m looking to do more exciting prints. While I wait for the Multi-Material kit I’m playing with changing filaments. The first test was to take the Prusa logo image concept and make name plates for the grand kids.
Changing up the Layers
I purchased a bag of PLA filament ends to play with different filaments. These included some glow-in-the-dark filaments and various colors but in the end I found white and black to work out best.
The Prusa Control program makes it easy to introduce filament changes. I’ll identify other programs but I’ve also just edited the gcode.
Glow in the Dark Nameplates
Playing around with changing filaments on the layer change I print a rectangle as the backing and pause for a filament change. Then I print raised text. This is the basis of any nameplate, either raised or indented letters in a different color.
To make them glow in the dark I found printing on white, with the top two or three layers glow-in-the-dark. The last few layers of whitish glow-in-the-dark filament dulled the white a little but isn’t noticeable unless you know to look. Then the letters are printed in black. This makes for a nameplate where the name stands out and when charged provides a back-light for the letters making the name visible in the dark.
Retro to the A8
Having had so much fun I decided to see if the A8 could do it too. My first try was to add the M600 command in the appropriate place in the gcode and upload the file to print. The printer ignored the M600 command.
Research indicates it should have worked. I’ve updated to Marlin for auto-bed leveling but I also read it didn’t really work well, at least with the A8. One user offered a few lines of gcode that moved the printer head to a safe place to load and pause the print job. I tried this and it worked just fine.
Summary
The Original Prusa MK3 is a very nice printer but changing filaments is just a matter of understanding the technology. Succeeded on the MK3 I had to find out if I could do the same thing on the A8. The short answers is ‘of course’ but it isn’t quite that simple. I didn’t have any luck using M600.
I did read that the stock A8 does not support M600. However my experience is neither does Marlin, at least not on the A8. Luckily one user response offered the solution of simply adding script that moved to a safe place and waited for a resume. That work well. Figuring out where to add the code is a little tricky so I will delve into that more once I’ve done my research.
So printing with multiple colors even if all you have is a single extruder is possible. Changing on a layer change is probably the simplest but it is probably possible to change mid-layer as well.
