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#1 2022-11-10 16:16:55

reinventtheprintingpress
Member
Registered: 2019-06-12
Posts: 5

Dual Material Printing

This is probably a Question for @Shahin.

As part of a research project, we have built out a fairly comprehensive and extremely rapid print-and-clean process that allows for printing of multiple resins. Goal is dissolvable supports and other neat applications that multi-material prints allow. Now we are trying to build out some basic test software to see how the whole process can print objects, and we *might* be able to do it with NanoDLP but are not sure.

The design is a standard bottom-up, DLP projector setup. The work flow is

1) Slice two designs with a common origin and a common set of layers (e.g. Layer 10 of Object A and Object B correspond to the design)
2) Print Layer 1 of Object A in Vat A
3) Clean + Dry
4) Print Layer 1 of Object B in Vat B
5) Print Layer 2 of Object B in Vat B
6) Clean + Dry
7) Print Layer 3 of Object A in Vat A
8) Print Layer 4 of Object A in Vat A
9) ..... <Repeat until complete>

Object A and B have distinct Resin Profiles, and the cleaning pattern is defined in GCode.

Object A may require burn-in layers (as it is attached to the build platform) but Object B may not. In addition, Object A might be printing by itself for a while (for example, between Layer 1 and 25, there may only be Object A layers and no Object B layers)

From what we can see, NanoDLP can call specific layers, and some basic conditionals are possible. There is a recent post about automated print-bed swapping, which indicated that you can 'start' a new print. So there are some code calls that we could use. But not sure which....

Ideally, we want to be able to have two specific, pre-sliced files with specific Plate_IDs attached to them, and run a print where IF a specific layer is 'printable', then it is printed.

Assuming this workflow makes sense, and you understand the basic design of our machine, we have a very specific question.

Let's say I start a print from a pre-sliced file.. call it Plate_ID_1. After I print Layer 1, can I check to see if Layer 1 from a different "Plate_ID_2" has an area greater than zero (e.g. it is printable), and if so, tell NanoDLP via GCode to move to another Vat and print it?

Please ask any question to me about the overall concept and workflow, if you have them.

Thanks!

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#2 2022-11-11 08:18:00

Shahin
Administrator
Registered: 2016-02-17
Posts: 3,536

Re: Dual Material Printing

We have similar processes developed for multiple manufacturers. This capability is not available on our public build.

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