Cetus2 gets used just about every day. For every design that is not one single color. I have posted a few more pix here.
What I want to discuss is - large single color prints.
Cetus2 is designed from the get-go to be a multi-filament (at a time) printer. The single nozzle provides perfect printing alignment of those two filaments. No mecanical nozzle lifiting or required (and accuarte) nozzle offset settings. The big difference is one filament can not be empty, turned off, or un-heated.
Cetus2 can be used for small, single color, one filament prints. But that is not it's prinmary design function.
The design is for two filament to always be loaded. Leaving one side empty (no filament feed) is not recomended. There are two separate temperature controls (not implimented in my early version). Separate control has been promissed in the release version. But both sides need to be heated to within some range (10C-20C ?) of each other.
The concern and absolute possibility is that if one side is not flowing for long periods, the filimaent will "cook off" the volatiles into solid, burned state and plug the nozzle.
The color purge when doing two color prints always clears BOTH filaments every layer, keeping any aging material cook-down from occurring, even when printing with a hundred layers of the same (color) filament.
Doing large prints with a single filament is certainly not good practice for a "designed-for-two-filament," single nozzle printer. Not just the Cetus2 but for both my other two (Geeetech A20M and A20T) as well.
The solution is somewhat obvious. I have done this several times.
When I have a large single color print I want to run on my two color single nozzle printers, I load two filaments of the same material and run with a 50/50 mix. This solves all the standby filament heating problems and provides twice the available capactiy. It's more than 2/3rds the available feed volume of a 3mm filament printer. It's a great solution other than requiring 2 spools of the same color.
In my copious printing, using two spools the same color is no issue at all. It's nice to have a 2K capacity machine without needing to source commercial size 2K or 5K spools.
Presented as food for thought. Certainly there will be more about this from official Cetus2 sources. Jason Wu and I have touched very briefly on the subject. These are only MY SOP (Standard Operating Procedures) for large single color, single nozzle printing. You can do as you please...
Meantime, here are a couple more Cetus2 (2-color) prints;
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| 2 color mix with single color bands | Two (50/50) mix. Front is using "paint" UPS3 feature |
Yes, there is a bit of "ringing" in the sidewwall of the lead picture. Probably a speed or jerk setting issue.