Dual extruder single nozzle support/tool selection#150

Hello Everyone! 😄

I recently inquired about manually switching between tools on a Creality CR-X dual extruder printer with a single nozzle. Albert mentioned that currently, this feature isn’t available, and he suggested submitting a suggestion through the suggestion box.

I believe adding a manual tool change option to the control panel for dual extruder printers would be a valuable feature for users like me. This could enhance the user experience and provide more flexibility during printing.

A workaround until the manual tool change feature is potentially implemented, is to use the Pro plan’s ‘Filament Change’ function.

Side suggestion would be to remove dual extruder single nozzle printers in the compatible printers list or at least note this limitation.
At least intill this change is implemented or untill basic features does not require a paid plan.

Please consider this suggestion, and if you find it beneficial, encourage other users to upvote it.

Also the Creality CR-X is only set up with tool 0 when adding the printer. IE. the user manually have to add the second extruder(tool 1) and check the “extruder share nozzle” checkmark box. This might be because of missing features like manual tool change, but i thought i would add it anyways 😅

I am also in need of this feature for my Tenlog TL-D3pro. On the OctoPrint interface the option to Switch Tool is available, it seems like it would be an easy feature to add into SimplyPrint.

@Andraesboni can you attach a screenshot of how it looks in OctoPrint? And perhaps a deeper explanation of why this is needed, and how it’s not a slicing issue?

As I said, you can easily select which extruder to use (tool 0, tool 1) in octoprint, and whichever is selected when you start printing is what the printer uses. This seems to mimic the behavior on the printer screen itself.

I sliced it in cura and specified extruder 1, disabled extruder 0, but when I sent it to the printer it still used extruder 0. I tried using the built-in slicer and specifying which extruder, also did not work. I tried manually editing the gcode, and it did not work. In simply print I only loaded filament on one of the extruders (E1) and it still started to print on E0. It seems like the printer is not recieving the instructions on which extruder to use, and always uses whichever is currently enabled on the printer itself. On Octoprint interface, I can select the correct extruder before I start the print job, and unless SimplyPrint gains that same function, I won’t be able to use it.

Alright, that makes sense - thanks for clarifying, @Andraesboni !
In OctoPrint, is it a plugin that adds this button, or something in the printer profile? What determines if the printer should be able to do this?

As multiple extruders for a single nozzle does not always mean you can do this. Bambu Lab is an example of this, where each “AMS” slot is technically an extruder - but the printer picks what to use. In other cases, it’s baked into the Gcode.

So, it must be a printer capability somehow, whether it supports tool-switching.

We’ll do some research and see what determines whether a printer can do this or not, but if you have anything that can point us in the right direction, please let us know :) Of the 22 printers we have at the office, none of them work like this - not even our IDEX (though that one is very home-made!)

I admit, this printer is very unique and not well known, so I’m not surprised at this issue. I don’t know how that option got into octoprint. I only installed the SimplyPrint OS following the setup guide and started printing with SimplyPrint, but everything was going to tool 0. My troubleshooting eventually led me to viewing the Octoprint interface when I noticed that tool option, which led me to search for the same option in SP, which led me to this thread.
After doing some more testing I realized that my Gcode edit was wrong. (I am very novice at all of this, just a prolific tinkerer.) I had searched for T0, but it wasn’t in the code, so I searched for E0 and there were a few references, so I assumed E0 was extruder0 (I should have looked it up.) So the gcode cura was creating wasn’t specifying tool at all. (I should note that my printer is not natively supported in cura, I am using a printer profile that was shared online for a very similar (TL-D3v2), but not exact model (TL-D3 pro).
With all of that in mind, next troubleshooting test was to explicity use both extruders in the slicer. In Cura I added a small 3mmx3mm square and assigned it to T0, then had the actual print assigned to T1. I sliced this in Cura, and sent it directly to SimplyPrint, and it worked! it still heated up T0 first, waited for it to reach 200, then heated up T1, but after both heads were hot it went directly to printing the actual part with T1. I think my little square was to small to actually print (It did put the skirt around both parts), but having it there forced the gcode to specify which tool to use.
So I guess I can just use that work around for now.