Hi All,
It's finally time to move on to the next big thing (yet to be announced.) And as always, that means it's time to retire the Mk4 and release it as a fully open source project.
We've published all the files, source code and sample profiles on our GitHub page here: https://github.com/3DChameleon/3DChameleonMk4
Feel free to take it, modify it, extend it, improve it, incorporate it into your designs, sell it... whatever you want! I'd love nothing more than to see you make 3D printing even more beautiful. When I started the 3DChameleon over 8 years ago, no one had a multi color solution. We set out to change that... shortly, we had a competitor or two, but no real big changes... but recently, finally, that has changed with a wave of new products from most of the major vendors. Jo's team at Prusa were always right there with the greatest software ever, and with their deep knowledge of what is actually needed, they started their own ecosystem of software "clones" or forks of their software... that's lead to all the machine vendors finally realizing how easy it is to implement their own hardware solutions. Bambu kicked off a great wave and now everyone is rushing to copy them. Some might think this is a bad thing, but I'm on the opposite side... this is the single greatest thing that FDM printing has needed to spur growth, especially in the color world. New ideas and products, like Jason Preuss' Color Lithophane Maker and HueForge have also triggered much greater interest and have shown that color printing can be much more beautiful than simply just swapping colors. I've been in the 3D Printing business for many decades, and have been involved with desktop (home) printing since the very inception by building my own RepRap Darwin over 15 years ago. I have a first batch Makerbot Cupcake, and subsequently invented polar coordinate printing (including founding Polar3D, where we sold 1000s of printers into school systems all over the world), I developed continuous printing with the "infinite Z" belt printers, and also developed the first color changing 3DChameleons, back in the day when it was "ok" to pull the plug on live stepper motors... using mechanical switches. Well... now it's time to retire this venture (sort of...) and let it be free.
Don't worry, I'm most definitely not leaving this site or this community... the next product will also be under the 3DChameleon brand and just like I do with all the previous projects, I'll still remain heavily involved in supporting it and helping others grow it. So many of you have purchased the 3DChameleon and given feedback, extended it, supported it, made your own... gosh, I just can't say enough good things about each and every one of you... it's been awesome, and I can't wait to see how far it goes. Hopefully, larger brands will take it up and run with it. (I might add, we're already seeing it... with at least two very large name brands implementing their own versions of it.) Anyway, stay tuned for what's next... I guarantee, it's not what you expect... I've always been one to push the bounds of technologies and our next product will follow suit and be even more revolutionary.
Bill NOTE: I've had numerous questions on what this means for the add-ons. They're still in play... I have not said that I was stopping development of it... this just gives me time to not make any more and devote my time to improving the system. There are four major items in the works... 1) The expansion capability... if you look at the GitHub page, you'll see the code already had been completed to allow for the Sparkfun I/O expansion as well as the Filament Runout sensors... this also enables the auto calibration feature by adding the necessary I/O for the filament position sensors. 2) The auto calibration... with the addition of the hardware expansion support, the auto calibration is just a software change. There are numerous ways of accomplishing this and documenting them all is taking a lot of time. 3) We're also going to offer two new ways of installing it... one is to use the direct feed method we used to have... which requires no software changes, but can use an optimized firmware. This will allow the 3DChameleon to act as the extruder, but without requiring any post processing like it previously used to. The second way of installing it will be to use independent motors for all 4 extruders instead of the switcher... this will allow Klipper based printers to drive them directly. Both of these options are fully developed and just need documenting. 4) New options for electronics. The firmware will be tunable for supporting two additional off the shelf Arduino based boards, the Arduino CNC Shield and the Arduino Nano CNC Shield. This will allow anyone to source their electronics from very inexpensive sources. The CNC Nano Shield can be purchased complete for $6... and can be used as a direct replacement for our electronics with some minor firmware changes. The Arduino CNC Shield (with 4 steppers) can be used instead of the 3DChameleon to drive 4 independent extruders (BMG Clones recommended) to drive through our Y adapter and 3DClippy filament cutter. This work is already complete (and operational) as well and just needs documenting.
Bill, is one of those two brands flashforge? I thought their system for the AD5X might be a coprint but now I'm thinking it's a chameleon. It's suspiciously compact and Co Print seems to have abandoned their all in one and now are mounting 4 individual extruders and FF isn't using that. Although changing the print head and nozzle was odd, if it's chameleon I'm assuming they put the cutter in there low and had to reconfigure what nozzle for short loading path.