Hello! I have installed my new Chameleon and have had a few problems. I had some loading issues with the filament getting caught on the extruder tension arm, caused I believe by the printed coupler being a couple of mm too high as the tube through the coupler does not line up with my metal extruder tension arm, it's just a bit too high. So I am attempting to re-print that after having modified it a bit. But here's where I started running into trouble.
I decided to load filament through Chameleon 1, then switched it to Chameleon 2 manually, so that it is not gripping the filament and feeds directly into the Ender extruder, basically as though the Chameleon was not installed at all. The printing began just fine, and it ran through the button presses (I unplugged the Chameleon so it didn't react) and held the tension arm so that it didn't try to feed a ton of filament through rapidly. Once it was done with that cycle it moved to the center and began its normal printing cycle and I immediately noticed an issue.
The print head will do curves quite slowly and, during these curves that it's traveling too slowly, the Ender extruder is turning extremely fast causing blobs and the filament to be ground down by the extruder gear. Faster than any other time that it would normally be turning. Then when it does straights the extruder will turn very slowly, the normal speed I would expect it to be turning, but the print head moves way too fast. I spent quite some time isolating the problem and ultimately what I found is this; if I remove the tool change G-code start and end g-code all of these problems go away and prints work exactly as they should.
I am using the G-Code generator and after having watched your video on the g-code part with cura a couple of times, I can't figure out what is causing this. I would greatly appreciate any help or advice on this. I am using the most up to date Cura version as of this writing; Apr-17-2022
Hey there! i got a dual extruder and swapped to prusa, things seemed to be going well until the Bowden tube for filament one came out, now it can’t push the filament through, because it just pushes the tube out of the way. I can’t quite tell how to put it back properly. Any help would be appreciated!
That’s fair, I’ve only used cura for single color stuff. I am familiar with prusa, as thats what we use at the local fablab. I’ll give that a whirl and let you know if I have any other issues.
Thanks for the help!
You can adjust the F parameters on the G0 commands... that's the speed being issued to it. Just look for the G0 commands that are causing the issue and dial that parameter down or up.
I personally don't recommend or use Cura, as their multiple color/extruder code is horrible. Our recommended slicer is PrusaSlicer, as they actually deal with more than two colors (with their MMU) and fully support up to 32 quite nicely.
Thanks for the quick reply. I’m not concerned at all about the misalignment and I’ve already got the fix, just printing it out now.
The main issue is that with the generated gcode added to cura for the tool change, the hot end will be extremely slow sometimes, and fast other times. Meanwhile the extruder, which is stock, will turn extremely fast as though it were trying to load the filament during normal print. If I delete the tool change gcode and nothing else everything works perfectly.
Let's start off with the very first problem... the PTFE connector not aligning with the lever arm, as that is the root problem. Take a look at our Tinkercad page for them and pick the appropriate one. If there isn't one for it, let me know and I can easily edit one to fit. Which extruder do you have and on what printer? The extruder being a non-standard Creality will also have different e step values, which will also cause problems because the stock profiles are based on the stock Ender 3 extruder's speed profile. Once we figure out which extruder you have, we can adjust it. Here's the Tinkercad page for the couplers: https://www.tinkercad.com/things/gOtUzHmPrWP-3dchameleon-ptfe-adapter-plates