I have used for dissolvable and multi material. It takes some different understanding when slicing . I'm not familiar with the unit you are considering but would recommend a dual extruder that runs independent. Just easier and less messy.

SV04 is a good machine – I have one and I like it a lot. Check out your other options though – this article compares a lot of these printers.

You can do a lot of the same stuff with the AMS now with Bambu, or there’s the Palettes or MMU for Prusas. You get a lot better quality if you have $5K+ though – for a more prosumer machine like a Raise3D, or even a Voron DIY kit.

I bought an SV04 last year and returned it. The frame was out of square and the extruders were junk. I don’t think there are any inexpensive, dual extruder machines that work very well.

https://www.creality.com/products/cr-x-pro-3d-printer

Anyone tried this?

I have an older Flashforge Creator Pro and my experience with dual extrusion is the idle hot head will ooze while the active hot head is making its layer. I imagine a small amount of ooze is happening at all times but you won't know it on a single extruder because the hot head is always busy. In any case, if you go in thinking "I'm gonna make some cool two-tone prints" you might be disappointed. I've tried printing in black & white PLA and both materials end up catching in the print where they're not supposed to due to said ooze problem. I decided its better to print colors separately and just assemble the final product. Some people might use the 2nd extruder for dissolvable supports, I have not tried that. My experience is basically that in trying to print in two colors at once I end up with degraded quality and a messy print. I wouldn't bother buying another dual extruder in the future.

I'm in the market for the same thing/same reason and so far the best lower-cost options I've found are the FlashForge Creator Max 2, Weedo x40, and JGMaker Artist-D. I'm leaning towards the Creator Max so far, but I'd be interested if you find any better options too.

What stuff do you make, if you dont mind me asking? Maybe there can be somethibg done, to improve the quality of your supports?

It sounds as if the parts are filigrane komplex structures, so maybe a dlp printer might be the better choice for you

I have and like the QiDi X-Pro. It comes all ready assembled and calibrated for the dual heads.

Pros:

• it just works
• fantastic support
• easy to use
• easy to maintain
• removable build plate
• currently under $500 delivered
• wifi connected
• power loss resume (have needed this and it WORKS - even when using both heads)

Cons:

• not the largest build area
• manual (but easy), not auto-bed leveling (uses 3-point system)
• uses re-skinned Cura (not current, but you can use latest cura with config)
• custom firmware (based on marlin)
• not super quiet

I have had mine for over a year and it just works. I have run multiple multi-day prints and it just works. Their support is just about the best I have ever used. They have sliced and test printed files for me when I have had issues getting them to work. They have purchased filament to test print stuff for me and sent me photo proof with the sliced files. I have printed as small as .02 layer height with .4 nozzle, as large as .2 layers with 1.0 nozzle, and at .1 layers with .2 nozzles. Used PLA and PLA+ with PVA and LOTS of two color. It just works.

In full disclosure I am planning to sell the X-Pro soon as I am getting a Prusa w/MMU. Not due to anything with the X-Pro but cause I now know I very much like multi-filament and want to go to more than two. I also have a QiDi X-one2 that I plan to keep (wife thinks 2 printers are more than enough - at one time I had three) as it is quite precise and why not.

There may be cheaper dual-head printers, there may be some with larger print beds but for the money and the support, I think the X-Pro is hard to beat.

I've had an Ender 3 Pro for about two and a half years now, before that I briefly owned an Anycubic Delta printer. While the Delta is faster and (arguably) can do a little better with fine detail, it was a pill when it came to leveling and other mechanical quirks that made me spend more time working on it than printing.

For dual extruder printer i use these printer. From my research I found that printing with support material was crucial and a problem to remove from the part without causing damage. The solution is PVA, or water-soluble 3D printing material. Unfortunately, this requires dule print heads, one that prints the part material, in this case PLA, and one that prints the support material PVA.

The prusia series seems the best for just out of the box printing .

I recently bought a Creatbox Dx triple extruder printer. It has been pretty painless after a few minor hiccups. User support is excellent.

I have a "tenlog tl-d3 pro", although that printer seems to come in about 75 flavors, which are hard to tell apart. 300mm square build plate, true independent dual extruder, with direct extrusion on both toolheads, and TMC2209's on all 7 motors (it has dual motors for Z). Has an edge over the 'filament switcher' systems if you want multiple temperatures, and I've also heard that if you're using different materials (rather than just different colors) you can get adhesion problems if you're sharing a nozzle. It works well if carefully handled and tuned. It's a low temperature deal, can't go above 250 degrees I don't think, although that's enough for my needs. The toolheads are pretty cramped, I'm not sure how much luck you'd have trying to replace the hotends. Usual low price Chinese printer problems, loose bolts, not-very-flat glass bed, requires frequent mechanical tweaking to maintain first layer adhesion. It's a fussy machine, more or less like a Creality. I've been using it for soluble supports, and have been getting results I'm pretty happy with. It can get down to about 0.15mm layers fairly easily. Below that, you'll start getting fine artifacts due to the lack of a geared extruder, but I've taken it down to 0.1mm and it still basically works.

Biggest negative: not much of a user community, and almost no customer support. I can't even get manufacturer firmware for this thing from the web site. But it works, and it's IDEX for less than $600, or at least it was when I bought it. There were two other ones I looked at which seemed very similar. I can't remember the names now.

If you've done much research, I guess you already know that what they can do depends on the type, and they can be expensive if you're looking for a "works out of the box" experience. There are several types, and you need to decide what you want dual extrusion for, determine a budget, and then look around for solutions.

If you already know what you want dual extrusion to do, you can probably ignore the rest of this (lengthy!) comment.

For example idex types have two independant hotends so they can print two things at the same time, usually identical though possibly as mirror images, and certainly can print things in two colours or with different filament types, like soluble supports, but like all other 2-nozzle solutions won't allow colour blending. Idex usually implies a purpose-built printer.

There are 2-in-2-out types with two hotends on a single carriage, good for two colours or soluble supports, where the support filament needs a different hotend temperature from the main filament. You can usually upgrade an existing printer to use a 2-in-2-out hotend, though it will need a board with dual-extruder capability. There isn't usually much in the way of retraction problems with these, but you need to be careful of oozing from the idle nozzle. The Chimera from E3D, and clones, are like this.

There are some non-mixing 2-in-1-out types, even DIY versions on Thingiverse, good for 2 colours or filaments, providing the required temperatures are reasonably close, but they can suffer from clogging because the filament sometimes has to be pulled back a long way out of the nozzle, or you need lot of purge block, for each filament change. But you don't lose any X-axis space, the way you do with other dual extruder solutions.

There are also 2-in-1-out and 3-in-1out mixing hotends, which allow you to mix colours into a single nozzle from multiple extruders. The Cyclops is like this, but it's only useful for filaments that all need the same temperature, doesn't really work for abrupt colour changes or soluble supports, and needs a special nozzle.

An alternate method is to use the MMU2 (or MMU2S) from Prusa, or one of several clones (including a DIY version) which allows the use of several colours, but can be tricky to set up. It doesn't need to be on a Prusa printer, and only uses a single nozzle, but no colour mixing and not so useful for filaments that need significantly different hotend temperatures.

Another reasonably reliable but expensive solution, as an addon to an existing single-extruder printer, is the Palette 2S or Palette 3 from Mosaic Engineering. It's multi-colour but not really multi-material.

You're looking for.. a single extruder.. with 2 entire hotend flow paths.. that works perfectly..?

Asking that question, in an end-user forum like 3Dprinting, indicates that you shouldn't be trying to attempt this.

You're so far into serious engineering territory that you're not going to have a good outcome.

The closest you're going to get would be something like an Independent Extruder (idex) 3d printer. They have 2 entirely separate extruders.

Since you're looking to do a DIY build, have a look at a Voron variant called Tridex

Designed by an engineer on the Voron Design Team and with a youtube assembly playlist by another Voron team member.

Both of them have said that it's very much "beta" and difficult to design, assemble and tune properly.

If you are not already experienced in building 3d printers (such as Vorons) then look at a commercial Idex printer like the Snapmaker J1S instead.

You want a Phaetus TaiChi hotend and a second extruder stepper. Make sure the board you get has enough stepper drivers for all your stepper, and make sure you set up your firmware to do a little poop off to the side after filament change. You'll also need to retract stepper 1 before loading stepper 2's filament. also something to note, no 3d printer works perfectly everytime. CNC machines crash, have errors, will try to use bad files, ect.

Lmao

I think you might have quite optimistic expectations of what’s possible here, OP. But, I’ll still try to help as best I can.

As someone else in this thread mentioned, the Voron is an option for DIY dual extrusion… but whether this works for what you need is only something you know.

Depending on what printer you have, you might be able to use the AMS, or Palette splicers, or the Prusa MMU. These let you switch colors / filaments, but not in the same way as the ongoing IDEX dual extruders.

This article compares a lot of the dual extruder printers, and multi-filament accessories for multi-color printing – hope this helps!

It’s probably just AI picking up something about dual gears in the extruder and deciding that means dual extruders.

Reminder: Any short links will be auto-removed initially by Reddit, use the original link on your post & comment; For any Creality Product Feedback and Suggestions, fill out the form to help us improve.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

If it had a dual extruder it would be very obvious on the Creality website as a huge selling point, it is a single extruder. Anything around that size is going to cost a good amount more H2D and the pursa would be the closest in size with more than one extruder I believe, both over 2k

Bambu Lab H2D checks all those boxes.

Sovol SV04 is an option.

Its an IDEX, so you have two independantly moving hotends.

You cant mix colors, but you can use two different colors or even materials without having to waste a ton of material while purging.

You can also print two items at once, mirrored or copied, build volume is 30/*30/*40cm, comes with a leveling probe and works fine and reliable if you set it up correctly.

That beeing said, getting both toolheads to perfectly align and everything to be tuned takes some time but its rewarding as hell.

I think also an advantage is that you can switch between different material types more easily, like using both TPU and PLA in a single print.

Costs like 300-400 bucks, the firmware is also a bit tricky.

If you have an engineer mindset think about trying it, if not id definetly stay away from it and go for a bambu printer(though theire more expensive and have other pros/cons)

Creality's K2 has a 300mm bed size and I've heard good reviews.

If you go 250mm Anycubic Kobra S1 was less than $1000 with their AMS.

If you are looking to not overspend, going from a 25cm cube to a 30cm cube basically doubles the price.

You can have the XL2T that is the XL with only 2 print heads at 2600 - 3150 semi assmbled / assembled.

That is color changing in 5 seconds without purge and minimal prime, often into the infill. Also 360x360x360 build volumne.

I was very lucky to pick up a secondhand flashforge creator 3, I baught it unseen but figured I would fix it if as needed. When it arrived it was practically brand new and has only done 39 hours of printing. But sides for being slow it wastes exceptionally little filament, since all you need are tiny purge towers, and that is basically just to get rid of filament that was cooking in the nozzle while the other nozzle is printing.

But not every person is willing to go for a second hand

I absolutely love my P1S. It does purge filament on color changes, but I haven’t found it to be a huge amount unless I’m changing colors a LOT during a print. It does offer a mode to purge as infill which helps a lot on the waste factor by using the old color as infill where it isn’t visible.

If you're really looking to get the best consumer grade multi head machine you need to look at the Prusa XL. I have a 5 head and it's an amazing machine. But.... You'll Pay.

I'm waiting on a wondermaker

I have successfully printed good TPU parts on my Artillery Genius which is not dual extruder tho. What do you need the dual extruder for ?

I don’t know if TPU works well with dual extrusion, it tends to string quite a bit. Preferably direct drive extruders are used for flexibles, but if you’re printing slow it should work with nearly any printer. I did some research the last weeks and just ordered my first spool of TPU (95A), I’ll let you know how it works on my bowden-printer :). There’s also some stuff that’s called Varioshore TPU that can foam up while printing to give you softer objects although the material is relatively ridged so it should print nicer.

Personally I'm a big fan of dual drive extruders with filament driving gears shaped like a half moon for more gripping surface, makes extrusions very consistant.For me it helped with old, harder filament which I had almost trown away and now prints excellent.