and sorry forgot to ask I’m a bit of a rookie as before my A1 I had an aquila c2 which was rubbish, what does the D stand for?
As in the “58D to 72D” figures I mentioned? The Shore Durometer Scale, from zero to 100, is a measure of how stiff or resilient a material like a hard rubber or a plastic is.
Say you want to print a gasket for a toolbox lid. To make a good seal you would want something like a stiff rubber, a mid-scale shore value like 40D. For the sole of a pair of sneakers you’d want something tougher and more resilient like a shore 64D or higher. TPU can be had in many of these values from soft to more rigid.
The problem with using TPU in an AMS: say you take a rubber band (fairly low Shore value), cut it, and try to push it from one end. It won’t work, it will want to squish and bind up in the tube. That’s the situation using it in an AMS. You’d need a TPU with a higher Shore value that would feed but might not be as soft or resilient as you want your part to be. So, to print a low-Shore-value soft TPU you wouldn’t try to use the AMS, instead feed it directly from the external spool where the extruder in the head is pulling it rather than the motor in the AMS pushing it.
thanks any recommendations for filament dryers
also can I put 3 ptfe tubes from the ams in and 1 from the external spool?