Ok, so I was watching my printer print a multicolor Charizard and was lamenting how much filament it wastes when I had an idea. When my printer does color swaps, it does it in an inefficient way. Suppose I have 3 colors, 1,2, and 3. When printing a model, my printer prints in this order:
All of color 1 (Swap)
All of color 2(Swap)
All of color 3(Swaps to 1)
New layer
and then the same thing. But what if instead, it did All of color 1 (Swap)
All of color 2(Swap)
All of color 3(
New layer
All of color 3(Swap to 2)
All of color 2(Swap to 1)
All of color 1, etc.
This would get rid of lots of purges. Am I crazy and my printer already does this, or would this be something good to implement?
In all my multi color prints the filament swaps are exactly done as you want it to be:
All of color 1 (Swap)
All of color 2 (Swap)
All of color 3 (NO Swap)
New layer
All of color 3 (Swap)
All of color 2 (Swap)
All of color 1 (NO swap)
New layer
All of color 1 (Swap to 2), etc.
So one color always is printed at the end of the actual and the beginning of the next layer. You can test it in the slicer when you use the horizontal slider.
Which Slicer do you use?
Is the “layer Filament sequence” in Plate Settings set to “automatic”?
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Yep the printer already does it this way, lets say you have 2 colors, white and black. It will print black first, then 2 layers of white, then 2 layers of black. It minimizes the color changes by printing 2 colors of each layer at a time while still never being more then 1 layer apart.