Hi All,
new H2D user here. I was gathering elements from a model under Games called Board Games Collection/Game Collection (Traveled) created by raphineu (sorry - don’t know where to find a link to the model in the web browser - not obvious to me…) - there are lots of plates so I was gathering as much as I could into a single plate for the H2D. Resulting project file is attached below (8MB). When I printed this file, I noticed a seemingly excessive number of filament changes going on - for example the H2D would print some of the white elements, change filament to another colour, then change back to white and print some more elements. Sometimes several additional colour changes before progressing to the next layer. With 5 colours in total, I imagined that there could only be four possible colour/filament changes per layer - one for each colour. The I began to realise that layer numbers are not actually layers as such - they seem to be individual layers for each filament per object (I think).
There were times when the H2D would change filament to a colour that wasn’t being used anymore (for example, the yellow in this print is only used for a small number of layers). Having changed to yellow, the H2D would then go to print, realise that there was nothing to print, and then have to change to the next filament.
In addition, because I copied a bunch of elements from several build plates onto one plate for printing, is there a possibility that even though an object is set to a filament number, can there be printing parameters that can essentially separate one object using a particular filament number from another object using the same filament number?
By this I mean can the slicer essentially print one layer of a grey object, then one layer of a white object, then one layer of another grey object, then one layer of a black object, then a yellow object, then a green object (all apparently at the same z-level) before it goes on to the next round of layers? This would require five filament changes before moving on in the z direction and it could possibly be more if the slicer for some reason selected an even more roundabout order in which to print a variety of different coloured objects…
As a newbie, I figured that combining multiple plates worth of objects onto a single build plate would necessarily be more efficient, but that may not be the case - is it essential to ‘merge’ all objects of a singlw colour to ensure that there are a maximum of four filament changes per printed layer if you are using five colours - i.e. External Filament → AMS1 → AMS2 → AMS3 → AMS4 then back to External Filament for the next layer? (really a fifth change I guess). If there are lots of coloured objects on a plate, can it really take more filament changes than this, or is there some setting that I haven’t twigged as yet?
Appreciate any comments, feedback & assistance!
SGK