Hi,
I’m a newbie so please excuse this question without the correct terminology. I’m printing with 2 colors and each time the filament switches, a color layer is added to a rectangle in a corner of the build plate. Is there any way to turn this off? I’m trying to print an AMS riser drawer and the rectangle interferes with the actual print.
It’s the purge tower, it’s needed for a clean color change so they don’t mix.
You can change it’s position in the Prepare tab.
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That is a prime or purge tower - in the A1 Mini you simply untick enable under the prime tower option - I think it is the same when using an AMS.
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As the others said, you can turn the prime tower off but you can also change the size and how much plastic is used in the prime.
But it’s also potentially important to know why you might want to keep it. After a filament change things like temperature and pressure aren’t normalized back to where they are during printing so first fresh filament out of the nozzle is changing as it is extruded. This can introduce anomalies in the print. It’s also a chance for filament bits that don’t fully clean from the nozzle and would otherwise get caught in a print to get caught before the print. A prime tower can save your prints at times.
This may or may not be important to what you are printing. For best quality multicolor prints, you may want a prime tower if you start seeing print defects after filament changes, though.
If the design you are printing has a lot of colour changes due to the details then you are far better off leaving it enabled.
You can resize it as others have said, you can relocate it.
If the amount of colour changing is essentially per layer (an entire layer is one colour and a different layer a different colour), it is less likely to be desperately required, experience gives you this information.
Read what @MZip wrote as it is valuable.
Thank you all very much. I’m learning so much about printing and really appreciate that you don’t mind passing along your knowledge.
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What happens if the purge tower gets knocked off the build plate mid print? Yes, I know, I made it too close to main print body…Does it ruin the print?
It certainly can ruin the print but you might be able to save it. Each filament change it will try to print the purge tower but with nothing there it will just extrude into air but may get dragged about and i to the print. If you can keep that from happening maybe you can save it but it’s got dangers for hands and the printer. Best way is to pause and grab the filament then resume.
Without intervention there’s lots of pictures here showing big wads of filament pushed into the sock and other big wads burned on and around the extruder.