Question: If you have tried a dodgy dual input hotend, what were your experiences?
Background: As with anyone else who have a single extruder, I've been contemplating upgrading to something with a bit more flexibility. But the idea of getting a whole new printer doesn't appeal as much to my wallet, as it does to my mind :-)
Scouring aliexpress for weird filaments with the mrs - you know, normal Saturday-evening-and-the-kids-are-sleeping couple activities - we fell upon a dual input hotend for creality cr10. It looks an awful lot like the hotend we have, and it comes with either 24v or 12v heater. It's only about 15€ so I might just give it a try, but it's pretty stupid when I don't even have a plan for an extra extruder as well. And I don't know how I would go about wiring that part up on my cr6 at the moment.
I have zero experience with this, but just thinking logistically, it doesn't seem like something that will work. Wiring it up is one thing, but it's another thing entirely to add the control commands to the slicer.
I suppose you could manually pause the print, retract filament 1, swap the control cable (or wire it to a switch) to Extruder 2, and resume the print. Essentially it saves half a step in swapping filaments mid-print, but it would still be printing a single color per layer.
No experience with these but I have seen some.
Basically you have 2 extruders and push the filament based on what’s needed.
You do need to purge the melt zone and I these don’t work well with different materials (PLA in one, ABS the other) because of PLA being too hot at ABS melt temps, etc.
As for these knockoffs if it’s cheap enough maybe but I can’t imagine the heat break being too good and it seems prone to jams.