[Brainstorm] Always use 'parking zone'

[richardvdweerd]

I made a test cube for fine tuning and testing my extruders to get rid of the blobs and hairstrings. The cube was a red box with letters. The letters started at the bottom layer and ended 1 layer above the box. I used a brim, no skirt.

I noticed that at the first layer, the box was printed okay with extruder 1, but the letters were not printed with extruder 2. In the final gcode I found that switching to extruder 2 was omitted due to skirt.

Knowing that, I printed a second test with the same cube. That cube started with extruder 2. So the first layer is dependent on the last used extruder. A bit of randomness.

So now the point of this brainstorm to overcome this randomness:

1. Always 'park' (retract) the filament at the given 'parking zone' (toolChangeRetractionLength) with use of the ySplit... variables.

2. Assume the filament is parked at the beginning of a print job

3. Always load the (right) filament from the parking zone at the beginning of a print job. There can be print jobs with one color from extruder 2.

Another advantage in this approach is that after a print job the filament can always be changed, without heating the hot end.

After fidling around a big while, I finally got my extruders working fine. I found some issues doing that fine tuning. I will issue a report for each one. I would like to edit it, but don't know (yet) how to upload it in this master again. Will explore that too.

Richard

[richardvdweerd]

I just discovered that skirt was enabled. Sorry. So no randomness of first color. Luckily. First layer with the letters is okay now.

Having my two color test cube and swapping the colors gives two towers?