Our Ultimaker2 now has dual extrusion!
Our space’s most reliable 3D printer has for years been an Ultimaker2 (purchased years ago by Feuermurmel). You can even see it on the picture of the lab ! It’s really the most reliable workhorse that we have around (for instance most of all Fillygons have been printed on it). Some time ago, lsr mused about the fact that the hot-end has space for a second nozzle and some holes in the case for mounting a second extruder; got curious and had a look under the bottom cover - turns out, even the mainboard of the Ultimaker2 has all the connectors for a second: heating element, temperature sensor and extruder. Nice! The next logical step was to purchase some PTFE tubing (inside: 4mm, outside: 6mm), a nozzle, a heating element, a temperature sensor and an extruder from Ali for a Proof of Concept (PoC). We also needed a compatible stepper motor - but as one stepper motor for an axis broke down some time ago and the replacement was accidentially purchased according to the specs of the extruder stepper motor, we just took a (weaker) axis-compatible stepper motor we had lying around, replaced the “too-strong-anyway” axis-stepper and put in the place of the second extruder.