Let’s talk about upgrading to multicolor 3d printing. We have a few different ways we can accomplish this in today’s market. The easiest is to just buy a printer that has everything we need ready to go! The printer in question is the new hotness BambuLabs series of printers. You do need to by the AMS or multi-color unit as an add on. We also have a variety of other units that we can buy. A new contender is the CoPrint system which is expensive as is an older company in the space called Mosaic. Both are over $500 to get started. The 3d Chameleon on the other hand is $179 and like the previous two you can add this to any printer. Obviously with the cheaper price comes some manual labor but it’s very doable.
How does the Chameleon work? It is basically a switching mechanism that has a Y adapter. Sounds simple until you get into actually running it. The Chameleon is on the third version with a fourth on the way very soon. Every version is obviously easier for the end user which is a good thing. The first and second version has the same but different than the latest hardware. The good news is the difference is just a print away which is conveniently open sourced. Being open source is another reason I like this product.
According to the website which is slightly misleading one can achieve multicolor on any machine. If you want to put this on a machine that hasn’t been used yet you have to do some modeling plus tinkering in code. We are not talking in depth coding just some g-code which you probably already know so it won’t be to difficult plus he has a code generator for us on his site. I have spent a few days already modeling up a mount only to find out it is the hardest version to get working than the other ways available. The good news is because it’s such a small community, Bill the inventor is hands on and has a forum that he keeps up to date on. If you are reading this and the Chameleon takes off with many more users I would imagine that he won’t be able to keep up with a ton of questions only being one person.
So far I have printed a few of the mounts and think I have the one I need and I have also messed around trying to get a 3d Clippy, another of his inventions, to work with my printer. I haven’t yet gotten that to work but I am giving it a good try. I have gotten the Chameleon all installed and have done a test to see if things move properly and they do. I did make the mistake of adding a new extruder to my printer and I now have to bypass the Chameleon to get that working properly. Once I do I will be happily multi-color printing.
To install the Chameleon it really couldn’t be that much easier. The hardest part is having to run the wires so they are out of the way and hat is no big deal. I think in the next post i will have already printed with the thing and will be able to report back on how well I got it working. I know that it works well because I have seen others posting on how they are doing. I wish you luck in all your printing and please wish me some over here!
