“Color is a power which directly influences the soul.” ~ Wassily Kandinsky, famous Russian painter and art theorist.
Isn’t this so true? Think about it for a minute. How boring would your everyday life be without colorful sunsets, the different color outfits you and your friends wear, and color TV? Sure you could survive without color, but life would be quite a bit less exciting.
“The Multiextruder NPr2 is an extruder [which] allows you to print in 4 colors (6 colors in the next [iteration]),” explained Nicola Patucelli of 3DMakerLab to 3DPrint.com. “It is equiped with 2 nema 17 (stepper motors); one for tracking filament and one for selection of color, so you can use a normal two-extruder-board to print in multiple colors. All filaments are canalized in one hotend for melting material. It uses a custom firmware based on standard Marlin.”
Right now the extruder is still in a prototype stage, as typical slicing software is not able to control real multi-color extrusion at this point in time on a single hotend. However, Patucelli tells us that he is working with an Italian software company to try and create a solution. Currently he can only print with custom G-code, which he says it not very efficient. “I hope I can print something interesting during MakerFaire (Rome) but I am still working on it,” he explained.
What do you think? Would you be interested in having the Multiextruder NPr2 on your 3D Printer? Discuss in the Multiextruder NPr2 forum thread on 3DPB.com. Check out the video of this extruder in action below.