Reviews of mechanical design and electronic control of multi-material/color FDM 3D printing

Abstract

An extruder is used to receive and dispense the material in extrusion additive manufacturing process. Multiple extruders cover a large variety of application of interest to 3D printing: enhancing productivity, multiple colors of the object, the variation of printing materials, interchangeability In case of a failure…etc. However, to support multiple extruders, the open sources electronic boards available in the market are very limited in this contest and still far from meeting the needs of some specific3D printers. Then this paper gives an overview of existing electronic boards able to support more than one extruder and their limitations.