Printing 2 colors with a single nozzle (Ender 3)

I’ve wrestled a lot with printing two colors with my Creative Ender 3 printer. I’m using Cura 4 as a slicer. It should have been do easy, but all standard extensions to change the G-code and add a pause and resume, or a change filament; resulted in tearing apart the already printed surface and blobbing all over the place.

Finaly I’ve gathered enough examples and did enough tests, to create a piece of gcode that works for me.

 ; Custom Change Filament (JS) - START
; Move to change location
M83  ; set extruder to relative mode
G1 E-15.000000 F2400  ; retract filament
G1 Z25.000000 F3000   ; move head up
G1 X10.000000 Y10.000000 F3000  ; move head out of the way

; Notify for changing the filament
M117 Change filament
M400 ; Wait for buffer to clear
M300 ; Beep
M25  ; Pause

; Reset Filament, to prevent starting printing with a blob
G1 E15.000000 F2400  ; reset filament

M117 Clean nozzle
M400 ; Wait for buffer to clear
M300 ; Beep
M25  ; Pause

G0 F1000 X112.999 Y114.591 Z1.6 ;Move to next layer position ar right Z position    <------ manual change to last position in your slicer code

M82  ;Set extruder back to absolute mode
M117 Printing color 2...
; Custom Change Filament (JS) - DONE

The result (just a logo plate), looks very good to me:

Usefull links:

  • All3DP to get a grip on gcode
  • The Marlin site for a very consize overview of commands; although not all work as supposed on the Ender 3

1 thought on “Printing 2 colors with a single nozzle (Ender 3)

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