I recently purchased a dual colour 3d printer. Whilst I have had 3D printers for a while, the recent purchase gave me a renewed interest in 3D printing.

Types of dual extruder 3D printers.

There are two main types, the mixer variety, with one nozzle, and the dual nozzle variety.

I have the one nozzle which can feed in two different colours, and mix them if required.

The unboxing

Here is my printer in the box

And then an hour or so later.. the finished product

you can notice that the blue reel of filament is not on the reel, because it doesn't fit. I'll have to print something to fix that later.

what can you do with a dual colour printer?

The great thing about having a mixer variety is that you can slowly move form one colour to the next with the gradient function on the printer. As you can see with this print of a dog.

You can also print in distinct colours, I decided to print a dice off thingiverse

you can't see it in this picture, but behind the dice are two block of colours, so the printer can purge the colour and clean out the nozzle of the previous colour. this means printing in two colours can be slow, and uses more filament.

Where can I get models?

if you have a dual colour printer, just search dual colour thingiverse in google and all the models designed for dual colour will come up, alternatively follow this link. I found this sign for the toilet door! on thingiverse

I am sure you can find something too that you need or entertains you.

Setting it up

this can be very tricky, I use simplify3D, which I know costs money so many wont have it, but there is a dual extrusion wizard that which makes things very easy.

This is the dice before the dual extrusion wizard

And this is after

So there you have it, printing in two colours. Comment below on your own experiences, and if you have questions I will be happy to answer them.