Design Upgrades, Reliability Testing and Implementation of Engineering Grade Thermoplastics in Prusa MMU2s

Abstract: This paper studies the two aspects of current problems that plagues the Prusa i3 MK3sprinters in possession of JTH and how to resolve them; to be able to get a reliable printoutputs from engineering grade materials apart from conventional materials like PLAand PETG. The second aspect being the implementation of multi material module 2.0S,hereafter referred to as MMU2s successfully by analyzing and testing the current modi-cations and upgrades currently in the community and suggest any further modications,if required, both in terms of hardware and software which is further discussed in theupcoming sections. At present, there are numerous design upgrades and modicationsover the stock parts in the community which claim to iron out the reliability issues ofthe multi material unit. But, the success rates of these modications and upgrades varywidely. We tend to look at some of these modications which helps in eliminating theissues associated with the unit while getting it to produce results in a consistent and reliablemanner. The engineering grade thermoplastics which the university plan to use werealso taken into account to implement in the printers once the MMU2s setup was testedfor reliability. The objective also to create a successful prole sets by tweaking variousparameters in the slicing software for the aforementioned engineering grade materials sothat a ready-to-print prole is available for the corresponding material. During the course of project work, the reliability of the multi material unit was increasedby upgrading few of the components such as idler barrel and selector. Fine tuningof software parameters led to the error free running of the MMU unit by which extensivetesting was possible. Furthermore, engineering grade thermoplastics was able to betested and implemented on the current setup by making use of these software and hardwarechanges. Finally, extensive testing of the multi material unit was done coupled withengineering grade thermoplastics which yielded successful results and the congurationsettings saved for future use in the university.