Upgrade to Dual Extruder with Arduino, Ramps and Chimera

Hi,

I whant to upgrade my K8200 with a dual extruder.
I have been looking in to this for some time now but still did not find a list of items i need to do this.

I believe i’ve find the most but i hoping to find some support here

What i believe is nessecary

  • 1 Chimera
  • 2 x Groove Mount Bowden Adaptor - 1.75mm Filament (4mm OD Tubing)
  • 2 NEMA17 40N-cm - Compact But Powerful Extruder Stepper Motor - Wantai
  • 1 Arduino Mega 2560 Compatible Controller Board & USB Cable
  • 1 RAMPS 1.4 - Arduino Mega Pololu Shield
  • LCD Controller With SD + Encoder with Adaptor for RAMPS *** (i have the one from Velleman… anybody knows if this could be reused?)
  • A4988 Stepper Driver with Heatsink

Next to this, some pieces have to printed to make it all work.

Any suggestions?
Im i going in the right direction here?

Thx in advance.

Premme

In would choose the DRV8825 instead of the A4988, also with heatsink and fan , then you can get extra power to the motors.

About the LCD: just look at the pinout of both.

You are on the right track.

For a dual extruder setup, it is very important to get the two nozzles at precisely the same height above the print bed. Also, things are much easier if both extruders are mechanically identical.

You can enable dual extruders in the Marlin firmware just by changing a handful of lines in Configuration.h before programming your Arduino. Don’t forget to reset the EEPROM settings after you re-flash the controller. You can do this by sending the G-code M502 (restore firmware defaults) followed by M500 (save settings to EEPROM.)

My dual extruder K8200 setup was working for a few minutes before the second extruder jammed. I was just able to print a few 2-color concentric rings in order to calibrate the offset of the second nozzle. It is printing very nicely on the primary extruder right now, so I just need to rebuild the second one, recalibrate, and I’ll be in business.