Hictop Dual Extrusion with mostly stock parts

thingiverse

I bought a few Hictop Prusa i3s (3DP-11) and replaced the hotends on two of them with E3D V6s. Because of this I had some stock parts left over, and before throwing them in a box, I got to playing around with them and realized it would be quite easy to upgrade these stock parts to dual extrusion. The only catch of this system is that it requires Bowden extruders. However, these are quite easy to print and assemble or to purchase directly. I used this one: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1318849 If you want to maximize the use of stock parts you could try this one: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2070374 Basic steps: 1. Take everything off the X-carriage. 2. Print one of the "jigs". These are based off of the x-carriages that I had (so your mileage might vary), but the idea is that this will line up the spots you need to drill. Use a punch or something else to mark the holes. 3. Drill the two holes in the carriage (6 mm). Along with drilling the holes, I opened up the heat break hole. The reason for doing this is that it allows you to fully remove the new hotend by simply removing the one M6 bolt that holds on the aluminum block. You'll want to orient the new hotend so the heater and thermistor wires come out toward the right front so you can remove that bolt. 4. Print out the hotend Bowden blocks. These are designed to be tapped for M6 PTFE couplers. You'll need one standard and one that is mirrored. 5. Put X-carriage back on. 6. Rewire everything. You'll need to connect a stepper motor at E1, the E1 heater, fan, and thermistor. Hictop uses JST-XHP connectors for the motor and thermistor on their control boards. 8. Adjust nozzle height. This can be tricky. I setup everything on the left extruder and slowly lowered it onto a pre-leveled glass build plate, while leaving the right nozzle and heat break loose in the aluminum block. The tricky part is tightening the set screw. The threads on the heatbreak make the whole assembly want to go up or down a little bit. Try twisting things slightly til you have the set screw tightened and both of the nozzles are just touching the build plate. 9. Determine your offset. There may be both X and Y offset. In my case, everything was lined up very nicely in Y and the X offset was ~35 mm. You can get a rough estimate with calipers and get exact numbers with some test prints. 10. Update firmware. I'll give you a link to mine shortly (latest Marlin). Note, you'll likely have to make modifications to the E-steps. 11. Print some stuff. https://youtu.be/ImFsGOO7b-8