Enhancements I would like to see:

[Kurt Gluck]

XL: The ability to add the MMU3 to toolhead #5, for those days when 5 colors are just not enough 🙂

Prusaslicer:   Bracketing the WipeTower in the Gcode (I can almost see how to do this with a post processing script) so that it is a cancelable object. For those days when it’s the @#@! WipeTower that fell over, but the model would probably finish ok without it.

XL: The ability to “tune” a print to add a filament join.   For those days when you thought you had enough filament but now 15 hours later you see the end of the spool and you would just like to be able to go to bed and have it switch to that other spool

XL: The ability to “tune” a print and load filament onto an extruder you weren’t useing, or is not currently printing now (see above) - yes it will pause the current print and have to swap toolheads twice…

XL: The ability to have different heat bed tiles at different temperatures. For those times your printing a dummy13 and want the PETG joints over here and the PLA armor over there - ok this is a silly ask

Kurt-A (The other Kurt)

[3D Printing Tips and Tricks]

They have yet to fix in Prusaslicer the prime tower. It can’t be used with PETG and pla when all five tools are applied..
As in four colors and a nonfusing support material. I’ve written it up on the GitHub, and had it confirmed… over a year ago.

They still have not learned that when a tool is parked…. Every time…. The material has to be drawn out of the melt zone! As such when one starts a print and the nozzle heats up, back pressure pushes the melted material out of the nozzle right before it attempts to “clean” the nozzle. The result; it fails to clean and stops. You’d think by now they would get it, but nope.

It’s hard to be patient with a company that seems so poorly managed. Especially when we see Bambu jumping on every opportunity they find to improve their product.

[Jody Harris]

I don't have an XL, so I'm typing out of turn, but on the Filaments tab,

• Filament Overrides
• Retraction when too is disabled
• Length:

Have you tried just increasing the retraction length there?

Just wondering. I agree that they should have better tuning in the stock profiles.

-j

Think carefully

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[Kurt Gluck]

Andy,

The prime tower works with the following options.

In this case Extruders 1,2,3,4 are PLA and 5 is PETG.  

The options "Perimeter Extruder", and "Infill Extruder" and "Solid infill extruder"  are basically ignored except in a special situation I will get to later.

As you see I have selected extruder 2/PLA to be "Support Material/raft/skirt".   I have selected extruder 5/PETG for INTERFACE.   

Note that I have specified that the "Wipe tower extruder" should be "3" PLA.   This will result in a larger wipe tower - ones whose structure is built out of PLA in this case.  The PETG will be wiped within that, but the structure of the tower will be PLA.       This would work even if I was using more than one extruder for PETG.   I have specified that the towers structure should be built out of extruder 3.   

New in the latest release, instead of messing with creating "compatible" filament profiles that share the same bed temperature I can now specify "Bed Temperature by extruder" and just say which extruder controls the beds temperature.

OK, I said I would come back to  "Perimeter Extruder", and "Infill Extruder" and "Solid infill extruder"   - as I understand these options (I have not tested this) - these 3 options ONLY apply if a PART is set to an extruder of DEFAULT, not if it is set to a particular extruder or if there is any other coloring command.   The logic of this is that they found they wanted coloring (differing extruders) to cut into the part (that is into its infill) so it would be stronger.    

Note - I find its important to enlage the WIPE TOWER BRIM WIDTH if you are mixing materials to keep the tower from being locked over.   I find the PETG I am using is a little blobby and makes bumps on the wipe tower when mixed and thus the extruder collides a bit and is more likely to knock the thing off the bed :-(

Also the PRUSAMENT defaults have been tuned with much larger retractions I think (0.8mm, but 1.2mm on extruder change) .  They have not tuned all of the other filaments - it's kinda something that they accept from the fillament manufacturers and I get the impression that they all don't bother with the XL as much.   

HERE ARE THE FILLAMENT SETTINGS FOR PLA

HERE ARE THE MULTIPLE EXTRUDER SETTINGS

Kurt-A

[3D Printing Tips and Tricks]

Kurt

I've been going on the assumption that I'd be contacted if a change was made. 

So I took a look based on your post above. I put in four objects into PS and set them to four diff colors of PETG then set the 5th tool to PLA and set that tool as the supports tool.. 
I turned on the tower. Sorry Kurt, the tower still intertwines the material of the 5th tool with the other 4. For this to work correctly the tower has to know which tool is the support tool and then have all of the support material from that tool in a singular, cohesive column which can be within the tower, but doesnt intertwine. The tower I got puts a layer of Petg on top of a layer of PLA over and over.

[Kurt Gluck]

Andy,

I see what you mean...  I think Prusa believes that they are reinforcing the tower by having a filament run through every layer of the tower,  Kinda a vertical interlocking of the different fillament types.  This is probably what makes the blobing of the PETG I see on my wipe towers worse.   I have found I have to have silicone wipers for my printheads, and also I have to slow the PETG down (I reduce its max volumetric flow rate).   

I have attached a 3mf file for an upside down pyramid.   I had to sink it slightly into the bed or the slicer wouldn't slice it :-).   I set it up to be 4 different PETG extruders for the 4 sides, with organic PLA supports.   I set the bed temp to PLA and set the organic supports to be PLA.  I also set the wipe tower extruder to be PLA.  One can clearly see as you step through the layers the 'reinforcement' of the wipe tower by every other layer inleaveing of some PLA into the PETG.   This document seems to be saying they did this on purpose: https://help.prusa3d.com/article/combining-materials-xl_498103 

"On the prime tower, the filaments might not stick to each other. This can cause the tower to break and cause crashes on the print. To prevent that, go to Print settings -> Multiple Extruders -> Wipe tower extruder, and select an extruder for the prime tower. This will cause one of the extruders with a specific filament to act on all tower layers, even if it is not used in the print, making the tower more stable. Leaving the value at 0 will use the tool that is available, which is the last one used in that layer. This saves time but, when printing with more than one type of material, makes the prime tower less reliable."

I guess opening a prusaslicer issue on their GitHub might possibly get looked at.... I have to think how to word it.   Something like a slicing option:

"Increased segratagion of dissimilar materials in wipe tower". But that would require them to know the materials are dissimmaler.

Maybe "Wipe Tower Extruder Segregation" - only available when the "Wipe Tower Extruder" is specified, and telling the slicer to NOT interpose the wipe towers structural extruder with the others - but to add even more material to the wipe tower to reinforce it.

Of course I would prefer if one could just group the various extruders into material classes and tell the slicer to have different wipe towers by material class :-)  Or perhaps to bifurcate the wipe tower by material class. 

Kurt-A

[3D Printing Tips and Tricks]

I posted an explicit fix for this on the Github. It was verified by a number of others. They ignored it.

This is why IMO, Prusa SUX!

This is not the only absurdly simple thing they ignore which impacts the reliability of the machine. There's others such as not relieving back pressure on the extruder at the end of a print or after a filament load. Yes you can set "retract on tool disable"(which I had to SCREAM about on their forum before people realized they had to use it), but that does not address the ooze as the extruder heats up at the start of a print. How can they not see that?!

They pay a LOT of attention when a number of peoplecokplained about the level of noise the printer makes because Bambu was able to make a change which diminished noise on the X1C, but when it comes to fixing relatively simple things that directly impact reliability and print quality they do nothing.