A10M: Do yourself a favor, throw the hot end in the trash

[millenium7]

I'm sure there's some people who've managed to make it work. Me? Nothing but a constant source of pain. I havn't completed a SINGLE dual color print with that utterly bloody awful 2-in-1-out hotend in the months i've had this printer, and the single color ones were ordinary with terrible overhangs from the lackluster cooling. Replaced it entirely once, cleaned it multiple times. Constant source of jamming on 1 or both sides and crap prints

Bought a cheap 24v chimera clone on ebay for ~$20, mounted it up with this STL https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3519112 and a 5015 fan. Adjusted the firmware for it and hey presto damn near perfect benchy on both extruders. WAY better than the stock hotend and cooling fan could ever achieve using a single color
Dual color I need to tune. The quality is great with way cleaner lines than using a single path. Only problem is a bit of stringing on the other extruder which i'll dial out

This is the first time in months that i've actually been able to use this printer
For anyone who has a working A10M, great
For anyone who has problems with theirs, just turf it. The fake chimera is really cheap and produces great results with that mount
For anyone considering this printer. Maybe its worth it now that there's a ready made STL mount that's very simple to fit (needs 4 extra wires run to control board but all the electronics are there, just wire the extra heater/thermister in). I really wish I never bought this thing in the first place, but now in its current state its not a bad package. I can finally do 2 tone prints or just use it as a single color printer that rivals my Ender3. Only took 6 months!

[William]

Thanks for your sharing!

[millenium7]

Slight update to this

There's bugs in both Marlin and Cura that will screw with any dual nozzle system (but not the original 2-in-1-out) due to the nozzle offset. Here's a paste from my post elsewhere

Marlin: Make sure you set your X/Y nozzle offset here, it just doesn't work properly if you leave this at 0 and set it in cura instead. Because even if you set it at 0 in marlin, issuing a T0/T1 command to change nozzle will ALWAYS try and move the nozzle over, ergo you'll always crash the head into the X minstop if you issue T1 after moving to 0,0 as it tries to move to a negative coordinate. If you aren't using Safe Homing then make sure you set the X/Y position after homing to a minimum of your X/Y offset. So that when issuing a G28 to home and then changing to T1 it won't try and move to a negative position

Cura: Change your starting G-Code and put 'T0' just before G28 and then T{extruder_nr} after any other homing/ABL commands. The reason is if you start a print with the other extruder, then when you issue G28/G29 it's going to offset it and be in the wrong spot (mine was trying to probe off the bed when starting on T1). This switches to T0 to probe correctly, then switches back to whatever your extruder should be. Here's my full start G-Code which pre-heats nozzle, bed and does an ABL routine simultaneously to speed up prints, and includes this fix
M140 S{material_bed_temperature}
M104 S{material_print_temperature}
G92 E0 ; Reset Extruder distance to 0
T0
G28 ; Home all axis
G29; EZABL mesh generation
T{extruder_nr}
M190 S{material_bed_temperature}
M109 S{material_print_temperature}
G1 Z2.0 F3000 ; Move Z Axis up little to prevent scratching of Heat Bed
G1 X28.0 Y30 Z0.3 F5000.0 ; Move to start position
G1 X28.0 Y200.0 Z0.3 F2500.0 E15 ; Draw the first line
G1 X28.4 Y200.0 Z0.3 F5000.0 ; Move to side a little
G1 X28.4 Y30 Z0.3 F2500.0 E30 ; Draw the second line
G92 E0 ; Reset Extruder
G1 Z3.0 F3000 ; Move Z Axis up little to prevent scratching of Heat Bed

Cura: The other issue I had was head crashing on tool change cause it insists on moving to 0,0 which as above causes it to actually want to go to a negative coordinate when on T1. Go into Travel settings and tick 'Layer Start X' and 'Layer Start Y' and then set these to at least your nozzle offsets or higher. Print head will go to these coordinates when changing extruders. This behavior is hardcoded to some printer models (including Custom FDM) and can't be changed. Cura know about this and refuse to fix it as they deem it not important

With that issue finally sorted I could actually get on with printing, and so far the quality has been ridiculously good, i'm blown away how i've gone from hating this printer so, so much. To now loving the quality its producing. I'm still yet to perfectly dial in retraction, but single color prints are damn near flawless, prusa mk3 quality

My suggestion to Geeetech: Design and sell an official kit using a chimera clone to replace the entire hot end and add a new cable and connector board for 2 heater cartridges/thermisters. If you did that i'd have no problem recommending this printer with that instead. In stock form it was utterly awful all because of that hot end setup, the rest of the printer is really good

[mractor]

Thank you for sharing...I have had the same experience....I will look to get that hotend

[Shoba]

This is pretty much the reason why I switched to a chimera hotend as well, since I did go through two different mixing hotends before giving up. If you don't mind I'd like to know where you got the cura settings for the printer? I found something of an A20D online and changed the printing bed size, and modified the A10 Firmware to use two nozzles/extruder.

[Jarda3d]

There are many ways to make supoport of A10M mixer in slic3r. I will do some changes to my profile. But be patient, please.

[MarioXpro]

Hello , I have do the same with a printer very similar to geeetech a10m. I can configurate and print very well with two colors or different filament materials using Simplify3d but I can´t do it with Cura. Could you help me please configuring firmware and/or with settings for print two colors with cura?
Thank you very much!! Greetings!

[millenium7]

There is no reason why it shouldn't work in Cura

The printer profiles in Cura don't really change the printers behavior at all, you can use any profile and then change it. However some printers enable/disable certain features in Cura settings. I don't remember exactly what, but there was an issue with 'Custom FDM' printer for a setting that was hidden and couldn't be used that I wanted however I think I read somewhere in patch notes that it was fixed

My suggestion is just to use the Custom FDM print profile, set the bed size (to 235x235, not 220x220), set extruders to 2, use my starting G-Code (doesn't matter if you have BLTouch/3DTouch or not) and the default ending g-code
Then you need to tick on certain options in Cura such as standby temperature etc and occasionally adjust these. Just make sure that when you make a change you check BOTH extruders, as setting temp on 1 does not change the other. Easy way is any time you make a change, right click and choose the 'apply settings to both extruders' option (I don't remember exactly what its called) this sets both extruders the same

[Chub]

What are you starting g-code commands. My start and end are blank.

[poppen]

Can you give details on how (where) you connected the second thermistor and heater? Can they be added to the small board mounted on the carriage or do they have to go to the main board and if so, where?