I'm thinking of building a new printer and would love to be able to make 2 color prints or dissolvable supports. Does anyone have any experience with this. I see 3 paths.
Two hot ends
Pros:
Most robust
No retraction or filament waste
Cons:
Alignment issues.
Reduced travel
Dragging nozzle
Dual filament hot end(taichi style)
Pros:
Easy to mount
No offsets
Cons:
Jamming?
Long retraction
Y splitter
Pros: easy to mount
No offset
Compatible with any hot end
Cons jamming
Super long retraction
Filament swap is not really a valid alternative when it comes to something like wanting dissolving supports. It's only realistic if you want to change the color or material for a fairly large consecutive portion of a print. Otherwise you're going to have to swap out the filament every layer.
Sharpie hack is also not a valid alternative hehe. These 2 were more like a joke, but for simple designs manual swap works like a charm. Swapping filament every layer would be honest work tho