So, I'm about to buy a snapmaker u1. And I wonder: how do you tell the slicer which part is which extruder?

orcaslicer allows you to add filaments needed for a print and paint your model with them, and the snapmaker fork simply picks the closest match of the colors and materials you've chosen to the ones it has loaded. you don't really need to care about which extruder has what, as long as you set the right type of filament on the printer. and if you use rfid spools that's also automatic. you can of course override that in the slicer if it selects the wrong filament.

the easiest way to start with is to simply fetch the loaded filaments from the printer and use those. when snapmaker orca is connected to the printer you get a "loaded filaments" section in the selection dropdown.

I keep forgetting snapmaker orca is a thing

it's the basis of orca fullspectrum!

Lol is that a real thing

Edit: apparently yes: https://github.com/ratdoux/OrcaSlicer-FullSpectrum

yeah it looks amazing! haven't had time to try it yet though.

Let me know how it goes!

The latest Bambu Studio 2.5.3 now allows the same process. I tried it on a small test cube yesterday. It works well and is easy to use, but it's quite wasteful and slow.

And there are limitations in use. It does not do sloped surfaces well at all. The stair stepping shows too much the individual layers to give you an even color blend. Remember: this technique doesn't actually "blend the colors". But rather it fools your eyes into thinking you see one color instead to different colored layers.

The juice ain't worth the squeeze IMO.

on a toolchanger it probably makes a lot more sense. i've also seen that transparent filaments "bleed" a lot more for a better effect.

I seldom keep transparent filament around, but I believe you. And everything about multicolor is better with a tool changer. :) The only thing I really like my ams for is auto switching spools when the filament runs out.

That said, I'm going back to single filament machine for my next printer. I'm considering getting a Qidi Q2 sometime this summer.

yeah the ams is not a solution for multimaterial prints. there's so much that can go wrong with mixing filaments in the same nozzle. i'm really happy with my snapmaker though, it can do the material switch as well if you mount two spools with the same material. the only thing i'm missing is being able to tell it "switch to this head" if there is no matching spool mounted, and getting it to notice new spools being loaded during a print.