Post #4379839

We got our kids a 3D printer last month. Shortly after they started printing stuff, some (but not all 🤔) of the prints started including these small (usually square; occasionally rectangular) "bonus" objects of various sizes, with a distinctive grille pattern. Wasn't sure what they were, so I started stacking them off to the side, in case they were important for some reason. After a couple days, I finally figured out that every time the printer changes filament color during a print, it needs to extrude the last of the old color already in the print head & then a little bit of the new color so it's starting with clean extrusion of it before it starts applying it to your print. To do this, it will (1) cough up a hairball with those bits of each color, and (2) lay down a layer in a small pattern of the new color to ensure this purge has been successful. By this time, of course, I had figured out this thing could also produce beautiful Islamic wall art for my musallah and my study in the house, and for my office and maybe even for the masjid I belong to--so the stack had grown quite a bit. I have christened it "the Purge Khalifa" 😅