Anything else you'd like to see printed with multiple materials?
2) > this approach is ultra powerful, and it's the same thing you see on some of the high-end maker printers (like in the TAZ production docs that describe how to use strong/precise steel parts combined together with 3D printed parts).
Sorry man, what do you mean here? Can you maybe please specifically link to what you are referring to here?
If you inspect most of the FDM (maker-style, RepRap, etc.) printers, you'll notice that they themselves are constructed of 3D printed parts. But the way they use the parts is a lot different than most end-users (a single purpose item that works stand-alone; like a statue, cup, wall hook, etc.).
Instead, the way the 3D printed parts on the printer are used (in general) is by combining the strengths/attributes of multiple materials. All fasteners are standard metal parts, with mating metal nuts (often embedded or even hot-inserted into the back of a printed part). Precision bushings are press-fit into printed parts to use along steel guide rails.
The TAZ assembly docs show a lot of that thinking, so I thought I'd link over to it in the write-up.
In short, it's the kind of thing that I'd love to see more of because it leverages the best properties of multiple materials instead of being all one or the other. :)
At one point I wrote a STL converter for medical images (DICOM -> STL), for MRIs and CAT scans: https://github.com/chrisvana/printer
It would be interesting to print a cancer tumor with one material the and the surrounding tissue with another. Some data here: http://www.cancerimagingarchive.net
Wow, that's like the first cool reason I have stumbled upon for a dual-extruder printer. :) (a lot of people think they need a printer with dual-extruders -- they don't, and actually the biggest reason they don't need it is 3d printing suddenly gets twice as difficult when you're doing it with dual-extruders)
I've done this to put captive nuts into a 3d print by adding a M00/M01 into the GCode right before the layer they were covered up in.
