I found a patent that might hint at Elegoo’s plans for multimaterial 3D printing.
Elegoo is one of the few major players in the desktop 3D printing industry that hasn’t yet announced a multimaterial solution. Meanwhile, others, such as Bambu Lab, Prusa Research, Creality, Anycubic, and several others, have released filament-swapping systems to enable multicolor 3D printing some years ago.
Even worse for Elegoo is that a couple of players have announced plans for more advanced, waste-free multicolor solutions that eliminate the requirement to purge nozzles after each filament swap.
We’ve been waiting for Elegoo to announce something for quite a while. They’ve hinted that they are working on something, and I don’t doubt that. They need a solution to stay in the game with the other players.
While we haven’t heard from them directly, I noticed a Chinese patent, CN-120080547-A, granted only a few days ago, entitled, “Feeding and discharging device and feeding and discharging method of 3D printer”.
It’s a bit hard to read, but the gist of it is that they have devised a new type of extrusion system. The system has three modes:
- Feeding
- Retreating/discharging
- Idle
This is accomplished by a new design that includes a specialized switching assembly. This includes a motor, transmission shaft, driving gear, and reversing arms.
The reversing arm can engage two driven gears. One engages with the feeding gear to feed filament, and the other engages with a “material disc” for retracting filament.
The switching is done magnetically, using steel balls for positioning. This allows the system to smoothly switch between feeding, reversing, and neutral, where neither gear is engaged.
What does this have to do with filament swapping? The device can feed filament forward into the hot end, then reverse it cleanly out when it’s time to switch. That’s the core requirement for multi-filament operation: reliably retracting one filament so another can be loaded without clogging.
Note that a durable magnetic coupler would be desirable if the switching is repeatedly engaged many times, as would occur during a long multicolor 3D print job.
This seems to indicate they’ve been working on some form of filament-swapping system and have focused on the extruder as a key success element in the system.
However, this new extruder design does not directly compete against the recently announced waste-free systems from several companies, including Bambu Lab’s Vortek and Bondtech’s INDX. In those systems, the entire hot end is swapped out, eliminating the need to purge the nozzle.
The new Elegoo patent design might form part of a waste-free solution, but that would require swapping out the hot end and nozzle.
This could also mean that Elegoo is getting close to an announcement.
Via Google
