The switch to low-waste 3D printers continues. Let’s survey the landscape as of today.
Low-waste desktop FFF 3D printer technology erupted late last year with the introduction of Bambu Lab’s Vortek solution, followed by many other approaches.
This was a reaction to the growing realization of the tremendous material waste generated by filament swapper technology that’s been widely marketed in recent years.
In a filament swapping system, a single nozzle is fed by several different filaments. At each filament change during the print job, the nozzle must be purged to ensure extrusions are actually the new material, not a mix of it and the previous material. Over a long job with potentially hundreds of swaps, massive amounts of purge waste are created, sometimes weighing 10X more than the print itself.
The clue here was the extreme interest in low-waste solutions as they were introduced. For example, Snapmaker’s Kickstarter campaign for their toolchanging U1 system gathered over 20,000 buyers. Operators realized that they were wasting enormous amounts of money on extra filament.
Even if you had a relatively recent machine, it might pay off to replace it immediately with a low-waste solution due to the material savings.
After all this started, the major players began to gradually introduce their solutions to the low-waste market. Let’s take a look at the options available today:
- Prusa Research: Original Prusa XL offers up to 5 toolheads
- Prusa + Bondtech: CORE One INDX, provides 4 or 8 toolheads
- Bambu Lab: H2C / Vortek provides up to 7 purge-free-ish materials in one job, more with attached AMS units
- Creality: K3 / KliTek system provides nozzle-switching for up to four nozzles
- Snapmaker: U1 provides 4 toolheads and uses a toolchanging approach
- Flashforge: Creator 5 / Creator 5 Pro has 4 toolheads with a toolchanging system
- Makertech: ProForge 5 has 5 print heads and is a semi-assembled/open-source toolchanger
- WonderMaker: ZR Ultra / ZR Ultra-S provides 4 toolheads in toolchanger format
- Sovol: M1D has up to 7 materials/tools and is a Hybrid IDEX + toolchanger concept
- AtomForm: MOVA Palette 300 has a massive 12 auto-swapping nozzles, 36 colours via feed system
In addition, there is also the Bondtech INDX Development Kit, which can be used to modify some existing systems. However, this is quite a complex process and not for everyone.
The question then becomes, which major players have not yet released or announced a low-waste solution? Here’s my list:
- Anycubic
- QIDI Tech
- Elegoo
- FLSUN
- Artillery
Finally, there is a special case: IDEX dual extrusion systems. These are effectively low-waste solutions, but only if you are using two materials. There are options in this category from:
- UltiMaker
- Raise3D
- LulzBot
- CraftBot
The path forward is pretty clear: low-waste solutions will soon be the standard in the FFF world, and today’s filament swappers will be viewed as wasteful and carrying hidden costs: every print requires far more material than expected.
Companies not yet offering low-waste solutions had better get moving, or they will soon be left behind.
