Creality has released some details on a very intriguing new desktop 3D printer, the SPARKX i8, a multicolor FFF system.
Multicolor systems are the rage now, with colour changing becoming dangerously close to being a de facto standard in the industry. However, all the vendors use different techniques to achieve multicolor capability.
The standard approach is filament swapping, which works well, but generates staggering amounts of purge material (poops) during colour changes. All of the players in the industry are frantically trying to find a solution to this issue, and some have come out with new technologies.
Creality themselves have done so, announcing something called “KliTek”, which is to appear this fall.
Meanwhile, the SPARKX i8 now appears, and it seems to have yet another poop-reducing approach.
The i8 is a desktop bedslinger-style FFF 3D printer, which appears to inherit most of the characteristics of prior models. These include AI monitoring, high print speed, automated calibration, etc. The big difference seems to be the new “QuarTeks” technology.
Hold on, let’s think about that name. QuarTeks is similar to KliTek, as they both have a “tech” at the end. One is “Kli”, likely representing “click”, and the other is “Quar”, likely representing “four”. KliTek likely involves detaching and attaching hot end modules, which would generate an audible “click”, whereas QuarTeks is entirely silent and involves four filaments.
That’s the key here: the i8 has four input filaments that enter the QuarTeks extrusion system. Creality lists the main features:
- 500% faster printing
- Less than one second filament switching
- Less than one mm “ultra-short” shared filament path
This is quite interesting. The reason for purges in the first place is that in filament swappers, there is always a length of filament in the path that is below the cutter, and all that material must be purged.
It seems that Creality has somehow reduced the size of this zone drastically, and consequently reduced the amount of poop to be generated. They listed some statistics, likely comparing QuarTeks to standard filament swappers:
Creality showed stats comparing the amount of waste generated by the i8 vs “Others”, ranging from 40-60%. That’s not 100%, so this is not a poop-elimination scheme. However, it is significant and would notably reduce material costs as compared to “Others”. My suspicion is that “Others” refers to standard filament swappers, which are notoriously wasteful.
Against some of the other low-waste solutions, like, say, Bambu Lab’s Vortek, QuarTeks would likely lose. However, savings are savings, and solutions like the Vortek are far more expensive to purchase than the i8.
So how, exactly, does this work? Creality’s diagram explains the difference:
They say that “Others” have “at least 35mm” of length that must be purged. That’s likely fairly accurate, at least with the hot ends I’ve seen. But the interesting part is on the right side of the diagram, where you can see a minuscule area that needs to be purged.
This is fascinating — the hot end has FOUR filament paths within it. These will no doubt be filled with softened material that otherwise would have to be purged, but here it doesn’t because it simply stays there.
To make a colour change, the current filament needs to be retracted only a mm or so. The next filament is ready to go, only a mm away. However, there still would have to be a purge — just a much smaller one.
The QuarTeks design by Creality is pretty ingenious, and I am now wondering why no one hasn’t tried this previously. Perhaps it’s because manufacturing a hot end / nozzle with those internal paths is probably quite challenging. However, Creality seems to have figured it out.
A more complex hot end/nozzle could be subject to more jams, so I was curious whether Creality has taken that into account. It turns out they’ve designed the i8 to easily quickly swap the whole arrangement, which should make maintenance easy.
Can you buy an i8? Nope, it’s being teased in the company’s crowdfunding pages, where you can subscribe to gain access to a discount at product launch.
I’m interested to learn more about this very interesting system.
Via Creality
