A new multilateral 3D printer has been — sort of — announced, the MC8 from AxiLoop.
The company is to present the MC8 formally to the public later this month at Formnext Asia Shenzhen. For now, all we have are some mysterious images and a few tidbits of specifications. Here’s what we know:
- FFF technology
- Build volume of 300 x 300 x 300 mm, reasonably large
- Up to eight colors/materials per job
- Side-mounted spools (four per side)
- 2500 point leveling (in one minute)
And that’s about it. The material does say that it can run at up to 600mm/s, has an app, and saves “10x” material waste, but those are normal features these days.
What can we make from all this? Some speculation:
The image says the MC8 has “eight toolheads”, but I am skeptical. The MC8 must use some type of waste-free 3D print technology, similar to Bambu Lab’s Vortek, Creality’s KliTek, and Prusa’s INDX. It is unlikely they are using a straight-up toolchanger because it would require eight extruder/hot ends, which would be expensive and, well, take up a lot of space. The sketchy images don’t seem to show more than one extruder. It’s likely they are using the term “toolhead” to refer to the hot end/printhead/something else, rather than a full extruder/hot end assembly.
The eight spools are interesting. That’s double the usual four we see on most multicolor FFF systems these days. My thought is that the number of jobs that require X colors gets smaller as X gets larger. So, while most jobs would easily be covered by four spools, eight will cover any residual jobs that require more than four. I’m a bit skeptical that there are that many jobs requiring five or more colors. On the other hand, if eight-colour tech was generally available, then perhaps more 3D models would use them.
I’m a bit curious about the 2500 point leveling system. With today’s typical point-by-point toolhead inspections, that would take forever, doing 50 x 50 touches. It may be that they are using some type of advanced optical technique to complete this process a lot faster.
Evidently, AxiLoop intends on competing with the several waste-free solutions on or entering the market. That’s not surprising given the incredible growth of some of the Shenzhen-based companies following this strategy.
But hold on, who, exactly, is AxiLoop? I’ve never heard of them.
The website AxiLoop.com is for a POS/ERP system that has nothing to do with 3D printing. Some quick searches reveal that AxiLoop (the 3D printer company) does not have a website, and appears only as Instagram and Facebook pages. That’s a bit suspicious, so I dug further.
It turns out that AxiLoop is actually a new consumer brand of a well-established company, Shenzhen XIKOE Industrial Co., Ltd., a.k.a. XIKOE Industrial. This company produces precision grinding and polishing machinery — and has never produced a 3D printer previously.
They are not a small operation. They have 134 employees, 20,000 sm of company/factory space, 300+ customers, 125 patents, and were founded in 2015. So this isn’t a case of “five guys in the back of a Shenzhen warehouse making a 3D printer.” Instead, we have a company that is well-versed in building precision motion systems, something that would be ideal for building a 3D printer.
We’ll learn more about this system after it’s shown to the public later this month.
Via Facebook
