Most of the multi color printers out there are AMS/MMU or similar, and there are many DIY options, like Armored Turtle or ECF.
They are an evolutionary dead end. Slow, wasteful, expensive to run.
The Prusa XL, or the Snapmaker U1 are the future direction.
Also a good CoreXY machine like vorons/sovols/ratrigs/VZ, etc can be upgraded with the Bondtech INDX tool changer.
We are talking 5x lower print times, 5x lower material costs.
There is going to be a glut of used Bambus and other multi material unit printers, when print farms unload them, since the tool changers will massively boost their bottom line.
Comments?
They have their place. If you only do multicolor prints rarely, but change materials between prints a lot, that’s where they excel.
I have both an MMU (Prusa MK3S + MMU 2) and a toolchanger (very custom Voron 2.4 with Tapchanger), and the MMU gets used plenty to swap filament between prints. I look at my toolchanger as being for color prints, and I usually keep 6 colors of PETG on it. My MMU gets used more as the functional printer with all the engineering filaments on it like TPU, PC, ABS, PA. I rarely have to change filament rolls with this setup.
I am also looking at building one of these Swapper3Ds, which should prevent all the waste from printing multiple colors with the MMU.
The swapper may reduce poop, but it looks like it won’t reduce print times.
Also, it looks like it has a ton of failure points. Tool changers are much simpler and faster.
I have no need of this tool changer myself nor am I selling them. But that Swapper IS the OG tool changer. Industry has been using that turret style tool changer since automatic tool changers have been a thing. So there is no new idea involved in this design, just the application.
Those turrets are dead reliable on machining centers and seemingly never wear out. At least I’ve never had to repair one, even on 30 year old machines. To be fair, those are made from hardened steels parts. And not the plastic of the Swapper. Still the design IS well proven on production floors across the planet.
Fun side note: If you look at the photo on their web site, the turret shows 25 slots. But you can’t load 25 tools, you can only load 24. Because you always need 1 empty slot in the turret to make the first tool change. The 25th tool is already loaded in the print head.
As far speed goes, it’s not like you are actually making the tool changes manually. The turret is still much faster than you and the AMS/MMU systems that are common today. Is it as fast as the Prusa XL or Snapmkaer U1? Nope. But speed matters a lot less than being dead reliable. And the Snapmaker or the Bondtech still remain unproven in that regard. The Prusa XL has been proven to be pretty damn reliable, if expensive. If you want a low cost entry, then the AMS/MMU is the proven system.
My personal opinion about the Swapper is-- a cool try, but this isn’t the correct application for this design. It’s too big and the tech isn’t hobbyist friendly except for a tiny handful of users. And it’s an added cost to the money already spent for a filament changer.
The industrial ones may be tough, but the one in the video looks janky and the abundance of printed parts does not inspire confidence in its longevity. Also, it is an addon to an MMU, making the whole multi color set up closer to $500, and limited to bowden, which precludes flexibles. Once a tool has been swapped it must be heated to the proper temp for the filament.
I’m not intimately knowledgeable with subtractive CNC, but I own and have used a lot a hand router, so I’m familiar with the business end of the things. Reliability is not going to be the same with a dry tool or toolhead, than with an oozy nozzle.
The system is for bedslingers only, which are inferior to cartesian or CoreXY cube printers.
The INDX is way more capable, simpler (thus likely more reliable) made by Bondtech, which has a proven reliability and performance record.
The only scenario where I see this being equal or superior to a toolhead changer is, well, none.
I did say that for as reliable as I know turrets to be, (decades of run time 10 to 24 hours a day), this is not the proper application for one. Like you, I don’t find the plastic parts to be very comforting.
The idea, despite being misguided, is an attempt to keep those perfectly good older bed slingers out of landfills by giving them extra capabilities to extend their life cycles.
Corexy IS faster and if you are a hobbyist buying your first or perhaps second printer I would recommend one and they are an excellent choice. But Bambu, Prusa, Soval, and Crealty still sell bed slingers for a reason.
Same here. Printing something like say, a cow, with frequent swaps would be wasteful, but I’ll do parts with 1-2 color swaps. It’s mostly nice as you said though to have multiples “locked and loaded” to do a 1 filament print.
If you have a print with supports, having a support filament that adds little extra time, compared to an MMU, is much more than nice. Being able to use rigid and flexible prints reliably in the same print is more than nice. From what I have read, flexibles in MMUs are prone to failure.
So I have a FlashForge AD5X with the MMU. It worked amazing out of the box, including flawlessly doing some TPU. They actually mentioned the MMU was designed with TPU in mind. That being said: I have been struggling with basic PLA, even after swapping to nozzle that has run only PLA (even though I only ran <10g of TPU through it). I am still new to a lot of this, and don’t feel experienced enough to fault the hardware. What I can say though is it does seem folks are specifically improving the ability of MMUs to handle flexibles. A big reason I got it was to be able to do ABS parts with TPU gaskets. Ask me in a few months.
I looked quite heavily into the swapper3d, but there doesn’t seem to be much development or adoption there.