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?
There is little reason to abandon a perfectly good older machine that still works just fine all because a newer technology shows up. That’s wasteful of money and material in itself.
I doubt there will be a glut of used Bambu printers being dumped by print farms either. They will continue to use those “old and obsolete” printers until they wear out enough to be replaced at the scheduled time. At which point it could very well make sense to swap them out with better tech. As long as that tech works first time, every time-- which hasn’t been demonstrated yet. It’s one of the major reason many print farms use Bambu printers and not Vorons or Crealty printers.
I may agree in a DIY setting, but for a business it’s a sunken cost fallacy. I’ve owned 2 businesses where productive equipment were integral. Replacing machinery where there is a substantial improvement does make absolute business sense. Also, if you allow a machine to wear out you are shooting yourself in the foot. It’s much better to unload them in the second hand market, and renew. I haven’t owned a print farm, but I’m certain that amortization is fairly quick.
Question is, how long is the expected lifetime of a consumer-grade FFM printer in one of these settings anyway? My bet is that it’s only a couple of years—certainly no more than five. Short enough that many businesses would be able to afford to wait for the expected end-of-life before replacing their old printers, even if there’s new tech out that might make some difference to their bottom line. At worst, the older printers will still be perfectly good and competitive at producing single-material prints, since I don’t think an MMU you don’t use incurs much of a penalty.