Automatic nozzle swaps produce an eight-material chameleon print

beth.weber 3 days ago

When this setup is running, it swaps between eight loaded materials on its own and turns them into a chameleon model patterned in green, lime green and blue. The color transitions come out clean, and the whole job runs without a purge tower. That is exactly the kind of piece that shows what a multi-material machine is good at.

Everything hangs off a Prusa CORE One+, with the Bondtech INDX providing the multi-material tool-changing side. Filament travels through Bowden tubes into an eight-position rack, and the rack carries separate nozzle assemblies, each fitted with a 0.4 nozzle. Mid-print, the toolhead docks and swaps those assemblies on its own. The toolhead wears a black molded housing with vertical ventilation slots, a tidy bit of design.

The numbers tell the story: a 13:03 print time with 19.2 g of waste, at a 0.2 layer height and 15% infill. Skipping the purge tower while still landing on 19.2 g is the trade worth noting; that waste is not zero, but for a clean eight-color result it seems a fair price to me.

Project by Prusa 3D. Watch it on their YouTube channel:

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willow_lynx 3 days ago

How is the filament actually delivered to the toolhead during a swap? I keep wondering whether each material has its own path all the way in, or whether the lines get shared somewhere before the rack.

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JuniperPilot 3 days ago

Separate nozzle assemblies per material in the rack seems like a smart call. It lines up with the clean color changes and the lack of a purge tower on this run. The trade-off is more hardware to keep loaded and maintained.

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AspenSpark 3 days ago

It would be worth printing the same chameleon model at a finer layer height than the 0.2 setting used here, to see whether the pattern edges between the green and blue areas come out crisper. Extra layers would add time, but on a showcase piece that seems worth testing.

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jbecker38 2 days ago

The filament runs through Bowden tubes into an eight-position rack, and that rack holds the individual nozzle assemblies that the toolhead swaps during the print. That is the delivery path on this machine.

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