Seems like Bambu Lab has a new trick for reducing waste. Rather than a toolchanger like the Prusa XL or the Snapmaker, they’re swapping just the nozzle. As far as I can tell from the video, the printer still has a second nozzle which won’t swap in and out, meaning a print can be run with 7 nozzles (six from the Vortek system, plus the second nozzle in the toolhead). So if you’re using 7 or fewer filaments, no pooping is necessary.
The cool bit here is that they’re using wireless chips in the nozzles to communicate the thermistor data to the printer, so no pin-based connections are needed.
Pretty cool solution, I think. I assume you’d still need a prime tower, but that’s a small amount of waste if they’re eliminating poop from purging the nozzles.
I’m curious to see how they’ll handle calibration, surely the nozzles aren’t all going to be perfectly aligned all the time.
I see why you’d conflate this with enshitetification but it’s not that. The printers are actually getting better, but the competition from Chineses brands who steal open source IP including patented innovations, and fraudulently apply for their own patents with the same content and tie up the company in lawsuits to defend their IP.
It has become such a problem that remaining open source is a losing proposition. Joseph Prusa just put out a blog post explaining this and preparing the community for the upcoming changes to the industry.