Hollow filament as delivery for liquid… Need details.
They are really going to have to explain how the economics works on this. $1000 head, OK. Then part A and part B ‘filament’ which is actually a hollow tube. OK. Something cuts the tube in the extruder and parts A & B are mixed. OK. Then the split tube is sent back, somewhere…
The videos are long into the benefits, but really loose on exactly how this works. Especially the hollow filament. It sounds cool, but how expensive is the ‘filament’ and what happens to the ‘tube’ part? It won’t be totally clean, that’s a huge mess waiting to happen.
I almost put one in my cart, but luckily the $1k price gave me pause. They are going to have to explain the mechanism, handling, and pricing of materials a bit more before I bite.
At this point, I’d rather print a mold and add silicone. I know that has some downsides to this, but the economics on this look crazy at first glance.
I wish that they’d open up more and start with some simple things, like a syringe extruder. That this is in effect a double extruder is kind of interesting. You could feed two different materials for color range (think White+Black= range of grays). Or a standard filament and one with a ‘payload’ like GF, conductive, or other material.
It looks like the head retains the standard nozzle and hot end?