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FYI (opinion.) don't buy an MMU (sopuli.xyz)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/3dprinting@lemmy.world
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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.

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[–] [S] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

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.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    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.

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