The package is 20x20x7cm, and is 1.5kg for just the hardware. It is 20x20x60cm and 3kg for the hardware and printed parts.

The Swapper3D doesn’t know what material or color is in a particular nozzle, what it does know how to select a QuickSwap-nozzle from a particular receptacle and load it on demand from the 3d printer. You need to keep track of colors and materials in Prusa Slicer. Whichever tool you assign to a particular part of your print, either a body or a feature Prusa Slicer will call the swap command for that particular nozzle, at the correct time in the print and all of that is in the gcode file that Prusa Slicer exports. Just like you would normally do for an mmu print.

Yes. Each nozzle is assigned to a single particular color and reused an unlimited number of times. Each time the printer needs to use that color the Swapper3D loads the nozzle for that color, it’s heated back up, and the printing continues. In this way unlimited color swaps can be done. For example, the print in the video has 576 swaps.

The Prusa MMU can switch between 5 filaments, the CoPrint up to 7, the Mosaic Palette up to 8, the ERCF up to 12 (enraged rabbit carrot feeder), in the future there may be even more. The Swapper3D supports “UP TO” 25, but it will work with 1 or 2 or 5 or 8…all the way UP TO 25. When users purchase the base Swapper3D kit it comes with 5 QuickSwap-Nozzles and it can be expanded by adding more at any time in the future. The ‘up-to’ 25 nozzles can also be used to automatically switch different nozzle sizes during the print even when printing with a single filament.

No. Some people really love their 3D printer (like the Prusa i3). With the Swapper3D they can keep the printer they love and add new improved functionality to it. No tool changer out there supports 25 tools, there isn’t the space for that many tools. All those other ways of MultiColor printing require purging, and the Swapper3D eliminates that. Over time the ongoing consumable filament costs + time saved will pay for the Swapper3D’s static price.

About 15 seconds, which is almost exactly the same time it takes the MMU to unload the current filament and load in the next filament, which means the swap adds zero(0) seconds of additional time because of the nozzle heating up. The Nozzles have a low thermal mass. The QuickSwap-Hotend has a much larger mass and it maintains the temperature of the heater block at all times, during printing and during a filament change and during a swap, with the standard 6mm tube heater and thermistor of the Prusa i3 extruder. When a cold nozzle is inserted, it lowers the temperature of the heater block by about 15C. The Swapper3D inserts a gcode command to wait for the temperature to stabilize to the print melt temperature before it continues printing.

Retraction has 2 effects which both make a large impact to stringing. 1) removing extrusion pressure and 2) creating suction at the tip of the nozzle. The #1 effect is seen immediately after a swap. The #2 effect is seen shortly after a little bit of extrusion, and to account for that we change the slicer to infill before perimeters. There is also the wiper on the cutter arm (not seen in this video. More info on Kickstarter page.) that can be used for priming the nozzle.

There is a wiper molded into the cutter guard that deals absorbs the ooze (not shown in this video. see Kickstarter for more details) We also infill before perimeters to address the pressure stability and priming. Though additional priming can also be done on the wiper pad if needed.

Retraction has 2 effects which both make a large impact to stringing. 1) removing extrusion pressure and 2) creating suction at the tip of the nozzle. The #1 effect is seen immediately after a swap. The #2 effect is seen shortly after a little bit of extrusion, and to account for that we change the slicer to infill before perimeters. There is also the wiper on the cutter arm (not seen in this video. More info on Kickstarter page.) that can be used for priming the nozzle.

Yes, you can use this to automatically change nozzle sizes too. and you can use it to swap filament materials too.

The infill is almost never enough volume for a color purge. Remember the infill is limited to the volume of that color space on a single layer. And the infill volume varies by layer so for larger layers maybe it’s enough but it may not be on smaller layers and then you’ll get color smearing.

No. Not for a lead screw. 1398g are added to the sprung weight. The current of the Z steppers is increased to account for this, and no missed steps have been seen. In the kit we include heat sinks and a fan that are added to the printer main board which keeps it much cooler than it was with even stock current.

Very low. We are currently stress testing the current iteration of The Swapper3D (the one in this video) which has done more than 35,000 swaps without failure up to now and is still counting.

No, because the amount it would need to purge would be the exact same amount (and take the same time) in both cases. The only benefit to a purge bin is that you save the bed space, But many printers cannot move the nozzle off the bed, so in cases like the Prusa i3 you cannot use a purge bin.

Because Swapping nozzles is better. Pulling out the filament can cause strings and malformed tips that interfere with reinserting that filament next time. It’s such a common problem that some people hate filament switchers like the MMU because of it. Cutting the filament eliminates the possibility of those problems.

In the main video we are switching the filament after a nozzle change using the Prusa MMU (Multi Material Unit). In short, the MMU pulls the old filament out -> selects a new filament -> then loads the new filament in. (The Swapper3D cuts the filament before the MMU pulls the old filament out to prevent possible strings and jamming.) The Swapper3D can also use these filament switchers: Mosaic Palette (any version), CoPrint, ERCF (enraged rabbit carrot feeder), Ryper MMU, 3D Chameleon, and any other similarly designed filament changer.

Possibly. Currently we only support the Prusa i3 out-of-the-box, but we will be adding support for other printers as fast as we possibly can. Brave Makers (like you) can also modify the mounting bracket or create an adapter to mount the Swapper3D to their own printer. We encourage this and supply the 3D step files to our customers to make it easier for them to create their own custom adapters. In addition to mounting the Swapper3D, your alternate 3D printer needs either an available serial port on mainboard or an external Raspberry Pi running Octoprint to coordinate nozzle swaps.
Because there are so many different variations of 3D printers we really do need the community to help expand support for the Swapper3D.
Printers with a similar design to the Prusa i3 (i.e. bed slingers) will be the easiest to adapt to. For instance the Creality printers (Ender 3, CR10 , etc) will be next for us to create a variation for. There is nothing preventing a core xy printer from using the Swapper3D as long as it has a) an adapter b) an available serial port and c) available clearance.
Printers that have an enclosure will probably be most difficult to adapt for since they usually have only enough space for their print area inside. Something a little more creative than a simple adapter may be required in that case; But we are working on solutions to each of these.

The Swapper3D requires integration with the Prusa i3 with some small changes: 

• Either Octoprint or an updated Marlin firmware version which enables serial communication to the Swapper3D. This is to coordinate the nozzle swaps and the filament switching at the correct time and tell the 3D printer when the swap is complete.
• Power is delivered to the Swapper3D from the 3D printers power supply by 2 wires. 

3 Wires (Tx, Rx, Ground) are also run from the 3D printers main board to the Swapper3D for Serial communication.

The Z stepper current must be increased to compensate for the additional sprung weight on the X axis. This causes the Z stepper driver on the Einsy board to get a little too hot. To compensate for this we are including Heat Sinks and a case fan for all pledge levels. You will need to clip some of the vents to make room for the heat sinks. We include 4 heat sinks because the stepper drivers were always a little too hot so it’s a good opportunity to address that and keep everything cool. With these changes the stepper drivers stay cool to the touch even after 24 hours of printing with the Swapper3D.

The Swapper3D also works with the Mosaic Palette 2 & 3 (4 or 8 filament). It requires a couple of extra parts and another servo motor.

The process for a swap is slightly different when using the Palette, there are a few more steps because the Palette splices have some color mixing which can’t end up in either nozzle, the splice must be cut out so there are 2 required cuts.

 A splice from the Mosaic Palette: 

This means that there is a little waste but still much less than a purge block. Each splice is about 12mm and weighs approximately 1.1grains. Instead of the featured OmNom print saving 181g, with the Palette the 576 splices weigh a total of 41grams, the total weight savings is about 140grams.

There is a sliding lock that pulls the hotend up against a taper in the heater block.  This is a cut away view of the locking mechanism being unlocked and the QuickSwap nozzle being slid out.