Each craft that works in colour figured this out way back. A painter doesn’t rinse one brush between each colour; there’s a brush for each on the palette. Weavers load a separate shuttle for each thread. Pastry cooks fill a piping bag for each shade of frosting. No person scrubs one instrument clear between colours, as a result of the proper one is already ready. 3D printing took some time to catch up. Most multicolor printers nonetheless run each colour via one nozzle, and newer four-in-one heads squeeze 4 colours via a single tip, so each materials has to behave the identical method. Co Print’s Quadro follows the craftsman’s rule as an alternative: one instrument per colour. 4 unbiased toolheads, every with its personal filament, nozzle and temperature, share a single rail and take turns printing. It’s the oldest trick within the studio, lastly constructed right into a 3D printer.
For those who’ve printed in multicolor on a single-nozzle machine, you already know concerning the poop. Each colour change forces the printer to flush out the outdated filament, leaving a pile of rainbow waste that may outweigh the mannequin itself. Toolchangers just like the Snapmaker U1 keep away from that flushing by choosing up and parking complete heads, taking about 5 seconds per swap. The Quadro skips the pickup fully, sliding the subsequent head in because the final one leaves, in about one second. Add as much as 4 supplies in a single print, a 300mm (11.8-inch) dice construct quantity and early pricing of $649, and this bed-slinger is aiming fairly excessive.
Designer: Co Print
Click on Right here to Purchase Now: $649 $899 ($250 off). Hurry, only some left! Raised over $xy.
4 Toolheads, One Rail, and a One-Second Handoff
A $649 multi-material 3D printer with 1-second colour modifications, as much as 90% much less filament waste and a 300mm construct dice, now dwell on Kickstarter.
Co Print calls the system IQEX, brief for Unbiased Quad Extruder, and it extends the acquainted dual-head IDEX structure to 4. Every head will get its personal stepper motor and belt, with 4 belts stacked one above one other alongside the gantry. All 4 experience a shared 12mm linear rail, which suggests they bodily can’t cross one another. As an alternative, idle heads tuck into docking stations at both finish, clearing the mattress for whichever head is working. That’s how each head reaches the total 300 × 300mm print space.
Throughout a colour change, the energetic head drives towards its dock whereas the incoming head strikes into place. Co Print’s real-time footage exhibits a Instrument 1 to Instrument 2 handoff taking 1.00 seconds, with switches to Instrument 3 and Instrument 4 taking 1.40 and 1.57 seconds. That compares with roughly 60 seconds for a filament change on a single-nozzle printer, and Co Print says Quadro cuts filament waste by as much as 90%. Nothing will get unclipped, grabbed, or reloaded in the course of the handoff, avoiding the grippers and couplings utilized by toolchangers.
QDock Parking and the Waste Comparability
The parking spots are known as QDock Stations, and each holds as much as three heads. As a head docks, its filament retracts barely and its nozzle tip will get sealed to restrict oozing and hold stray blobs off the print. Parked heads additionally cool to round 140°C to additional scale back leakage. About 30 seconds earlier than a head is required, the printer begins heating it again to its goal temperature. The purpose is to have it able to extrude when it leaves the dock.
Since every filament stays in its personal nozzle, there’s no have to flush one colour out earlier than loading one other. The Quadro does print a small prime tower, although, to ascertain nozzle strain when a parked head begins extruding once more. Zero Waste Mode strikes that step into the mannequin’s infill, eliminating the tower on suitable prints. In Co Print’s personal four-color chameleon check, the Quadro completed in 9 hours 34 minutes with 34.16g of waste. The one-nozzle printer within the comparability wanted simply over a day and produced 180.7g of waste, whereas the toolchanger took 10 hours 5 minutes and produced 44.65g. That’s greater than 14 hours sooner than the single-nozzle machine, with about 80% much less waste. In a bigger scale check, the identical four-color mannequin left 1,079g of waste on a single-nozzle printer and simply 135g on the Quadro.
A Mattress-Slinger With a Largely Steel Body
Co Print selected a bed-slinger structure, the place the construct plate strikes alongside the Y-axis, for its relative simplicity and ease of upkeep in contrast with CoreXY. The body makes use of thick-section aluminum reasonably than skinny bent sheet metallic, and the load-bearing joints are metal-to-metal. Co Print says roughly 70% of the construction is metallic. Even the mattress carriage is a single piece of aluminum, designed to remain flat and parallel throughout high-speed printing.
Two synchronized motors drive the Y-axis via separate belt methods, spreading power evenly throughout the mattress to cut back twisting underneath arduous acceleration. Movement runs on 12mm industrial linear rails, and automated tensioners are supposed to maintain the X and Y belts balanced over time, so you must spend much less time reaching for a wrench. The Z towers are braced by the filament station constructions to assist scale back the layer irregularities often known as Z wobble. Co Print charges the platform for 600 mm/s journey speeds and 10,000 mm/s² acceleration.
Calibration and Controls Constructed for 4 Nozzles
4 nozzles solely produce clear colour boundaries in the event that they agree on precisely the place they’re, right down to fractions of a millimeter. The Quadro’s 360° Toolhead Calibration probes every nozzle from a number of instructions in opposition to a shared reference on the back-right of the mattress, then compensates for X, Y, and Z offsets in software program. The remainder of the calibration routine covers enter shaping, mattress mesh leveling, and Auto Move Charge Calibration, which makes use of a load cell in every toolhead to set strain advance mechanically earlier than each print. All of it sits underneath one button known as Full Self-Verify. Co Print says the routine takes minutes. Faucet it and go discover a snack.
Every head carries a QLight LED that glows within the colour of its loaded filament and lights up when that head is energetic, so you’ll be able to learn the printer’s standing from throughout the room. A large-angle 1080p digital camera sits in the proper QDock, watching each the mattress and the parked heads. All the pieces runs on QuadrOS, a Klipper-based, open-source platform managed via a 4.3-inch touchscreen. Co Slicer handles multicolor fashions and assigns filaments to every head. The open-source basis leaves room for personalisation, whereas the touchscreen and automatic setup are supposed to hold inexperienced persons out of configuration information.
4 Supplies in One Print, and What It Prices
Co Print lists PLA, PETG, TPU 95A, PVA, and carbon-fiber-reinforced filaments among the many supported supplies, with as much as 4 supplies accessible in a single print. Every head has its personal temperature setting as much as 300°C (572°F). Combined nozzle sizes in a single print, similar to 0.2mm for element subsequent to 0.6mm for bulk, are in testing and can arrive as a free replace. Direct-drive extruders deal with versatile TPU, opening up potentialities similar to inflexible elements with tender grips. PVA supplies dissolvable helps, whereas PETG can function a detachable help interface for PLA. An elective enclosure with built-in air filtration provides ABS and ASA, and an attachable filament dryer retains moisture-sensitive TPU and PVA able to print. 4 unbiased heads can do greater than change colours. Co Print is creating copy and mirror modes, the place two heads print the identical half, or a component and its mirror picture, on the identical time, together with CMYK full-color printing that blends cyan, magenta, yellow and black into new shades. Each will come to each Quadro as free updates.
Quadro is now dwell on Kickstarter, from $649 for Tremendous Early Hen backers in opposition to an $899 MSRP (they’re additionally on show at Formnext 2026 in Berlin from November 17-Twentieth at Corridor 12.1 Sales space G89). Backers additionally get launch presents together with Meshy Professional AI 3D modeling, and Kickstarter-only Duo and Farm Pack bundles convey the value to about $625 and underneath $600 per printer. Transport begins in Q1 2027, worldwide. Each Quadro contains 4 full toolheads, a 300mm dice construct quantity, and a largely metallic body. For Co Print, which has been including colour to different individuals’s 3D printers since 2019, with add-ons for greater than 100 printer fashions and two delivered Kickstarter campaigns, the Quadro is the primary machine constructed fully round its personal thought. That jar of filament poop ought to replenish much more slowly.
Click on Right here to Purchase Now: $649 $899 ($250 off). Hurry, only some left! Raised over $xy.
