It's hard to fathom that one of the star attractions of an industrial manufacturing event in its tenth year would be a small desktop machine printing colourful plastic parts. But so unrelenting is the popularity of Bambu Lab that even by day four of Formnext, the Chinese FFF 3D printer manufacturer was still drawing a lot of eyes.
The company announced the launch of its H2C printer earlier in the week following several months of teasing. Attendees in Frankfurt got a first look at what promises to represent a ‘new benchmark’ in multi-material 3D printing, with a wireless hotend swapping system that enables 3D printing with up to 24 filaments.
I’ve often wondered if the demand for the multi-colour portion of multi-material printing was really that huge. I don’t know if it’s just years of seeing events filled with mainly novelty parts in linear rainbow stripes or because I have a strong penchant for monochrome, but multi-material hasn’t really been on my wish list.
If any company could convince me otherwise, though, it was probably going to be Bambu Lab.
