The biggest thing to happen in 3D Printing in 2024 will be...

so here we are at the end of 2023 with my self-proclaimed predictions being proved right if I'd done one of these videos last year in 2022 at the end I don't want to blow my own trumpet in fact I can't I can't play the trumpet I don't have a trumpet and I wasn't going to print a comedy trumpet just for the this one pun and that's why I'm doing this for proof this time although I have to say 2024 is going to be I think a lot harder to predict so let's get on with it this video is sponsored by PC B way this year saw an insane number of printers released and I'm not kidding uh possibly the most printers ever released in a given year although I would have to count them and I don't have enough fingers and I don't have enough toes some highlights were the very early chidy xmart that managed to lead the charge of the corex wise that were to follow um there was an influx of very fast printers even bed Slingers were claiming that they could do 500 millimeters per second I mean maybe they can I I think the fact that they can doesn't necessarily mean that they should but that's not what this video is about uh the prer Mark 4 was announced um I don't remember the exact date for that I feel like it was around June and that was released and even I managed to BL one look here it is I don't think it came out of nowhere we knew it was coming but they announced it and released it without any kind of um runup if that makes sense and of course this was the year that creality well creality released a lot of printers that's not entirely unusual but I think they released more this year than um previously but the flagship K1 series appeared and that definitely happened there was a lot of hype around that and a lot of other things but about firmware the rise of clipper was exactly as fast as I expected it to be in 2021 Clipper was I think it's fair to say it was an obscure firmware that only the voron crowd were really using a standard and definitely no commercial machines used it at all so if you wanted to use it and a lot of people were using it on things like Enders um you could I did but that was a niche and by the way that is how it's pronounced um niche Niche Niche the first commercial Clipper printer was the F sun v400 and that sneaked out the year before this one in 2022 but then nothing really else happened until the BQ huracane which really did sneak out and there was very little Fanfare even though I thought this was a highly notable machine because I could see that it was the first actual legit open full Clipper bed Slinger where they were literally providing you with an an open source board and saying look here here is a machine that uses the BQ uh the the big tree Tech um Manta with the CB1 um but broadly speaking people ignored it because apparently there's no prizes for being first especially if you use a Bowden extruder um which I think was probably in hindsight not the best idea and I think that might be one of the reasons why people didn't engage with that printer even though it was okay I thought so I still have mine but then 2023 happened and every single machine started suddenly using Clipper just like that overnight from going from two machines up to midnight on December 31st 2022 we just went straight into every machine nearly the only two machines this year that I've reviewed to use Marlin were the ender3 V3 e and this MinGa there were others I'm I'm sure but you get the idea everyone else was shifting in 2023 to enclosed corex wise because of the undeniable success of Bamboo's X1 series the year before and what did bamboo do they released the p1s but then bamboo released two bed Slingers which seemed to be outstripping the sales of every other machine so this kind of feels like it's leaving the rest of the manufacturers wondering what on Earth is going on why are people buying bamboo machines even if they're beds Slingers and I've got a hint if you're a manufacturer watching this it might not be the kinematics of the printer it might be this bit anyway I think that's enough of the history let's get on to 2024 I think first and foremost in 2024 we're going to see a roughly 70 30 split of enclosed printers and beds Slinger printers as the Market heads towards an even spread of what will eventually be bed Slingers on the cheap end and enclosed corexy style printers on the expensive end and obviously some variations of that but I think that's going to be the theme if you think about it that makes sense bed Slinger printers are cheaper to make and they pack into smaller boxes for shipping but bamboo and creality both show that there is definitely enough demand for higher end enclosed printers especially if they manage to also do multicolor prer seems to be proving there's people with even more money than that um nice if you can and if you're one of them don't forget to use my affiliate links um I don't actually have affiliate links for Pria yet I'll be honest if I had the money in the space I would definitely buy an Excel um there's nothing else on the market like it right now so fair play to people who can some companies I'm sorry to say this coming year they might actually disappear the market is getting much more competitive or rather the market Market is getting more mature and there's a segment of printers that nobody really wants and it's kind of like the elephant in the room there are outdated mid price bed Slingers running Marlin that companies are still kind of trying to sell and I'm sure they sell some but these companies are either going to have to adapt and stay profitable or they're going to have to go and do something else and we've seen one manufacturer in 2023 pivot entirely to a completely different product line color printing could be on the rise next year it turns out that color printing is not a fad which as much as I'd like it to be and the reason I say that is because it's really wasteful in the current uh iteration there are ways to do color printing that aren't wasteful but unfortunately those are more difficult more expensive and more limiting in terms of how many colors you can have I know uh some things about the plans for color printing that some companies have but I can't share those at the moment but I will say don't expect too much or rather don't expect a flood of um color systems in the same way that corex wise were in 2023 the reason is making a color changing system is hard and it requires a lot of development and it's expensive to do that and making it work well is even harder those that we see next year will almost certainly be plagued with problems at least initi also worth bearing in mind is that the puser Mark 4 mmu 3 the mmu 3 is already out for the Mark III so it's it's complicated um it's requiring some adjustments for the markv uh there is a Blog article out there on that but that is imminent uh very imminent I'm hearing I've got one on order so you'll be hearing about that when I get it I will undoubtedly be covering it I think the this coming year most manufacturers especially the smaller ones they will start to diversify a lot more primarily I expect to see a lot of companies shift into accessories or maybe parts and kits but especially I expect to see more companies diversifying more seriously into filament there's a huge markup in filament at least that's what I uh understand and I don't think demand for filament is going anywhere soon we've seen a bit of uh this eligo creality sovel and of course bamboo have always sold their own filament but they are increasing that recently um they've increased the range with glow-in-the-dark and color changing um I expect more of this shift to printer manufacturer selling their own brand filament in 2024 and maybe they will also sell things like dryers and stuff like that the reason I'm predicting this is because there's kind of this phenomenon when you have a small number of dominating Brands which is the the way we're moving I think and other brands start to sell accessories for those Brands if you think about how games consoles work you have a small number of brands that make the consoles and then you have a ton of Brands around that that uh sell accessories and things like that on the side and I think we might be starting just just very much starting to move in that direction with 3D printing case in point being big tree Tech is making screens for the bamboo I don't know if that's secret or not sorry if it is e3d is making hot ends for the bamboo next up let's go into uh the predictions of what I'm going to make using PCB ways services in 2024 that is a really good segue I am proud of that one I don't have an answer though because I'm probably just going to do whatever I feel like that's why it's so easy to use PCB way PCB way are a manufacturing service who can help you make small runs of prototypes or products that you are unable to on your home equipment although their name implies that they make pcbs which they do like this one or this one and they can populate it like this for you too but they also offer other things like CNC Machining or sheet metal cutting and folding and you know what 2024 is going to be the year where I start tapping into this and learning how to prepare files for sheet metal cutting and folding and I think you're all going to come along with me for that ride I think that is definitely something that I want to happen this year getting things made by PCB way is super easy and their website guides you through the whole process so don't worry if you aren't too sure about what you're doing or if you're like me without a formal engineering background that is true you'd never guess would you anyway make sure you click the link below and go check them out and there's a coupon for new customers if you do that thank you PCB way for sponsoring this episode and let's get back to it so I think in terms of firmwares and ecosystems there has been this huge shift towards the combination of Clipper and a skinned slicer a lot of the manufacturers have done this and whether you like it or not I think this will probably go further in 2024 I can see manufacturers actually even starting to think about making their own slices the thing is this integration of machine firmware and slicer and even cloud is at least partially user driven we as users are apparently demanding it even if you were sat there yelling at your screen right now saying that you don't want it the market evidently does and this is what manufacturers are going to respond to does that mean more closed Source machines I think in the longer term probably yes yeah I'm not really that into resin to really be able to predict what's going on there but I think there's a good chance that not a lot will actually happen with resin this year I think one of the really cool things I've seen on resin printers is the pumps that you can use to remove the material back into the bottle when you finished I would really like to see that being a standard feature on resin printers because it seems a lot less messy and it seems like it's almost a safety feature if that makes sense because it's going to cut down on spills a lot beyond that I I have no idea I don't know if screens can get more resolution or whether they need to whether it will help but yeah I'm completely outside of my um area expertise here a few related things to finish up I don't know if you've noticed the recently introduced sunlu S4 dryer that I showed on the channel uh this used a new method of heating it used PTC heating instead of the slower old resistive circuit board and PTC heaters are sort of quite well used inside printers now I think we're going to see a lot of those uh next year because they just perform better they heat up faster these kinds of dryers will will inevitably be specked with higher maximum temperatures because the filaments we're using are more diverse now with people wanting temperatures up to 70 or 80c for drying you absolutely don't need those temperatures but people don't believe a single word I say about how dryers work and I've got into so many arguments over this this is not how how humidity works at all I think dryers are going to get smarter in general too there's this sort of wide open market for that it wouldn't surprise me as well if these dry start to get um Internet connected we we need apps for drers I'm sure we haven't got enough apps on our phone but again this is something that's that's going to happen because it's the Natural Evolution of things going back to filament an interesting side note with regard to filament reels especially in the USA where the real sizes differ a lot more than they do over here with the popularity of the AMS lights and it was already a problem with the AMS but even more so with the AMS light I think we might start to get more standardized fil El real sizes if you want to sell to Bamboo users and there are more bamboo users by the day so you have to make a reel that fits otherwise the bamboo users are just going to buy bamboo filament so I think we're going to see a really rapid movement towards a standard filament real size which is an interesting outcome of bamboo making that device so I'm going to finish up there and I'm going to put my predictions on screen here now and let's meet up in exactly a year and see how close I got and if I'm wildly inaccurate I'll just pretend this never happened and not make an episode next year anyway that is it thank you for watching and remember to subscribe if you enjoyed this and I will see you next [Music] time [Music] a

Channel: Lost In Tech

Views: 90,451

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Id: vtcAOMxKeHs

Length: 15min 11sec (911 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 30 2023