Anycubic Launches New Color-Switching 3D Printer, High Speed Resin 3D Printer and Online Community

Anycubic released a cascade of announcements yesterday on advanced 3D printers, materials and even an online service.

The Shenzhen company has faced stiff competition from rivals in recent months, where several companies announced low-cost color-switching desktop 3D printers, among other advances. Now it seems that Anycubic has made the move to catch up and perhaps surpass the competition.

The series of announcements this week included the following:

• The Kobra 3 Combo FFF 3D printer, which includes a color-switcher accessory
• The Photon Mono M7 and M7 Pro AI-powered resin 3D printers
• Makeronline, an online 3D model sharing site offering a variety of functions
• A series of new colored filaments using the PANTONE color standard

Let’s look at these one at a time. As of this writing, we don’t know the pricing for the new products and services.

Kobra 3 Combo

Anycubic has been incrementally improving their FFF equipment over the past two years, and the Kobra 3 seems to be the culmination of all that effort. The device boasts a larger build volume at 250 x 250 x 260 mm, larger than their prior devices. The Kobra 3 is a high speed machine, capable of printing at 600mm/s with 0.1mm layers with the help of onboard accelerometers for calibration.

The most notable feature of the Kobra 3 is the new Color Engine Pro. This accessory can hold up to four 1kg spools of filament and can switch filaments in mid-print by retraction and re-insertion from a different spool. This allows for four-color print jobs.

But wait — Anycubic also allows for up to two Color Engine Pro units to be linked, meaning jobs can handle up to eight filaments when both are used.

There’s more: the Color Engine Pro is also an environmental chamber that keeps the filament spools at the desired humidity level for optimal print quality. This means operators can safely leave spools directly in the Color Engine Pro between jobs without concern.

One more thing: the Color Engine Pro is capable of reading RFID tags on spools to automatically identify the material. This will greatly simplify machine operations.

I’m quite interested to learn the pricing for this unit, as well as give it a test in our lab.

Photon Mono M7 Pro

Two variants of a new resin 3D printer were also announced, the M7 and M7 Pro. These machines can print up to 130mm in height per hour using a high resolution 14K LCD light engine. By printing with thicker layers it’s possible to achieve speeds of 220mm per hour, which is quite fast.

The more notable feature is an increased operational sophistication though the use of artificial intelligence. Anycubic has made the M7 more intelligent and able to handle more operational scenarios. They explain:

“This internally developed intelligent assistant support is made possible through core algorithms such as AI vision, motion control, and motor control, which reduce the barrier to entry for users and amplify the overall printing experience. While the integration of intelligent assistant accelerates printing speeds, it also prioritizes printing quality and reliability.”

Makeronline

It seems that their competition all has large and growing online communities, so Anycubic has made their own: Makeronline. This site will provide access to shared 3D models, which presumably can be easily dispatched to your 3D printers through the Anycubic app.

But it’s more than just 3D models. There is a discussion forum, and it seems that Anycubic will use the platform as their way to communicate with their community through news announcements and more. Makeronline will also include online contests, where the community can get directly engaged.

PANTONE Filaments

Finally, we have some new filament colors:

• Peach Fuzz
• Interstellar Violet
• Tropical Turquoise
• Spring Leaf

The colors are interesting themselves, but the more interesting aspect is that Anycubic has partnered with PANTONE, perhaps the most well-known color standard in the industry. This means that the colors of these filaments will be highly consistent and predictable, making them suitable for production applications. I’m interested to see where Anycubic goes next with this approach.

This is perhaps the biggest announcement ever from Anycubic, and it explains their mysterious silence over the past few months.

They’ve been busy.

Via Anycubic