This one might get bopped. 
Leak regarding the possible sighting of a new Snapmaker partnership coming up.
Move over H2D… A 4 head toolchanger running Klipper and with nearly 270x270x270 mm^3 build volume?
As usual with rumors, “take this with a large grain of salt.”
For me as an early 2.0 adopter, snapmaker is running in the wrong direction. They never build good 3d printers.
They “invented” modular 3in1 machines and thats why i bought one. And i hoped for more and more modules and possibilities. The 3d printer Market has just a few players which deliver much better printers to better prices. And i would personally never buy a snapmaker printer.
I get sad when I see how snapmaker has lost its ideal.
Just my opinion as a 3in1 user.
For what it’s worth, the inverse was my thought when I saw the Bambu Lab H2D is trying to also be a laser cutter. They make such excellent printers, it’s strange to me they’d compromise that in any way to try making a multifunction device. (The Snapmaker ones are better thought out from a laser tool perspective… Does anyone really want an incredible 3d printer with some bad laser slapped on like the H2D?)
And in that way, also interesting Snapmaker is attempting the opposite.
I’m cautiously optimistic Snapmaker has put all of what they’ve learned from the J1 into this. But so much of it will come down to how the full user experience is tuned, all the way down to a full library of very good slicer profiles..
It’s still very rare any company actually provides profiles that make it truly easy to use. And going to a multi head system only makes that more difficult.
I have Snapmaker J1s 3D printer since 2023 and it is not my first printer 
. In my opinion Snapmaker J1 has a lot of potential and is very good printer out of the box. Here I can make comparison to Ultimaker S7 and Bambulab X1 printers.
I agree that the Luban slicer is rubbish. I have used Cura as alternative, and now for 100% of prints went over to Orca. I get in 95% of time great results. Just lately tried PCTG, PC-CF, PA12 filament. I had no problem with those, using the maximum of printed capabilities (nozzle temps up to 290 C and bed temp up to 100 C).
The slicer is not a concern, as there are alternatives available. The hardware of J1s is great! The sturdy aluminium alloy casted frame. The motion system is reliable. The upgraded nozzles are doing the job. I can not see much issues with hardware. Yes, you have to lift up the top lid, as PTFE tubes from printing heads are rubbing the lid and wear out quickly. That’s the main issue. I have dealt with this with upgrades available from users. I do advice to look at those updates, both for new users and Snapmaker (!).
As looking at the more engineering type of materials I miss couple of things, but I can see the rumoured Snapmaker and xTool collaboration are addressing those issues. Seems that new printer will have actively heated chamber (as looking at the thickness of the printer walls, should be well isolated and have funs and heater inside the walls), multimaterial (more than 2 multicolor) printing (would be great alternative to AMS or CMS and etc), it looks like to have 3 Z-roads (possible automatic bed levelling system).
If this all will be implemented and machine will have at least 350 C nozzle, bed temperature up to 120 C along with active chamber heating (up to 65 C), then this will be my next 3D printer 
even it has comparably quite small printing volume (not an issue for me personally).
I will skip the Bambulab H2D purchase and will wait for this one instead! I made this promise years ago, not to buy Bambulab printer till it will have IDEX or multi printhead systems. I will keep my promise.
P.S. I do think that Snapmaker is going in the right direction. Messing with any kind of AMS systems is eventually wrong (waist of printing time, amount of purging, complexity and reliability issues).
I have a good idea for multi printing head system development (to lazy to patent), so Snapmaker it is your opportunity (and my believe in you ). The idea is similar to the “revolver” tool changing systems widely implemented in the CNC cutting machines. Instead of 4 heads with separate mechanics, the tool changing should be realised via rotating (half circle, more than 4 connections can be placed radially very compact) plate having number of “connections” (connectors between bowden tube and printhead, connected to material spools). In this case “switching” between materials/tubes will be in same defined spot all the time (no need for multiple calibrations, which is the main issue with Prusa XL at the moment - wasting a lot of time for each connection/toolhead calibration, less mechanical issues with print head movement and connections, I guess all the system will be much more compact and having less weight), much more compact system if compared to linearly positioned toolheads, will be able to “host” much more tubes (materials) per same area.
Let see who is reading this forum and will be the first to implement “my” idea
And this is more or less what I mean. Snapmaker releases a product which will not work out of the box. You have to buy upgraded nozzles, cooling fan upgrade kit, high speed hot end kit, .. and then you also have to open the lid to print normal PLA? I never own a J1, I just know the threads here and the compliants from facebook and from my perspective, this is not a very good printer.
But I can just compare to 2.0 and Artisan and there is “work out of the box” far away from the reality. Automatic Z Level calibration still sucks on dual extruder, the single head e steps are still bad in default, the orca slicer from snapmaker really sucked on my testings (they failed to create an a150 profile which should be like 10min of work for them), the profiles in luban are not recognizing the vibration compensation relase and are much to slow..
I have some cura profiles which are working good for me, but thats nothing snapmaker gave to me, I had to set them up.
But I do more CNC and laser jobs, so i am still happy to have the snapmaker. If I had foreseen this product trend, I wouldn’t have bought Snapmaker, but dedicated machines. Hopefully they will still do 3in1 investigation (no new product, just new possibilites).
Stefan already pointed out with the H2D on CNC Kitchen that the very advanced nozzle swapping arrangements also lead to difficulty with repair and motion due to the extra moving parts.
It further shows the strength of a simple one extruder per head kind of design. Though to be fair, any of these will likely be more challenging to maintain.
its neat but based off my experience with the J1, idk if id want to take that risk. too many proprietary parts and a closed source system. im still upset about the lack of a real input shaper on the j1.
I totally agree with you. This is my favourite idex printer today. Reliable, good profile with Orcaslicer I barely have trouble with it.
