Opening:
Multicolor printing is finally getting more interesting than “add another filament box.”
Creality showed two completely different ways to reduce purge waste this week: a true nozzle-changing K3 and a four-channel SPARKX i8.
Prusa, meanwhile, is attacking the same problem from the material side—using five translucent filaments to create up to 45 apparent colors.
The multicolor war is officially becoming a technology war.
The 60‑Second Extrusion:
Creality showed the K3 with KliTek. It swaps nozzles in about five seconds and is designed for mixed nozzle sizes, soluble support, and even multiple TPU hardnesses.
creality.comSPARKX i8 takes the opposite approach: four filament channels go straight into one printhead for sub-one-second color switching and much shorter purge cycles.
store.creality.comPrusa launched dedicated ColorMix filament. Five translucent base colors can generate up to 45 shades through optical mixing.
blog.prusa3d.comAnycubic Software 2.0 landed. Better printer/app/slicer control, improved material syncing, third-party filament support, file search, and slicer-side print history.
store.anycubic.comThe Bambu A1 can now swap its own build plates. Chitu Systems’ $99.99 PlateCycler C1 can cycle through as many as eight dedicated plates.
chitusystems.com
Top Stories:
Creality joins the toolchanger war
What happened
Creality showed much more of its upcoming K3 and KliTek nozzle-changing system.
Instead of unloading one filament and pushing another through the same nozzle, KliTek physically changes nozzles.
Creality claims roughly five-second nozzle swaps and under-15-second material changes with virtually no purge waste.
The interesting part is what Creality wants to do with those tools:
80A, 85A, 90A and 95A TPU
Rigid + flexible material in one part
Soluble or breakaway supports
CMYK-style color
Different nozzle diameters in the same print
A 0.4mm nozzle could handle detailed outer walls while a 0.8mm nozzle blasts through infill.
Why it matters
The big multicolor companies are converging on the same conclusion:
Repeatedly shoving different filament through one nozzle is not the final answer.
Prusa has INDX. Bambu has Vortek. Snapmaker has four toolheads. Sovol has M1D.
Now Creality has KliTek.
Who should care
Advanced makers, flexible-material users, print farms, soluble-support users, and anyone planning a premium printer purchase.
Extruder Report verdict
This is Creality’s most interesting printer technology in years.
Forget the headline color count.
If KliTek can reliably print very soft TPU, switch nozzle sizes, and use soluble supports without generating giant purge towers, that is real functional value.
Now Creality needs to tell us the price.
Five Prusament spools can now make 45 shades
What happened
Prusa launched filament specifically engineered for ColorMix.
The system starts with five translucent PLA colors:
Cyan.
Magenta.
Yellow.
White.
Black.PrusaSlicer or EasyPrint then layers them in calculated ratios so your eyes perceive additional shades.
Prusa says those five base filaments can produce 45 color shades.
There are also Gold and Silver glitter filaments that can be mixed into ordinary PLA for Galaxy-style effects.
Why it matters
This attacks multicolor from an entirely different direction.
Instead of figuring out how to physically load 16, 24, or 36 colors, use a small number of controlled translucent colors to create additional colors.
That means fewer spools to buy, store, dry, and keep loaded.
Who should care
HueForge creators, multicolor users, sign makers, wall-art sellers, INDX/MMU/AMS/CFS owners, and anyone with too much filament already.
Extruder Report verdict
This is becoming a real ecosystem, not a slicer gimmick.
3D-Fuel now has compatible PCTG colors. Creality is explicitly pitching CMYK through KliTek. Prusa now sells filament engineered around the process.
Optical color mixing has momentum.
Anycubic Software 2.0 improves the boring stuff
What happened
Anycubic released Software 2.0, tying the printer, mobile app, and Anycubic Slicer Next more closely together.
You can manage more printer settings remotely, filament configurations sync better, third-party materials get improved library support, and print history is now visible from the slicer.
That last one means you can find a successful job from weeks ago and run it again without hunting down the file and reconstructing the settings.
Why it matters
This is what mature 3D-printing software should increasingly do:
Remove tiny annoyances.
You shouldn’t have to walk to the printer to toggle one setting.
You shouldn’t configure the same spool three times.
And you shouldn’t need detective work to reproduce a part you already printed successfully.
Who should care
Anycubic owners, beginners, repeated-part users, farms, and classrooms.
Extruder Report verdict
No killer feature. Good update.
The printer market is mature enough that twenty small workflow improvements can be more useful than one flashy feature you use twice.
Trending Models:
Grumpy Rooster
An angry desk rooster with a message that translates roughly to “please stop talking to me.”
Perfect Monday-morning print.
Sandman
A free fantasy tabletop sculpt from Schlossbauer, a creator with more than half a million downloads on Cults.
Modular Floor Lamp
A standing lamp built around ordinary 60cm or 120cm LED tube lights.
Print the structure. Buy the boring electronics.
Spider Giant
Fresh resin-friendly nightmare fuel for the next tabletop campaign.
Mystic Spirit Fox Coaster
A multicolor coaster shipping as both geometry and a ready-made 3MF print profile—a small example of how model creators increasingly sell the workflow, not just the STL.
Deal Pulse:
Anycubic PETG — about $8.65/kg
Anycubic’s current anniversary-sale round has 6kg of PETG for $51.90, or about $8.65/kg.
Also available:
6kg PLA refill: $54 — $9/kg
6kg ABS-like Resin 2.0: $69 — $11.50/kg
6kg Water-Wash Resin 2.0: $81.60 — $13.60/kg
The current round ends September 15.
For farms and heavy prototype users, the PETG price is the standout.
Community Pulse:
Buyers are increasingly asking “which ecosystem?” instead of “which printer?”
September’s purchase-advice discussions are full of familiar printer names.
But the questions have changed.
People are asking about:
Multicolor waste
TPU compatibility
Heated chambers
Phone and cloud workflows
Customer support
Replacement parts
Whether the printer constantly needs fixing
Whether they can avoid Bambu entirely
The market has reached the point where 600mm/s does not narrow the field anymore.
The ownership experience does.
Print Farm Note:
A $100 accessory might add more production than another printer
Chitu Systems’ new PlateCycler C1 can mechanically move a Bambu A1 through as many as eight build plates without someone clearing each finished job.
It costs about $100.
That creates a useful farm question:
Would $400 spent on another printer add more production?
Or would $100 spent making an existing printer continue working unattended add more?
If your bottleneck is operator availability, the answer may be the plate changer.
But do not trust it with overnight production immediately.
Run a qualification test:
50–100 automatic plate changes
Track failed ejects
Track failed loads
Check plate positioning
Check first-layer consistency
Test recovery after a failed job
Automation is only valuable when failure becomes boring.
Final Layer:
The purge tower may finally be living on borrowed time.
This week alone:
KliTek changes the nozzle.
SPARKX i8 nearly eliminates the shared filament path.
ColorMix creates more colors from fewer physical filaments.
Three companies. Three completely different approaches.
That is exactly what a healthy technology race should look like.
The winner may not be whichever system can technically print the most colors.
It may be the one that makes multicolor printing least annoying.
What to watch next week: Bambu has spent a month teasing the R1 laser without telling us most of the things needed to actually buy one.
September is nearly half over.
It is probably time to show the machine.