I've been looking into upcoming multicolor 3D printers like the rumored Bambu P3C and wondering how much further 3d printer technology could evolve. Toolchangers seem like a huge improvement, especially for reducing waste and using different nozzle sizes, but I wonder if they'll stay dominant for years or if something better could come along fairly quickly. I still have some gripes with them, like price, and how most toolchangers keep each filament assigned to one toolhead, so using the same red filament with both a .2 and .4 mm nozzle during one print usually requires two spools of the same color. So I've been thinking there could be real improvements to 3d printers still.

One idea is combining a toolchanger with something like Creality's QuarTeks system. QuarTeks uses four filament inputs feeding into one shared nozzle, with a shared extruder and a smaller motor that selects which filament to extrude, helping to keep it light.…