Well.
That was a year.
So, there went 2023.
If I'd done one of these last year in 2022 I don't want to blow my own trumpet..I can't,
I don't have one and I wasnt gonna print one for this pun..
I predicted that 2023 would be the year of all metal hotends, enclosed corexys and the
demise of marlin firmware in new machines.
Let's go through it.
This video is sponsored by pcbway.
So here we are at the end of 2023 with my self proclaimed predictions being proved right,
thats why I'm doing this for proof this time although I have to say 2024 is going to be
a lot harder to predict so let's get on with it.
2023 though, we're not done yet.
2023 saw an insane number of printers released, possibly the most printers ever released in
any given year although I would have to count them and I don't have enough fingers.
Some highlights were the very early Qidi x-smart that managed to lead the charge of the corexys
that were to follow, and a lot of fast bedslingers were also released by companies that weren't
doing corexys yet, some claiming up to 500mm/s and that's probably something they are capable
of but just because they can, I don't know if they should.
The prusa mk4 was announced and released and I even managed to blag one, look.
And of course this was the year creality, well, creality released a lot of printers.
But the flagship K1 series appeared and that - definitely happened.
The rise of klipper was exactly as fast as I expected.
In 2021, klipper was an obscure firmware that only the voron crowd were really using and
no commercial machines used at all so if you wanted it on your ender, sure you could, but
you had to do it yourself and that was a niche.
By the way that is how it's pronounced.
Look - it's not hard.
Ni ch e - niche.
If it was to be pronounced nitch, it would be spelled nitch.
The first klipper commercial printer was the flsun v400 that sneaked out the year before
in 2022 but then nothing really did until the biqu hurakan which really did sneak out
to very little fanfare even though I thought it was a highly notable machine because it
was the first actual legit open full klipper bedslinger and
broadly speaking people ignored it because there's apparently no prizes for being first
if you use a bowden extruder.
But then 2023 happened and every single machine started using klipper - just like that, overnight.
The only two machines this year to use marlin
were the Ender 3 SE and this mingda.
So
on to 2024.
I think first and foremost we're going to see a roughly 70/30 split of enclosed and
bed slinger printers as the market heads towards an even spread of what will eventually be
cheap bedslingers and expensive enclosed printers.
if you think about it that makes sense, bed slinger printers are cheaper to make and pack
to smaller boxes, but bambu and creality both showed theres enough demand for thousand dollar
plus higher end enclosed printers especially if they manage to do colour.
Prusa seems to be proving there's people with even more money than that, and if you're one
of them, don't forget to use my affiliate links, right?
I would buy an XL though if I had the space and 3 thousand dollars to spend.
Who wouldn't?
So.
Some companies, I am sorry to say, I think they will disappear next year.
The market is getting more competitive or rather the market is getting more mature and
there are a segment of printers that nobody really wants, meaning the slightly outdated
mid price bed slinger.
If these companies can't adapt and do so while being profitable, they're going to have to
go and make telescopes or something.
Colour printing could be on the rise next year.
It turns out it's not a fad, as much as I'd like it to be, it's really wasteful in the
current iterations.
I know some things about plans for colour printing but can't say, but I will say don't
expect much, or rather, don't expect it to be a flood like corexys were in 2023.
Making a colour changing system is hard, making it work well is even harder.
Those
that we see next year will almost certainly be plagued with problems at least initially.
Also worth bearing in mind that the Prusa MMU3 for the mk4 is imminent, some time soon,
I'm hearing down the grape vine it might be very soon.
I've got one on order so you'll be hearing about that when I do.
I think most manufacturers especially the smaller ones will start to diversify a lot
more.
Primarily I expect to see a lot of them shift into accessories or maybe parts and kits,
but especially filament.
There's a huge markup in filament and I dont think demand for it is going anywhere soon.
We've seen this a bit with Elegoo, creality and sovol and of course bambu have always
sold filament but they are increasing that recently with glow in the dark and colour
changing, but I expect more of this shift to printer manufacturers selling own brand
filament in 2024 and maybe more things like dryers and stuff like that.
There's this phenomenon when you have a small number of dominating brands, and other brands
start to sell accessories for those, look at maybe games consoles to see that, I think
we're starting to move that way, case in point bigtreetech making screens for the bambu,
e3d making hotends for the bambu.
More of that is likely in the coming year.
Next up let's go into predictions of what I'm going to make using pcbway's services.
That's a good segue.
Proud of that one.
I don't have an answer though, because I'm going to do whatever I feel like, that's why
it's so easy to use PCBWay, I can think up some crazy idea on Monday and have the parts
made and delivered by Friday, subject to what I'm doing obviously but you get the idea.
PCBway 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 they
make PCBs, which they do, like this one, or this one, and they can populate it like this
for you too, 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 I think you're all going to come along with me for that ride, I think that's
going to happen.
Getting things made by PCBWay 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 are like me without
an formal engineering background, yeah 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 if you
do that, thank you PCBWay for sponsoring this episode and lets get back to it.
So.
I think in terms of which firmwares, there's been this huge shift towards the combination
of klipper and a skinned slicer, a lot of manufacturers have done this, and I think
this will possibly go further - I can see manufacturers actually making their own slicers.
The thing is, this integration of machine, firmware, slicer and cloud is at least partially
user driven, we as users are demanding it apparently - even if you are sat there yelling
that you don't want it, the market evidently does, and that is what manufacturers are going
to respond to.
Does that mean more closed source machines?
I think probably yes.
If you don't like it, maybe you shouldn't have all bought into it.
Just saying.
I'm not that into resin to really be able to predict that but I think there's a good
chance that not a lot will happen with resin.
I think one of the really cool things I've seen on resin printers is the pumps you can
get to remove material back into the bottle - I'd like to see that being a standard feature
on resin printers because it seems a lot less messy.
A few related things to finish up, I don't know if you noticed that the recently introduced
sunlu s4 dryer that I showed on the channel used a new method of heating, PTC heating
instead of the slower old resistive circuit board, I think we're going to see a lot of
those next year and the machines will inevitably have higher maximum temperatures because the
filaments we're using are more diverse now, with people wanting temperatures up to 70
or 80C for drying.
I think dryers are going to get smarter in general
too, there's a sort of wide open market for that, wouldn't surprise me if they start getting
all IoT, because we need apps for dryers.
And an interesting side note with filament reels,
with the popularity of the ams lite I think we might get more standardised filament reel
sizes.
If you want to sell to a bambu user you have to make a reel that fits, so that will be
interesting to see.
So I'm gonna finish up there and put my predictions on screen here now.
Let's meet up in a year and see how close I got.
Anyway that is it, thank you for watching and remember to subscribe if you enjoyed this,
I will see you next time.