Dual extrusion (or multi extrusion) 3D printing is many things to many makers. To some, it’s the possibility of printing multicolor objects, cutting down on post-processing and finishing work after a part has been printed. For others, it’s a means to achieve more complex prints using soluble or breakaway support material – something not possible using a typical single extruder 3D printer.
Another reason could be productivity, especially with independent dual extrusion (IDEX) machines, which go a step beyond single toolhead machines and offer the ability to print two identical models simultaneously.
Handily, we go hands-on with the printers worth knowing about and have whittled them down to a handful of recommendations tailored to the various multicolor/multi-material-enabling options.. For a pro-focused look at IDEX machines, check out our guide to the Best Independent Dual Extruder (IDEX) 3D Printers.
| 3D Printer | Pick | Market Price (Approx., USD) | Check Price (Commissions Earned) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bambu Lab A1 Mini + AMS Lite | Budget | A compact and connected mini printer ideal for color | $349 | |
| Bambu Lab P1S + AMS | Single-nozzle | Better filament protection and expanded print volume for multicolor | $849 | |
| UltiMaker S5 | Dependent Dual-nozzle | Expandable, pro-grade printing with solid software | $6950 | |
| Snapmaker J1s | IDEX | Compact, heavy-duty printer with productivity-boosting print modes | $1,099 | |
| Original Prusa XL | Toolchanger | Expandable fully-multi-material toolchanger that scales with your printing | From $2,499 (dual-toolhead) | |
How to Choose a Dual Extrusion 3D Printer
The considerations for dual extrusion 3D printers aren’t particularly complex. Ultimately, it’s all about the type of 3D print you want to achieve and how cleanly the printer can accomplish it. That’s about it.
While two extruders feeding material to a single nozzle risk cross-contamination of the materials and will require more rigorous purging of the nozzle for clean prints, an IDEX or toolchanger 3D printer uses entirely separate print heads for each material, minimizing contamination at the expense of added complexity to the motion system and calibration. Physical or software offsets may be needed to properly align IDEX print heads, and so printers that automate this process reliably are integral to a decent multicolor or multi-material printing experience.
There are also dual-nozzle printers that have a single printhead but two nozzles that extrude independently. Compared to a single-nozzle 3D printer, these are a bit more flexible and can produce faster multi-material prints. Faster because less time is spent switching filaments and more versatile because the separate nozzles allow printing with varying nozzle diameters in a single print. Dual-nozzle printers do add the risk of oozing filament from the inactive nozzle affecting your print, though, so print-quality measures like ooze shields and prime towers may be necessary.
It’s a push-pull of factors, and each style of system offers some advantages over the others. Single-nozzle systems save on complexity and typically offer a rock-solid base printing experience with fewer calibration considerations. A toolchanger, meanwhile, excels at material flexibility and minimizing waste.
When selecting a multi-extrusion 3D printer, think about what you want to accomplish. If you’re just looking to print in multiple colors, a single-nozzle system is likely the most affordable and will keep upkeep to a minimum. If you want to print with soluble supports or different nozzle sizes, then you must look at multi-nozzle systems, be it IDEX, dual-nozzle, or a toolchanger.
Bambu Lab A1 Mini + AMS Lite
What’s Great
- It’s fast, with self-calibrating smarts
- High-uniformity prints
- Pleasant beginner-centric experience
Despite its mini size and name, the Bambu Lab A1 Mini is a surprisingly complete 3D printer, giving the full, slick, connected, and productive experience offered by the rest of Bambu Lab’s more premium lineup of 3D printers, in a compact form and slim price tag ($349) to boot. For that reason, we’re drawing attention to it as a low-cost entry point to multicolor printing. The possibilities for multi-material are limited, though, so bounce further down the list for more.
This cantilever-style 3D printer boasts a 180 x 180 x 180 mm build volume, automatic calibrations, flow compensation, motor noise compensation, plus a self-monitoring system that can alert you to issues and remedies. All of this is to say it’s a smart little cookie, and as far as active involvement is required from you, there isn’t really any. When you need to, you can make quick nozzle changes (no tools required) – just one of the many reasons the A1 Mini is a recommendation in many of our guides.
But multi-material and multicolor is why we’re here, so let’s get to it.
The Bambu Lab A1 Mini uses a companion device for its multi-filament printing. Called the AMS Lite, this device sits next to the printer, feeding filament through an array of guide tubes into a buffer that sits atop the print head. The AMS Lite is powered directly by the printer and connects via a single data/power cable.
Using Bambu Lab’s own materials offers the smoothest experience in so far as filament set up, given the company’s spools contain RFID tags that the AMS Lite can read and for spool details, and then convey this information to your computer.
Together, the A1 Mini and AMS Lite let you combine up to four different spools of filament in a single print job, be it multiple colors of the same material, or, to a limited degree, different materials.
The A1 Mini printer is only rated for lower-temp materials, such as PLA, PETG, PVA, and TPU. Of those, the AMS Lite cannot feed TPU and similar soft materials.
It’s a single-nozzle system, so to keep color transitions clean, some material purging is required. Historically, the printer’s default purge behavior has led to criticism of it being wasteful (which it certainly can be when printing small, colorful objects), but there are measures you can take to offset this, such as purging into an object’s infill or printing a dedicated purge object alongside your desired print.
Bambu Lab P1S + AMS
What’s Great
- Enclosed volume with temperature regulation
- Fast, high-quality printing & effective cooling
- Slick, connected software ecosystem
The Bambu Lab P1S is the enclosed successor to the company’s budget-conscious P1P, and, in combo with the AMS, it’s priced to match the P1P too. This single-extrusion 3D printer is built for speed, outputting high-quality prints in a fraction of the time of many other printers on the market.
Alone, it is not a multicolor or multi-material 3D printer. But, in combination with Bambu Lab’s Automatic Material System (AMS), a standalone box that houses four spools of filament, the P1S can use up to four spools in a single print – supercharging the printer’s abilities and making it a truly versatile multicolor (or multi-material) machine.
The P1S 3D printer alone will set you back $599. This gets you a 256 x 256 x 256 mm enclosed build volume and a print system with a direct extruder and hot end that heats to 300 °C. The AMS on its own would be a further ~$350, but you can shave $100 off the total by buying both together for ~$850.
One core distinction between Bambu Lab’s AMS and AMS Lite is that the standard AMS can be clustered up to four devices at a time, letting you create prints using 16 (that’s not a typo – 16) filaments in total.
Expect a smart, interconnected experience from the P1S. With a few added benefits, it’s functionally the same machine as the P1P, which, as of the beginning of 2023, has been our upgrade recommendation for beginners. The machine benefits from solid software and user experience underpinned by the Bambu Studio slicer and Bambu Handy companion app.
Handily, you don’t even need a split model for multicolor printing here – you can paint colors in the slicer, letting you configure colorful prints on the fly from single-piece models.
As a system for printing more than one filament, its strength lies in using materials of the same type. Temperature jumps for different material types will increase the print time.
As with the A1 Mini, the default nozzle purging seems excessive. Again, as with the A1, there are things you can do in your printing to minimize the waste.
That aside, it’s a workhorse of a printer that prints beautifully with zero effort from you to do so.
UltiMaker S5
What’s Great
- Powerful printer management software
- Simplified printing experience
- Print core system simplifies nozzle changes
Dual-nozzle, or “dependent dual extrusion”, is a segment of machine that has largely been abandoned by desktop 3D printer manufacturers. We imagine this is because most consumer needs in dual-extrusion printing are served by multi-material style add-ons.
That basically means that for authentic dependent dual extrusion, you’re looking to the likes of Ultimaker and Raise3D, which straddle the line for consumer levels of ease of use with pro-grade hardware. Insofar as a simple, productive machine that gets out of the way of you printing dual material prints, the UltiMaker S5 endures as a long-term favorite of ours.
The base UltiMaker S5 3D printer has a 330 x 240 x 300 mm build volume, and achieves dual extrusion 3D printing by way of UltiMaker’s swappable “print cores.” These compact hot ends can be quickly swapped in and out of the printer, with each tailored to a particular material and type of printing; from a PVA soluble-support specific core to a larger-bore toughened nozzle that’s best suited to filled, abrasive polymers. These print cores can be mixed for a print, giving you a lot of freedom in your printing to achieve particular print strategies.
To fully take advantage of what the S5 can offer, you have to commit to the ecosystem, with Pro bundle upgrades adding an enclosure and air filtration system, plus a material station for extended continuous printing or the possibility of changing material between prints without manual intervention. There’s also a speed kit upgrade that gooses the near-six-year-old S5’s print speeds closer to the default speeds offered by today’s consumer 3D printers from the likes of Bambu Lab, albeit mainly through larger nozzle sizes and software optimizations.
Its whole schtick is uptime, with a simple setup process the only thing standing in the way of you getting productive. UltiMaker’s software ecosystem begins with the free and open Cura slicing software, which has a simple UI through which you can select from a long list of material, find more in the company’s online material library (or create your own), and progresses up to the enterprise-centric UltiMaker Platform, which incorporates model management, printer management, online support, software plugins, and educational materials and certifications.
Snapmaker J1s
What’s Great
- Premium look and feel interacting with the printer
- Nicely-guided approach to calibration
- Productivity boosting IDEX print modes
There are not many IDEX-style 3D printers at a consumer-friendly price point. There are even fewer that pass muster. Of the systems we’ve tested, the Snapmaker J1s does. Despite a rocky launch (initially as the J1), and with a smidge of patience, the slick tank of a 3D printer can attain reliable, consistent dual-extruder-pure performance for its ~$1,100 price tag.
The J1s excels in the main area where you need an IDEX to – calibration. Snapmaker’s system sidesteps a fully manual process, automating X- and Y-axis offsetting, and visually guides you through bed tramming on its gorgeous, 5-inch touchscreen display.
Additionally, your $1,000 investment is buying a premium-feeling chunk of hardware, too. Its die-cast frame and stamped metal side panels, lid, and base all feel quality, and the heavy-duty motion system runs on linear rails. In just about every direction, the J1s is a tank. The presence this projects certainly validates the spend, and while it may sound superficial so far, this heft contributes to its stability when chucking two printheads around at what the company says is up to 350 mm/s print speeds.
You get a 320 x 200 x 200 mm build area to work with, with two quick-swap print heads whizzing about this volume. These print heads can be upgraded to different nozzle sizes or the recently released hardened-nozzle variants that expand the J1s’ compatibility with trickier technical materials that would quickly wear out a standard brass nozzle.
In terms of general printing, the J1s offers a thoroughly modern printing experience, with vibration compensation and linear advance addressing extrusion artifacts at speed. Being an IDEX means that the J1s has independent print heads that can operate in a number of productivity-boosting modes, provided you’re comfortable with the possibility of reducing your print volume per model.
It also means filament wastage and downtime between material changes are minimized, with a slim priming tower being the only default “waste” generated and, depending on the materials used, only short heating phases between extruder changes.
Spool placement is a tad bit annoying, and compounds the sub-optimal filament pathing that sees the guide tubes rubbing on the printer’s lid and its sheer bend into the print heads themselves. Snapmaker’s Luban slicing software (which the J1s shares with the company’s 3-in-1 CNC and laser engraving-capable machines) does its job but offers fewer options for fine-tuning your print than many other popular slicers today. General wisdom for the J1s seems to be to ditch Luban and use your preferred slicer, such as Orca Slicer, PrusaSlicer, ideaMaker, or Cura. Snapmaker offers configuration files for Cura, so for a beginner, that is likely the best place to start.
Original Prusa XL
What’s Great
- Massive material flexibility
- Scales to your printing
- Quick, premium printing experience
Prusa Research’s 360 x 360 x 360 mm build-volumed XL does a solid job carving out a useful niche of the multi-material space that few other machines manage. Seen by the company as an expert machine for the material versatility it offers, we’re inclined to agree that the Prusa XL unlocks an awful lot when decked out in its full five-toolhead configuration.
Being a toolchanger, it offers the advantage of completely independent print heads – meaning the materials do not share a print head and consequently do not risk clogging from the changing of viscosity, fillers, and temperatures. Each print head is capable of up to 290 °C and the heatbed of up to 120 °C, meaning reliable performance with the likes of tough filament like Polycarbonate is also possible. Downtime between extrusions is minimized, too, since each active print head can sit at temperature ready for use. The toolchange mechanism is quick and performs consistently. Consequently, the actual printing uptime of the printer is considerably higher than that of single-nozzle systems.
The XL’s heatbed is segmented into 16 individual tiles that can heat individually, depending on where and how much of the plate you are using. The Prusa XL effectively adapts to your printing, be it material or scale, and reduces waste where it can.
The line between a toolchanger and IDEX is a little blurry, with both sharing many of the same advantages over single-nozzle systems. This comes, of course, at the expense of more moving parts, and more points of failure, but in the XL’s case, Prusa Research has a solid track record of stringent quality control and updating better or new functionality into its machines.
A recently released enclosure accessory improves the XL’s stability when printing higher-temperature technical materials, and adds air filtration for a more office-friendly experience.
Other Machines
Our latest reworking of this guide leaves us almost with a blank slate for other machines in the wings of consideration. Only almost, though. We’re testing more multi-material multicolor systems, including the Original Prusa MMU3, which is said to boast more reliable performance with easier maintenance possibilities and a better user experience. We shall see.
Likewise, the Anycubic Kobra 3 Combo is on our bench. Duking it out with the likes of Bambu Lab’s A1 and A1 Mini, this affordable solution to colorful 3D printing certainly has some advantages, particularly in terms of filament storage, but our experience so far has been a bit… buggy. Testing continues, and Anycubic is pumping out the software updates. We’ll have more on this printer soon.
What's Changed?
We’ll be keeping track of the major changes to this guide here. The ins and the outs: here are all the changes we’ve made over the last 12 months.
Update – July 26, 2024: It’s overhaul time. Addressing the many comments we’ve received that point out that many of our picks were not strictly, technically, soulfully, dual extrusion technologies, we’ve reworked our guide to better accommodate the spread of different approaches to multi-extrusion 3D printing. From single-nozzle systems – which are here to stay, growing in number, and completely suitable for those only interested in color printing (something you’d need a dual extrusion 3D printer for, in the past) – to dependant dual extrusion, IDEX, toolchangers, and who knows what else in the future, this guide is for you, acerbic commenters *raises glass*.
Update – February 17, 2024: With the removal of the Flashforge Creator Pro 2 as our top pick, this update sees the total exclusion of multi-nozzle 3D printers. Though its purging may be a lot, Bambu Lab’s Automatic Material Systems are just proving too effective to prefer the hassle of a dual nozzle for most users. That could change, though, as we’re planning to test the Original Prusa XL more extensively and have added it to the Other Machines section in the interim.
Update – November 12, 2023: The P1S, offered at a price to match the P1P when bought with the AMS, has pushed its open-frame variant out of this list. We’ve also tested the Snapmaker J1’s Cooling Kit, which effectively upgrades the machine to the company’s J1S variant of the printer. This is detailed in the Other Machines section.
How We Test
If there’s one thing that testing a lot of 3D printers has taught us, it’s that maintaining a broad benchmarking scheme for 3D printers is impractical for getting a sense of what a 3D printer is like to use and live with. Holding a sub-$200 self-assembled printer for hobbyists to the standard of a $6,000 production machine designed to handle engineering-grade materials won’t tell you that the former is a breeze to set up and the latter a tangled web of firmware updates, buggy systems, and unreliable performance.
We want our reviews and buyer’s guides to cut straight to the chase. What is it like to use a printer? What are the defining features like? What didn’t we like? And, more importantly, is it worth the money? We don’t want to get bogged down benchmarking numbers out of context or hung up on issues affected by more variables than we can control.
Who Are We Testing For?
Our buyer’s guides and reviews take the intended end user of a 3D printer into consideration. We imagine what they’re likely to do with it and focus the testing on challenging this. If we have a large-volume printer, for example, we’ll be printing – surprise, surprise – large prints, making use of the entire bed, and checking the performance at the limits of Z-height.
Other points of consideration for what makes the best 3D printer include ease of use, supporting software, and repair options. If something goes wrong, how easy is it to fix the machine? Does the documentation or customer service provide adequate information?
We strive to answer all these questions and more in our quest to find the best 3D printer for you.
Why Should You Trust Us?
Trust is important to All3DP, so our product testing policy is strict. When sourcing test units from a manufacturer, we do so under a zero guarantees policy. We make no guarantee of coverage in exchange for the printer, and the first time a manufacturer sees what we think is when we publish the content.
If a manufacturer doesn’t reclaim the unit after testing is complete, it is donated to a local cause or goes into deep storage for responsible disposal later. We occasionally buy machines for testing, too. In such cases, machines purchased by All3DP either remain in the office for team usage or are donated or disposed of in the manner described above.
Manufacturers or benefactors donating units for review do not influence the outcome or content of the reviews we produce. To the best of our ability, we will investigate abnormal issues with the manufacturer to glean better context or get insight into their awareness of the problem. But we make no excuses for poor design or bad QA.
How We Monetize Our Content
One method we monetize our content at no additional cost to the reader is through affiliate product links. If you click on a shopping link featured in our buyer’s guides and reviews, we may receive a small commission from the store if make a purchase. This is at no additional cost to you. For more meaty content policy details, we cover it all in the advertising and commercial activities section of our terms of use.
Which 3D Printer is Best for Me?
For most readers, our top recommended 3D printers are your best bet in a given category.
But, facing the fact that there is no one-size-fits-all solution to home 3D printing, we’re here to help. Here are some pointers to orient you in this terminologically dense but wonderful world. (A word on terminology, we have a handy glossary of terms to know at to bottom of this article.)
Beginner’s printers
Many 3D printers pitched for “beginners” or children go to such lengths to baby the user that they quickly become claustrophobic experiences. You will encounter more limitations than possibilities as your experience grows. If you aren’t satisfied with a “beginner” 3D printer’s features, we’d recommend a budget pick instead. You’ll save a little money, and the opportunity to learn by doing is far greater. And if something goes wrong, there are giant tribes online for each printer that have already asked and answered every question under the sun.
Follow the crowd
While the general quality of budget 3D printers has dramatically improved in recent years, quality control is often lacking. While manufacturers with large user bases are adapting to meet the demands of their newfound fans, including better customer support, there are usually better wells of knowledge to be found in the owners themselves, who contribute to the vast forum knowledge bases for some 3D printers.
Reviews matter
We have zero obligation to manufacturers to sugarcoat what we find, and the first time they read it is when you do too. That’s why you can trust our reviews. We don’t pander to anyone, and our experience with the printer is what you read on the page.
If you can’t find any information about a printer you’d like to know more about, let us know at editors@all3dp.com.
Understand the costs
A 3D printer for the home is rarely ever a one-and-done investment. Besides the continual purchase of materials, maintenance costs on perishable printer parts can stack up – think nozzles on an FDM printer or FEP film on an MSLA machine. Of course, parts can wear down or break, too, meaning sourcing replacement parts is a sensible consideration if you plan to print long-term. Printers with roots in the RepRap movement and open-source designs will be easiest to source parts for, with off-the-shelf components part and parcel of the design ethos behind them. Enclosed-design printers aimed at beginners may offer the gentlest introduction to printing, but your options to source spare parts will often be limited to the manufacturer. That’s if you can even get to and diagnose the problem.
Know why you want to 3D print
The thrill of a new hobby will only sustain you so far. Being the desktopification of an otherwise complicated manufacturing process, expect to encounter, sooner or later, problems with a home 3D printer – even the occasional show-stopping issue. Having an end goal in mind for your printing gives you purpose and a reason to learn the solutions to the problems. Printing simply because it looks cool will result in a small mountain of useless doodads and, eventually, disinterest at the hands of cost, frustration, and the buildup of useless plastic trash.
When you do know, pick a printer that will make it easier
Most home 3D printers are single extrusion fused deposition modeling machines, meaning a single printable material extruded through a single nozzle. Versatile enough for many applications through material compatibility, they’re safe machines to start with. But if you know you need to print objects with challenging geometries or semi-enclosed volumes, a dual extrusion printer would make your printing far easier. Likewise, single objects that need to have different material properties will only be achievable with dual extrusion. A resin printer will be the way to go for high-detail miniatures. Understand the technologies to find a printer that best suits your needs.
Pick a printer appropriate for your space
While the size of FDM 3D printers can vary greatly, the spillover is small. You’ll get some emissions from the filament melting, cloying the air, making it inadvisable to spend prolonged periods nearby. Generally speaking, the cleanup is minor and relatively easy to contain, depending on the models you print.
Resin 3D printing, however, is dramatically different and has unique demands that should make you think twice before investing. To varying degrees, the resin is smelly and toxic to you and the environment. It requires dedicated cleanup stations and personal protective equipment. You typically need 95 %+ isopropanol to clean prints and dissolve uncured resin from surfaces.
All printers should be operated in well-ventilated spaces, but this applies doubly to resin 3D printers.
Kickstarter – It’s complicated
While many excellent 3D printers have gotten their big break on Kickstarter, there’s the unavoidable issue that the platform is not a store. You are not buying a printer when you commit money to a campaign on Kickstarter; you are backing a vision. It’s putting money into the pot to help a company or person trying to achieve something.
You get nothing in return if a project is grossly mishandled and the money disappears. Often what you do get is the beta version of the product. You are paying for early access and all the wrinkles across all stages of the product that come with it.
We’re seeing more big-name companies turning to Kickstarter than ever to launch their products – it’s a safe way for them to gauge demand and drum up some interest against the pressure of a ticking countdown. Despite many companies being capable of outright launching products, they go cap-in-hand to enthusiasts with the promise of shiny new tech. Don’t be that user unless you absolutely must be the first to use a product and have money you can afford to lose.
We don’t think it’s worth the risk, but in the interest of cool new tech, report on new campaigns with our news coverage. You will never see a Kickstarter 3D printer in our buyer’s guides unless it has completed its campaign and the printer is widely available at retail, with all the protections that come with buying from a store.
Best Professional 3D Printers
But where’s the UltiMaker? Or Formlabs? What about Raise3D? Desktop Metal?
In the past, we’d list the best professional 3D printers alongside what we consider consumer or hobby-oriented machines (the printers we mainly focus on). An apples and oranges comparison, we know.
With this in mind, we created All3DP Pro, a wing of our content exclusively covering the professional applications of 3D printing and additive manufacturing solutions. Here’s a selection of articles covering the best 3D printers for professional use to get you started.
- Top 6 Professional 3D Printers Under $10,000
- The Best 3D Printers for Small Businesses in 2025
- The Best Metal 3D Printers in 2025
- Best Desktop-Size Carbon Fiber 3D Printers: Our 10 Picks
- The Best Carbon Fiber 3D Printers for Industrial Use
- SLS 3D Printer Buyer's Guide 2025
- The Best Independent Dual Extruder (IDEX) 3D Printers
- The Best Ceramic / Pottery 3D Printers
- The Best Dental 3D Printers 2025
- PEEK 3D Printer Guide & All You Need to Know
Glossary of Terms
Choosing the best 3D printer is tricky, not least because the terminology surrounding 3D printing is dense. Here are some need-to-know terms, their explanations, and useful links to help you on your way to 3D printing mastery.
FDM: Fused deposition modeling, otherwise known as FDM, is a 3D printing process that extrudes heated thermoplastic material through a moving nozzle to build an object layer by layer. FDM is a trademarked term, which led to the RepRap open-source movement to coin the alternative phrase “fused filament fabrication” (FFF), but the two are interchangeable.
Filament: Filament is the base material used to 3D print objects via FDM. The filament is typically a solid thermoplastic fed to a print head, heated to its melting point, and extruded through a small nozzle. Filament is commonly available in spools of either 1.75 mm, 2.85 mm, or 3 mm diameter widths – dimensions that dictate the printers that can use them.
G-Code: G-code is the machine language used to instruct computerized tools such as 3D printers. Giving coordinates and instructions for tool heads and other non-movement functions, it is almost exclusively generated by slicing software. It comprises a library of commands to control specific actions like motion, speed, rotation, depth, and other related switches and sensors used in a machine’s operation. You can get to grips with G-code in no time with our guide to G-code commands.
Heated bed: This is a build plate that is heated so that the few layers of extruded plastic are prevented from cooling too quickly and then warping. A heated bed is essential for working with ABS or PETG materials but not so much with PLA.
Hot end: This is the cluster of components that heat and melt the plastic for deposition through the nozzle.
Extruder: Used by some to describe the entire system of parts that pushes and melts filament, extruder can also refer specifically to the motor and accompanying gears that grip the filament, feeding it to the hot end. How the extruder is arranged can affect the printer and its capabilities. There are two common arrangements: Bowden and direct. It’s a messy subject with overlapping terms and technical explanations; our guide to 3D printer extruders gives you all the knowledge to make sense of it.
Bowden: A style of extruder that sees the extruder motor positioned away from the hot end – typically the structural frame of the printer or on one end of the X-axis gantry. So-called for the Bowden cable and its action of allowing a wire to move freely within tightly constraining tubing, the Bowden extruder feeds filament through a PTFE tube directly into the hot end.
Direct Extruder: The other commonly seen extruder type, a direct extruder sees the extruder motor and associated feeding mechanism mounted directly to the hot end, with barely any distance between the feed and the melt zone of the hot end.
Dual Extrusion: Some 3D printers carry two extruders/hot ends, allowing them to incorporate multiple colors or materials into the same print job. While the obvious appeal comes from the possibility for decorative two-tone prints, the real benefit of dual extrusion systems is combining different materials, such as dissolvable support material, to enable the printing of otherwise impossible geometries. It’s a deep topic worth exploring more in our guide to all you need to know about dual extrusion.
PLA: Polylactic Acid, otherwise known as PLA, is a thermoplastic commonly used as a material for printing with FDM 3D printers. It’s easy to work with and is available in many colors and finishes. PLA is somewhat brittle – don’t expect to print strong items with it – but it remains popular for decorative printing thanks to its low cost. You can learn more about PLA in our guide dedicated to the topic.
SLA: Stereolithography is a 3D printing technology that falls under the broader process of vat photopolymerization. The term is often (incorrectly) used to describe all methods of vat polymerization – really, it’s a particular technology that uses a directed laser beam to trace layers into a vat of liquid photopolymer resin. Alongside SLA, other technologies are considered vat polymerization.
Resin: The material used in desktop SLA, DLP, and LCD (MSLA) 3D printers. A blend of chemicals that includes a photoinitiator, resin solidifies under ultraviolet light. Highly toxic and difficult to clean up after a spill, care, attention, and personal protective equipment are musts when working with resin. It is an unpleasant material, and wastage must be disposed of in accordance with local laws. Despite all the warnings, it’s the only way to go for intricate detail.
LCD 3D Printer: A common term for resin 3D printers that use an LCD as a layer mask over UV light. The de facto standard in inexpensive resin 3D printers, the technology is cheap and widely used. The LCD panels are consumable, though, with monochrome LCDs typically having lifespans in the low 1,000s of hours.
MSLA: Mask stereolithography (MSLA) is a term coined by Structo but popularized by Prusa Research. It refers to, basically, the LCD 3D printer as described above.
Micron: One-thousandth of a millimeter. This unit of measurement is commonly used in 3D printing as a value to indicate accuracy, resolution, or surface finish.
Slicer: 3D printing works by building an object layer by layer. A slicer is a program that divides a 3D model into flat layers and generates the machine code for the printer to trace out said layers. The output of a slicer for FDM 3D printers is typically G-code, which gives instructions and coordinates for the printer to execute. Our deep dive explaining what exactly a slicer is gives good foundational knowledge. Many popular slicers are free and open source. Others are proprietary and machine-specific. It’s an essential tool for successful 3D printing.
STL: STL is the most popular file format for 3D printing. Developed by 3D Systems in the ’80s, the STL file type only contains the surface geometry of a 3D object. Despite industry efforts to move onto more efficient and data-rich formats such as 3mf, STL endures and is the most commonly found 3D model file type on popular 3D model file repositories. We explain in more detail in our guide to what exactly STL is.
Open Source: The term given to a product, typically software, but also applicable to hardware that is freely open for others to modify and redistribute according to their needs. In 3D printing, this is often in the spirit that individuals are free to modify, improve, and share changes to the source material for others to test, iterate, and reciprocate. Open source licenses govern the fair and correct usage of open source works, giving terms and conditions that ensure the freedom of access to the creation and any derivatives.
RepRap: A project started in 2005 by Dr. Adrian Bowyer, a mechanical engineering lecturer at the University of Bath. Created to develop a replicating rapid prototype, a low-cost machine capable of printing replacement parts for itself or other new machines. The vast majority of desktop 3D printers stem from the work laid down by the RepRap project. We have a fascinating alternative RepRap Wiki page on the topic if you want to dig deeper.
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