Even with all the Controversy that rightfully surrounds them, I still think that this could be well worth Discussing given thier Track Record.
While it is likely just Marketing Jumbo, the Whole “Rethink Personal Manufacturing” stuff does make me think that this double extrusion stuff is more than just 2 Lossless Filament changers. What do you folks think? What will be the Killer Feature of the H2D?
Wait, they’re adding vinyl cutting to the extruder? What in the mad science hell?
I can’t see a world where that works well unless the cutter is on a different part. I’d imagine that a vinyl cutting head has entirely different design considerations and constraints than a 3D filament extruder.
That is the rumor so far. Since the heads are going to be swapped out, it’s not difficult at that point. Vinyl cutters are pretty simple 2D machines. All you need is a knife, some rollers to feed the stock, and a couple of stepper motors to move the stock rollers and turn the knife. They can be quite large or small enough to sit on a desktop like a paper printer. I don’t see being able to make stickers as something a lot of people who are interested 3D printing are all that interested in. But maybe I’m wrong about that.
One thing I do know is history has a good number of examples of companies that thought they could make a multi-purpose machine of some kind. And that they would sell like hotcakes. None of them proved to worth the hassle of the setup time or turned out to be particularly good at any one thing. And they all proved in the end, to not be very popular with their customer base either.