FormNext 2024: Rotating Nozzle Toolhead (Patreon)

Today at Formnext, I came across a fascinating extruder design from QUALUP, a French company pushing the boundaries of 3D printing. They’ve developed a hotend with a unique rectangular nozzle design.

This innovative nozzle extrudes material in a ribbon-like form rather than the traditional round tip. The brilliance of this design lies in its ability to rotate, enabling unparalleled precision in material deposition.

This technology facilitates sharper edges and smoother surfaces, making it particularly advantageous for creating complex patterns. The nozzle's infinite rotation capability dynamically adjusts its orientation relative to the print path, improving trajectory control and minimizing material gaps or overflow.

The team behind this hotend was incredibly transparent about their development process. One particularly exciting detail: they managed to control the nozzle rotation using a stock Klipper setup. By configuring a second extruder in Klipper and leveraging its extrusion and retraction capabilities, they can rotate the nozzle left or right. It's a bit of a hack, but hey, if it works, it’s not wrong!