This week the multicolor war shifts into a higher gear: Flashforge Creator 5 units are already shipping with a 7-second tool change. Plus, some homegrown pride: Spanish company 3Dresyn has unveiled a resin that "melts back" with heat so you can reprint it, and the University of Alicante has developed a 3D-printed modular prosthetic. And more: OrcaSlicer adds free thermal simulation, and the PTAB delivers a split ruling in the Stratasys vs. Bambu Lab patent war. Let's go. 🔥
🔥 Featured
🔧 Flashforge Creator 5: 4-head tool changer with 7-second swaps
The Flashforge Creator 5 ($649) and Creator 5 Pro ($799) are now reaching early backers. Their secret weapon is FlashSwap, a four-head tool changer system that, instead of purging filament to switch colors (which generates mountains of waste), swaps the entire hotend. At TCT Asia 2026, they demoed a live swap in just 7 seconds.
The promise: up to 500% faster multicolor printing and near-zero purge waste. This is a different approach from Bambu's AMS or Creality's CFS — both of which switch filament through a single hotend — and is closer in philosophy to tool changer printers like the Prusa XL. The Pro version adds a heated enclosed chamber reaching 65°C and HEPA filtration, designed for engineering-grade materials like ABS or nylon.
This keeps fueling the multicolor war we've been covering for months: the Bambu A2L and Creality KliTek in issue #011, and the Snapmaker Full Spectrum in issue #012. Every manufacturer is betting on a different architecture to solve the same problem: multicolor printing without wasting half a spool. As always, treat the speed claims ("500% faster," 7-second swap) for what they are: manufacturer demo figures. One weak spot flagged in early reviews: nozzle changes are still manual and require screws. Read the full breakdown at 3DPrinting.com →
🧪 Materials
🧪 3Dresyn launches a circular Spanish resin that "un-cures" with heat
It's always satisfying when one of the most exciting stories of the fortnight comes from a Spanish company. 3Dresyn has launched Circular RePrint Bio, a depolymerizable resin for resin printers (SLA/DLP/LCD, 385–405 nm) with a property that sounds like magic: you print a solid part, then apply a thermal trigger and the part reverts back to reusable liquid. A true circular cycle — liquid → solid → liquid — with zero material thrown away.
The magic is in the depolymerizable chemistry. Depending on the variant—DP80 or DP150—the part "dissolves" when heated to 80°C or 150°C, recovering the resin as a syrup you can reuse for printing. The most obvious applications are sacrificial molds and rapid prototyping: print, use, recover the material, and repeat. It's the same sustainability wave we covered in Weekly #011 with Yokohama's recyclable resin, but this time with a Spanish stamp—and already available to buy.
Now for the cold shower, no pun intended: the price is brutal. A 1 kg bottle runs around €700 (roughly $928), and the biocompatible variant pushes up to €833/kg. Kerry Stevenson at Fabbaloo put it bluntly: "extraordinarily expensive for what is a resin." At those price points, this is strictly a niche product for now—jewelry, dental, R&D—not something you'd use to print minis on the weekend. In fact, at the time of writing it was showing as sold out on their website.
Even so, the direction matters. A Spanish company pushing circular resin forward—even if the early pricing is steep, as with any emerging technology—is exactly the kind of innovation that moves the industry ahead. One worth watching. Worth noting that pricing and performance figures come from the manufacturer; there are no independent real-world reviews yet. Read the Fabbaloo coverage →
💻 Software
💻 OrcaSlicer Gets Free Thermal Simulation via Helio Additive
Good news for FDM printers looking to improve results without buying new hardware. Helio Additive has integrated its "Dragon" simulation engine directly into OrcaSlicer: with a new "Slice with Helio" button, you upload your job to the cloud and get back a thermal map of your part in under a minute, for free—predicting where overheating will occur, where adhesion might fail, and which areas are likely to cause problems.
The idea is to move from the classic "print and pray" approach to "simulate, adjust, and print smart." Just specify your printer, material, and chamber temperature, and the system returns a visual Thermal Quality Index. Simulation is free; you only pay if you want the system to automatically optimize print speeds. Helio says it has already characterized around 45 materials, with a goal of reaching 250 by year's end.
It's a welcome development for the OrcaSlicer ecosystem, which was front and center in the legal drama with Bambu Lab we covered back in #009. After all that controversy, seeing the open-source slicer gain serious industrial-grade features—at no cost—is a reminder of why the community rallies around it so hard. Read the Fabbaloo coverage →
💵 Industry
💵 PTAB Issues Split Ruling in Stratasys vs. Bambu Lab Patent War
On June 10th, the U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) handed down its first ruling in the legal battle between Stratasys—the longtime giant of 3D printing—and Bambu Lab. The outcome was a mixed bag: certain Stratasys patent claims were invalidated, while others were allowed to stand. The dispute centers on technologies as commonplace as heated beds and purge towers, which are found in virtually every modern 3D printer.
It's worth clarifying that this is a separate chapter from the Bambu Lab vs. OrcaSlicer saga we followed for weeks: this isn't about software or forks, but a patent infringement lawsuit between two hardware manufacturers. Stratasys alleges that Bambu Lab infringed its patented technologies; Bambu Lab is fighting back by arguing those patents should never have been valid in the first place. PTAB has now sided—at least partially—with each of them.
This is far from over: the PTAB's final decision is expected around July 14th, and the main trial in a Texas federal court hasn't even begun. Why should makers care? Because if Stratasys managed to lock down fundamental technologies like heated beds, it could drive up costs and create serious headaches for the affordable printer manufacturers we all rely on. This is a lawsuit worth keeping a close eye on. Read the full analysis at 3D Printing Industry →
🤖 Ciencia WTF
🤖 University of Alicante 3D Prints a Modular Prosthetic Limb
We close with another Spanish success story to be proud of. The BioFAB research group at the University of Alicante, led scientifically by engineer Javier Esclapés, has unveiled a 3D printed modular upper-limb prosthesis. The clever part lies in the modular design: each component is printed in whichever material best suits its function, and the socket that sits against the skin is biocompatible and washable.
The modular approach is a smart one, because it makes repairs and adjustments faster and more affordable: if a part breaks or the user grows (think pediatric prosthetics), only that individual module needs to be reprinted rather than the entire device. It's the same accessible medical 3D printing philosophy that connects to the frontier of bioprinting we covered in Weekly #010 with the 3D printed human cornea.
The fact that this is coming out of a Spanish public university is a reminder that 3D printing isn't just about printing minis or keychains: the same technology sitting on your desk is genuinely changing lives. Hats off to the Alicante team. Read the coverage at 3DPrint.com →
💬 Our Take This Week
A standout week for Spanish 3D printing. On one hand, 3Dresyn is pushing circular resin forward—pricey, yes, but genuinely pioneering—and on the other, the University of Alicante is proving that 3D printing saves lives in the medical space. Having two homegrown stories of this caliber in a single issue doesn't happen every week. Meanwhile, the ongoing storylines keep moving: the multi-color arms race gains a new contender with Flashforge's tool changer, OrcaSlicer gets smarter with thermal simulation, and the legal front shifts from software forks to hardware patents.
The pattern holds: the industry is maturing, becoming more sustainable, and more accessible at the same time. And increasingly, with a Spanish touch. On our end, we're still in the trenches: resin, filaments, free tools, and this newsletter every Monday. 💪
❓ This week's frequently asked questions
What is a depolymerizable resin and what is it used for?
It's a 3D printing resin that, after being printed as a solid, can be converted back into reusable liquid by applying heat (80 °C or 150 °C in the case of 3Dresyn's Circular RePrint Bio). It's mainly used for sacrificial molds and circular prototyping — you print the part, use it, then recover the material to print again. Its main limitation right now is the price: around €700 per kilogram.
What advantage does a tool-changer have over an AMS system?
A tool-changer like the one on the Flashforge Creator 5 Pro (FlashSwap) swaps the entire printhead — with filament already loaded — instead of purging and reloading filament through a single hotend. The benefit is dramatically less purge waste and potentially faster multicolor printing. The downside is greater mechanical complexity and, typically, a higher price tag.
What does Helio's thermal simulation in OrcaSlicer actually do?
It lets you predict, before you ever start a print, where a part might overheat, warp, or suffer poor layer adhesion. You upload the job to the cloud directly from OrcaSlicer and get a free thermal map in under a minute. This helps you adjust the model or print settings before wasting filament and hours on a print that was destined to fail.
Does the Stratasys lawsuit against Bambu Lab affect my printer?
Not directly, at least for now. It's an ongoing patent dispute between two manufacturers, with no final resolution yet — the PTAB's final decision is expected around July 14, 2026. The theoretical long-term risk is that if Stratasys succeeded in enforcing patents over fundamental technologies like heated beds, it could drive up costs or hinder the development of affordable printers. For now, it's something to keep an eye on, not to lose sleep over.