JJ Shankles: Welcome back to another episode of the Co-Extrusion Podcast. So we've been talking about what we want to see in 2026. And as we were talking about this, we were just talking about how many of the projects we see are going away from open source. Like, it's not as common that every project is open source anymore. And it's kind of disappointing, you know, right? Jerry: Yeah, you know, I, I kind of have like mixed feelings about it, right? So I love the idea of open source, because the community, the maker community, it's incredible. And people like they dedicate so much time to projects to make things bigger and better. But then at the same time, you know, there's only so much that the open source community can do to make to like, evolve, right? JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Jerry: I mean, think about ⁓ in the the Voron world, like the the carrot feeder or whatever it is, right? ⁓ The multi feeder, right? So that's an open source, multi color, multi material feeder ⁓ for printing. And that was basically the only thing that we had for a long time. But then bamboo comes in and they make the AMS and it's like that's completely closed source thing. So I have mixed feelings about it, right? JJ Shankles: Yes. ⁓ yeah. Yeah. Jerry: ⁓ I don't know. I don't know. It's a weird world to be in. JJ Shankles: Yeah, I feel like some of these, when a company does make a closed source project, kind of locking off things, but when they can make it so good, there's kind of that trade-off of like, yeah, I would rather have something that works really well and I pay for it rather than an open source project. But I also love open source projects, and I do feel like I don't contribute enough to open source projects. Like, it's one thing when talking about this, like, well, there's the paid model or there's the free open source, and it's like... I probably should pay someone for Clipper, but I don't know who to pay. I feel like I have benefited so much for it, but I've not specifically donated to the project. But, yeah. Jerry: That's so true. Yeah. And kind of, guess, going along with that very specifically, it wouldn't hurt my feelings for a lot of these brands that are, I say a lot of, but pretty much everyone that's still, pretty much everyone's using Clipper just about. mean, Bamboo's not, and I don't think Prusa is either, but it wouldn't hurt my feelings if these other big brands like start to contribute some towards open source. I remember at one point when Soval did the SV08, JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Jerry: they claimed they were gonna donate to the Voron Project. I don't know if it ever happened. But it kind of like going along. JJ Shankles: Yeah. and sometimes I will randomly hear about that a company is funding. I remember hearing that Creality was one of the major contributors to Marlin Project. And it was like, oh, why didn't I know this? Why don't we know Creality to the Marlin firmware? Monetary. They were just sponsoring that project. Jerry: contributor in terms of monetary or in terms of development? ⁓ Interesting. JJ Shankles: because they were using it so much that they were contributing to it financially. And it was like, that's cool. Why don't I know about this? Like, why is this some random podcast where someone mentioned it? And I was like, that's awesome. Jerry: Huh. Yeah, imagine this, right? Like you just said you have no idea who to pay to contribute towards Clipper. I have no idea who to pay. Everyone watching this and probably all of their friends don't know who to pay to contribute to Clipper, right? Like I know I could talk to someone that knows, but I don't. So JJ Shankles: Yeah Jerry: How awesome would like I would pay one extra dollar on every single 3d printer that I buy and donate right like how many printers is Creality and bamboo and all of them selling thousands and thousands of printers like if one like I say a dollar as if it's like ⁓ wow but I mean seriously when you sum up the probably JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Jerry: tens to hundreds of thousands of printers. It starts to add up. JJ Shankles: It adds up a lot, and how much that would change things. ⁓ I did look on their website and they said there's no place on the Clipper website to donate. They say it's free software and they do list some sponsors of BigTree Tech and Obiko are the only two sponsors they list specifically on the Clipper.3D website. Jerry: Interesting. How am I not surprised that BigTreeTek... I... that... I use very few BigTreeTek products, but every time I see one, I want to own it and I want to use it. it's just... they're so niche, but like so good. I just... JJ Shankles: Yeah, Big Trash Shack, that's an awesome company. Hahaha Yeah, like whenever upgrading I've been using my VORON a lot recently and so been rethinking the tool head or the hot end because currently it's a bunch of wires and I would love to change it to a CAN bus ⁓ and it's immediately ⁓ I go to victory tech like see what they have and they have some beautiful looking circuit board and how it's connected and it's like but then I'd have to go back into the firmware and relearn how I set this up four years ago or something like Jerry: Of course they've got it. Of course. ⁓ yeah. JJ Shankles: It's like relearning what past JJ did is probably the biggest deterrent to me figuring it out. Jerry: Yeah. If I had to go to some of my clipper machines, that would probably be a problem as well. But yeah, I just going back to that that thought before when I I feel like I talk about my trip to China a lot. just think it was such an incredible trip. But when I went there, I toured the Creality factory. So Crowdy has I think it's either three or four factories. I toured their biggest JJ Shankles: Yeah. But yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Jerry: fact or their newest biggest factory. When I walked through the shipping department, I don't even know if you want to call it shipping department, the warehouse where they store all their products. When I tell you it was, I mean, it was the size of what, well, I'll say Walmart for all of our US listeners. What's the Walmart competitor in like Europe? I have no idea. JJ Shankles: Yeah. don't know if they have anything that big. Jerry: How big is Walmart like 250,000 square feet? What is that in square meters? Right? I keep having this problem. Huge, massive warehouse. I mean, stacked like three layers of printers, K1C, K1 Max, K2, K2, all these things, $1 for each one. I, this is a case where I feel like JJ Shankles: Massive, yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Jerry: A lot of us would probably be very willing to chip in. JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. If all our printers cost $1 more, yeah, that would be totally worth it because it would... I think software is what changes the printers. Upgrading your firmware is way bigger than upgrading your motors or something like that. That's going to be the biggest improvement to your printer is supporting the firmware that's running it. Yeah. Jerry: Exactly. So, so we've got Clipper. ⁓ I can't remember we talked about this all ⁓ offline or if we talked about it right as we started but ⁓ we've got ⁓ our slicers. So brain fart ⁓ or yeah orca slicer which I know was built on perusa slicer but figure out ⁓ yeah, what you don't want crowd to pay JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Orca slicer. Jerry: to pay Prusa, but let's, you know, you got to a slicer. You've got, you've got Clipper. You've got, ⁓ all of these like model sharing sites, like printables, like even if print, I know again, Prusa owns printables, but like, many brands are utilizing products from someone else, but they're all free to the consumer. Like in some way is there's gotta be some way to commercialize contribution. Does that make sense? JJ Shankles: Yes. Yeah. Mm-hmm, yeah. Yeah, it's this like that we're all kind of building on the backs of open source projects and I really don't want them to go away because if, I mean currently every brand is using Orca Slicer to make their own. I can look at my bottom of my computer right now, I've got pretty much every brand, Snapmaker, ⁓ not Prusa, that one's actually different, Flashforge, Elegoo. Jerry: Thanks Yeah. JJ Shankles: Crality's kind of bamboo lab is definitely like every single brand is based off orcaslicer nowadays. Jerry: They all are. Artillery Slicer. We're talking the small brands. Let's talk about those small brands. The small brands that are too small to have software departments. not only do they take Orca Slicer and I mean, I almost don't even want to call it reskinning, right? They don't have their software development team is and this is fine to be a small brand, but their software development team is so small. JJ Shankles: Artillery. Mm-hmm. ⁓ yeah. Jerry: It's literally like sticking. It's like putting a sticker pack in. we put our brand logo and our colors and that's it. Yeah, and so sure, you've got some people like Creality, which technically they are using some version of Orca Slicer, but so incredibly heavily modified, right? Bamboo is doing it. Heavily modified to a degree, right? But like JJ Shankles: Yeah. And take features away. And that's it. Mm-hmm. Jerry: I mean, Artillery Slicer. If any of you guys have an artillery printer, it is Orca Slicer with the artillery word in the top left corner just pasted. JJ Shankles: Yeah, and it's the same with Snapmaker and Elegoo. Those are the two that I've used a lot where it's like, this is just a worse version of it. The whole integration with the printers isn't great. It won't always connect to the printers and it's like, why isn't this, come on, why is it worse? Jerry: Yeah, and let's be let's be clear. I personally, Jerry personally wants these brands to continue using Orca Slicer because if you as artillery don't use it, your slicer is going to suck and I'm never going to buy your printers. Like I want you to use Orca Slicer and be compatible with Orca Slicer. Just somehow can we contribute so. JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yes, yeah, because it's better than the ones that used to use Cura and they did even worse job at modifying Cura. still have Lulzbot is the one that still uses a Cura. And so it's just a bright orange Cura and it's like, ⁓ there's a lot to look at. Jerry: ⁓ That was bad. Still. Kira is. In my early days of printing, I loved Cura. when it was between Cura and PrusaSlicer, was like, anyone that's using Cura or sorry, anyone using PrusaSlicer is crazy because it looks bad. It's so, it's like unintuitive. It's clunky. It doesn't make any sense. I was a diehard Cura fan. It was slow to process certain things, especially when tree supports were first integrated and it's complex. I mean, it was not fast. JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Jerry: A couple of times I crashed my computer, yeah, I was diehard cura, but now it's like, I couldn't go back. JJ Shankles: It happens. Yeah. I still use it for my Voron, and I do like it for the Voron because I'm always experimenting and changing things. So I like it for my niche use case of that. ⁓ But when a brand tries to skin it and then takes features away from base Cura and you're like, ⁓ this is even even more clunky, even slower to boot up, even slower to slice files. And you're like, no, no, Jerry: Hmm Is it not? Yeah. So, like, if we can kind of bounce this back to like open source going away, I have a question for you and like a genuine question. So think about what we talked about was that last week or the week before with Prusa and ⁓ the core one how you can buy a kit or you can buy you can buy the kit and put the kit together or you can ⁓ just buy the pre assembled kit. JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Jerry: or pre-assembled printer, whatever you want to call it. this kind of like this kind of like feels very Voron-esque, but what would it be possible to save the save the open source life of dirty printing if a brand like Bamboo or Creality designed a printer and you bought the electronics kit and they delivered it? I mean, we're talking like essentially custom Voron here, where you can go buy from a a kit compiler. ⁓ And then you can print the pieces or they can send you the piece and you can assemble the thing except except here. It's a crowd a huge can go out a huge brand that has designed the printer, they've designed the K two plus they designed all these things. And then you go pull it and you can print it yourself right? That like really feels like it saves if you will open source like is that JJ Shankles: Mm. Yeah, almost you're saying like, what if Creality or Bamboo Lab did what Prusa does, or what LDO do of like, putting out a kit or selling the parts for the printer and it's like, cool, now you assemble them yourself. We can sell it cheaper because it's smaller packed. We didn't take the time to assemble these parts. Jerry: Possible? Yeah, and this is my thought, right? So take the K2 Plus or the Pro or whatever their newest thing is, The core of the printer, right? The motion system, you're not printing any of that. In a Voron and in a Perusia machine, you're not printing that, obviously. So all of that stays the same. Think about what are the printed parts. You've got your frame, not your frame, but like your JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Jerry: plastic your Yeah The beautification of it the trim panels you got your trim panels You've got like a lot of the pieces on the tool head are 3d printed. I mean you got stuff like that Why can't you take that machine and keep its core motion system and all the rigid component all of that? keep it the same, but then make a 3d printed version and then send that out right and ⁓ JJ Shankles: the corners, the holding it, yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Jerry: Now, because they, mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but like, Crowdy claims these machines are open source. I feel like they do. JJ Shankles: Yeah, some of them, they do release the firmware eventually, ⁓ which is really cool that they are releasing the firmware. And so you could take all these parts and build your own 3D printed K2. Jerry: It seems... I don't know. I don't know if it's worth it, right? Like... I don't know if it's worth it, but it does a lot... I mean, a lot of the people that really built this community probably feel the same. I don't know if it's nostalgia or like a sad feeling that it's not as... maybe it's not as good as it was because we're going towards these injection molded panels and sheet metal and glass rather than a 3D printed... JJ Shankles: Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Jerry: Contraption. JJ Shankles: Yes, the parts that hold the whole printer together, yeah. And I think that's where the enthusiasts will keep open source alive in 3D printing, ⁓ where I think both of these will continue to exist of like, the Vorons are never going away, like that project is never going away. Like the Voron or other 3D printed, like that's just like the biggest 3D printed printer project. There are so many more. ⁓ Jerry: It's JJ Shankles: whenever you scroll through printables, there's, I don't know, every now and then you'll see a new one pop up pretty high up on the list that's like, someone else 3D printed a little, some kind of printer or a Delta printer, something weird. It's more the enthusiast sides of a fully 3D printed printer. Jerry: Yeah. Maybe so I I do have a line in the sand somewhere. I personally don't think that I would just choose some completely random printer on printables and decide to go try print all the pieces for that and then and run with it. Not because. I think actually it is for that. I'll say I'll say not because I don't trust it, but maybe it's because I don't trust it like. I feel like my time is valuable and if I spend like a week printing and then when I get this printer assembled it's like... I don't know, not good. But the Vorons, the Vorons, I think you're right, they'll probably never go away. This is like in my head, if Creality takes an intern and says, hey, you just graduated university and your project is to make JJ Shankles: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Jerry: ⁓ 3d printed kit right you You can name the printer and it will be sold on the website, but it's going to be an engineering project I Feel like it's it's low budget because there's a small team of people designing it but that low budget means it sells cheap on the website and Maybe it's just a project. It's not supposed to be like the best printer in the world, but I don't know JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And yeah, I feel like that's a pro... As you describe it in that way, I could totally see Creality doing something... It's kind of off the wall that way. Like, you know, like that's kind of a crazy low-volume project that I totally could see Creality. Or even Bamboo Lab, like with all their Bamboo Lab kits. ⁓ Maybe not for printer. I don't know, but they keep selling new little maker kits for making random new... I saw the recent ones... ⁓ Jerry: Yeah. JJ Shankles: It's like a vacuum kit, so basically like a vacuum motor and induction fan blade thing. And so on MakerWorld, there's a bunch of new 3D print your own vacuum cleaner or make a little vacuum car. They just, I don't know, somehow found the parts and they were like, we could actually sell these parts to make a 3D printed little hand stick vacuum or something. I don't know how well it works. Jerry: You What the heck, I gotta look this up. What the heck handheld vacuum cleaner? Ayayay ⁓ It's 50 bucks. It's 50 bucks. I- This is like- JJ Shankles: but it's random, it's so random, it's wild, yeah. Jerry: So, this idea popped into my head specifically because I'm thinking, yeah, ⁓ open source is going away. But specifically, you have been talking a lot about those cars and the kits with the controllers. And it's like, this is still a thing that could exist. Like, I like the idea of I've always talked about JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Jerry: final products and final designs and all this, whatever, however you, whatever the industrial term is, I've always talked about it. And I think 3D printing has to go that way. If you want to get it in the hands of everyone. Like if I want to walk into my grandmother's house and see a 3D printer, which probably won't happen, but you got to find it on the shelves of Best Buy, right? So. JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Yes, it's something at Target. It's something as low as like, easy to buy as a random college kid could pick this up at Target, take it home and start printing. Easy to use. Jerry: Yeah. Yeah, open the box, injection molded panels, glass panels, it looks good. It doesn't have a fire hazard warning on it. It just works. And we need to go that way. But like, somehow, like, let's grasp onto this trust, because I do think a lot of like the Voron community and the I said the Clipper community, but Clippers, the whole community now, but like, JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Jerry: the old Clipper community, that's where a lot of innovation came from. Like it is, like we wouldn't see what we have today without that. And if we start to bury it and push it onto the rug, then we're getting locked into what Bamboo Lab and Elegoo and Creality can innovate. And that's like looking through a tunnel and not seeing the vast world outside of it. JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm, yeah. ⁓ yeah. Mm-hmm, yeah. Yeah, there's so much innovation that comes from these projects that we all benefit from. And I think it's crazy how much this entire industry ⁓ all goes back to like a handful of people. Like the Clipper project being like mostly like there's I think there's one guy mostly started it. But then, know, I would say the entire Clipper team being ⁓ pretty small relatively for like how big of an industry this is that's been affected by. Jerry: So. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's true. It's just one of those. JJ Shankles: those few people really helping things out. And I think we will continue to see these ⁓ uses of open source in projects to continue to change things and stuff. It's really cool. Jerry: And I think concerning is the wrong words, but it's concerning to me because there's probably a lot of really good projects that are small one to five man teams that will either never surface because it's just like if we start to deviate from the open source world, fewer eyes will be on it just generically. So even if it's a good project, it might not surface or ⁓ JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Jerry: Maybe people just won't spend their time on these open source projects because like, why would they? No one will see it. So. JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Yeah. It's very... ⁓ could be sad if things go that way, for sure. Yeah. Jerry: Yeah, well, what major innovation and obviously you're we're going to say tool changes like forget forget tool changers like but what major innovation have we seen since since bamboo launched the X1 carbon on Kickstarter was was it four years ago at this point? don't know. JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Four years ago? Yeah. Jerry: I can't off the top of my head, I can't think of one, which doesn't mean it doesn't exist, but it means there's very few of them. JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Yeah, innovations on the printer. ⁓ Yeah, yeah, that they're all pretty similar with small changes, small improvements here or there. Jerry: See? Primarily what we've seen is algorithmic changes in slicers. We have seen ⁓ algorithmic changes in firmware for ⁓ tuning. ⁓ We've seen software improvements on localized firmwares like your screen. So your screen firmware. JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Jerry: The bamboo lab screen is more intuitive to use. The crowd is green, more intuitive to use. All of these things are like software based, right? And, and I think we were software limited, but like, I think software has come up now. Maybe we're even like we could see some mechanical improvements or some new, new hardware to have new features, but it's been four years. JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah. And those minimal improvements of the hot ends are all faster now than they used to be, but that's, you know, cutting seconds off here or there, or the heated beds are more likely to be AC beds now, and so that's a little bit faster on the heating. ⁓ but still a lot of them struggle with TPU and like. Jerry: The Yeah, these are the things that you mentioned are good, right? Like I would rather my hot end. We talked about ceramic heaters and how they heat up so much faster. We talked about that last week or the week before, right? And that's great. I would rather my heater heat up in 30 seconds rather than four minutes. But also at the same time, That's not so much innovation, ⁓ technically, definitionally, I think it is, but that's not like that's not game breaking. That's just. JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Yes. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Jerry: saving time like sure it's it can heat up faster so you have you don't you don't have as many you can print faster i got you i understand how that how you can have more volumetric flow with that but like JJ Shankles: Yeah, it's a marginal improvement, not a like, earth-shaking paradigm shift here in printers where it's like, ⁓ here's a line in the sand, here's pre-bamboo printers, here's post-bamboo printers that we can see. Like, we haven't had that sort of a giant shift since then. Yeah. Jerry: There's nothing tangible. Yeah, and it's weird because four years ago does not seem like four years ago. It doesn't feel like four years ago I was sitting in my office at work when the bamboo lab printer launched on Kickstarter and there was like four of us hovering over the computer, like wasting away time. Like, whoa, this is wild. This is like next level. It doesn't seem like it was four years ago, but I think it's because we've just been living in JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Jerry: I don't know. Time has gone by fast, but there's, I don't know. There's no, there's no new chapters after that. JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah. And all the little improvements have been big enough to make it like... I think there are printers way better than the X1 Carbon at this point. ⁓ And apart from tool changers, because we said we're not mentioning those. ⁓ Yeah. Jerry: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now, you're right. The conglomerate of all of the small changes has made a big difference. I just, I don't know. don't know what I'm expecting to see, right? Like, there's only so many major leaps you can take, right? Like, with vacuum cleaners, right? I say that probably because we just talked about it and so on. But like, JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. We were talking about it. Yes, yeah. Jerry: Okay, if the suction power doubles in a vacuum cleaner, like maybe that's jaw dropping, but eventually there's only so many improvements you can make and maybe that's the maybe maybe we've reached that point. The only improvements are small incremental. Maybe maybe we've reached I don't know. JJ Shankles: Yeah. Mm-hmm. of kind of like, I don't know, most other industries, like cell phones or something where like for a while there were big changes in cell phone technologies. And then, yeah, for the last, I don't know, 10 years, it's like, they're all pretty much the same year to year. They're a little bit faster. The cameras are a little bit better. Same with how printers now are like, it's better, but like how much better really, you know, like a lot of these year over year, it's, I still, we're not there, we're not to the level where cell phones are, I don't think. I think cell phones are really boring now. ⁓ The printers, I do think they continue to combine enough nice features to be like, this is better than the previous one. The P1S is a good bit better than the BambooLab P1, or P2S is ⁓ pretty substantially better than the A1 or the P1S. Jerry: Yeah. JJ Shankles: But yeah, I think... these open source projects. That's kind of where we get a lot of our innovations. Jerry: So the big brands, why would Creality or Bamboo or Elegoo, why would they spend five million dollars testing the waters on some wild theory that sells, you know, a hundred units, a thousand units, right? Like whatever. But ⁓ enough units. or sorry, not enough units that like make anyone think something and they lose money. Why would they go develop this new feature if it doesn't, if it doesn't improve anything? So like they're not going to take that risk because they're a brand that's trying to make money. Open source is not a brand. They're not trying to make money. So like make these miniature printers like Voron zero sizes or even smaller tape like let let JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Jerry: open source take the risk because there's not zero risk. Yeah. And then and then when people see it and they're like, ⁓ wow, this is crazy. We want it then bamboo or then crowd or someone comes and jumps in and flocks on on this wild. It seems seems like we still need it around. JJ Shankles: Yeah, yeah. It's random tinkerers playing around in their basement. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, they're still, I feel like, I don't know, I don't wanna poo poo on they're still trying things of like, Bamboo Lab really took a swing with like the H2-D, the H2-C is a pretty big swing of like developmental effort into the two nozzles and then this whole nozzle changing thing is a pretty big swing, we'll call it that. It's a lot of developmental time into something that. Jerry: ⁓ I'll give you that right? I don't want to poo poo on that I Yeah, if I saw if I sound like if like like I'm you know Taking a couple one two punches at these brands like that's not what I'm doing. I just But no you cuz you're right. So JJ Shankles: I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. No, no. Yes, yeah. It's an interesting, ⁓ Yeah, discussion on the... Where it'll be. Yes. Jerry: It's an interesting thought and guys ⁓ If anyone watching this has thoughts as well, make sure to put them down in the comments ⁓ down below and if you aren't ⁓ Like and subscribe we post every week Yep, bye guys JJ Shankles: Yes, and we will see you next week. Bye.