Ask a muralist how many brushes she owns, and she will point to a row of jars rather than one brush she rinses between colors. Weavers keep a shuttle for each thread, and bakers keep a bag for each frosting. Working with color has always meant keeping the right tool within reach, and a multicolor 3d printer applies that same logic to plastic.
3D printing has been slower to adopt that habit. Most multicolor 3d printer designs push every color through a single nozzle. Newer four-in-one heads push four filaments through one tip, which forces all four materials to share the same melting behavior and flow. Co Print’s Quadro takes a different route. It gives each color its own toolhead, with its own filament, nozzle and temperature, and all four heads share one rail.
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Anyone who has printed in color on a single-nozzle machine knows the cost. Each color change flushes the old filament out of the nozzle, leaving a heap of waste that can weigh more than the model. Toolchangers such as the Snapmaker U1 avoid some of that purge by swapping whole heads, a process that takes about five seconds per change. The Quadro’s handoff takes about one second. With up to four materials per print, a 300 mm (11.8-inch) cube build volume and early pricing of $649, the machine is aiming at a serious tier of desktop hardware.
Four toolheads on one rail
Co Print calls the architecture IQEX, short for Independent Quad Extruder. IDEX, or independent dual extruder, is a layout with two separate heads on one gantry, and IQEX extends that idea to four. Each head runs on its own stepper motor and belt, and the four belts stack vertically along the gantry.
All four heads ride a shared 12 mm linear rail, so they cannot pass through one another. Idle heads park at docking stations on either end of the rail, which leaves the bed clear for the active head. Co Print says this arrangement lets every head reach the full 300 × 300 mm print area.
Co Print’s real-time footage shows a Tool 1 to Tool 2 handoff finishing in 1.00 seconds. Switches to Tool 3 and Tool 4 take 1.40 and 1.57 seconds. For comparison, Co Print puts a filament change on a single-nozzle printer at roughly 60 seconds. The company also says the Quadro reduces filament waste by up to 90 percent. No head is unclipped, gripped or reloaded during a swap, which removes the grippers and couplings that toolchangers rely on.
Parking, purging and the waste numbers
The docking stations are called QDock Stations, and each one holds up to three heads. When a head docks, its filament retracts slightly and its nozzle tip is sealed to limit oozing. Parked heads cool to about 140°C, which further reduces leakage. Roughly 30 seconds before a head is needed, the printer begins heating it to its target temperature.
Because each filament stays in its own nozzle on this multicolor 3d printer, no color has to be flushed before the next one loads. The printer still prints a small prime tower to build pressure when a parked head resumes extruding. Zero Waste Mode moves that priming step into the model’s infill, which removes the tower on compatible prints.
In Co Print’s four-color chameleon test, the Quadro finished in 9 hours 34 minutes and produced 34.16 g of waste. The single-nozzle comparison machine needed just over a day and produced 180.7 g. The toolchanger took 10 hours 5 minutes and produced 44.65 g. Co Print’s figures put the Quadro more than 14 hours ahead of the single-nozzle printer, with about 80 percent less waste. In a larger test, the same model left 1,079 g of waste on a single-nozzle machine and 135 g on the Quadro.
A bed-slinger built around metal
The Quadro uses a bed-slinger layout, in which the build plate moves along the Y-axis. Co Print chose this design over CoreXY for its simpler mechanics and easier maintenance. The frame is built from thick-section aluminum rather than thin bent sheet metal, and the load-bearing joints are metal-to-metal. Co Print says about 70 percent of the structure is metal. The bed carriage is a single aluminum piece, designed to stay flat and parallel during fast moves.
Two synchronized motors drive the Y-axis through separate belt systems. Co Print says this spreads force evenly across the bed and limits twisting under hard acceleration. Motion runs on 12 mm industrial linear rails. Automatic belt tensioners aim to keep the X and Y belts balanced over time. The Z towers are braced by the filament station structures, which Co Print says helps reduce Z wobble, the faint banding caused by wobbling vertical motion. The platform is rated for 600 mm/s travel speed and 10,000 mm/s² acceleration.
Calibration and controls on a multicolor 3d printer
A multicolor print looks clean only when each nozzle sits at a known position, measured in fractions of a millimeter. The Quadro’s 360° Toolhead Calibration probes each nozzle from several directions against a shared reference point at the back right of the bed. Software then corrects the X, Y and Z offsets. The remaining routine covers input shaping, bed mesh leveling and Auto Flow Rate Calibration. That last step uses a load cell in each toolhead to set pressure advance before every print. A single button, labeled Full Self-Check, starts the whole sequence, which Co Print says takes minutes.
Each head has a QLight LED that shows its filament color and lights when the head is active. A wide-angle 1080p camera in the right QDock watches the bed and the parked heads. The printer runs QuadrOS, an open-source platform built on Klipper firmware and operated through a 4.3-inch touchscreen. Co Slicer handles multicolor models and assigns filaments to each head. Klipper is the firmware that runs the motion control, and its open design allows deep customization. The touchscreen and automated setup are meant to keep newcomers away from configuration files.
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Materials, dual printing and pricing
Co Print lists PLA, PETG, TPU 95A, PVA and carbon-fiber-reinforced filaments as supported materials. Each head sets its own temperature, up to 300°C (572°F). Direct-drive extruders handle flexible TPU, which allows rigid parts with soft grips. PVA works as a dissolvable support, and PETG can serve as a removable support interface for PLA. An optional enclosure with air filtration adds ABS and ASA, and an attachable filament dryer keeps moisture-sensitive TPU and PVA ready to print.
In Multi-Color Dual Printing, toolheads 1 and 2 build one part while toolheads 3 and 4 build a second copy beside it, at the same time. Each copy uses two colors. Standard IDEX printers can make two copies at once, but each copy comes out in a single color. Co Print says the Quadro can deliver two colorways in roughly the time of one, which suits batch work, small shops and print farms. Mixed nozzle sizes, such as 0.2 mm for detail and 0.6 mm for bulk, are in testing and are slated for a free update. Mirror mode and CMYK full-color printing are also in development.
The Quadro is live on Kickstarter, with Super Early Bird pricing from $649 against a planned $899 retail price. Co Print is also showing the machine at Formnext 2026 in Frankfurt, November 17 to 20, in Hall 12.1, Booth G89. Shipping begins in Q1 2027, worldwide. Every unit includes four complete toolheads, a 300 mm cube build volume and a mostly metal frame. Co Print has spent years adding color to other companies’ 3d printers, with add-on kits for more than 100 models since 2019. The Quadro is the first multicolor 3d printer the company has built from the ground up, and it aims to make the filament waste pile grow far more slowly.
H/T yankodesign.com
Frequently asked questions
How fast does the Co Print Quadro switch between colors?
The Quadro’s Tool 1 to Tool 2 handoff finishes in 1.00 seconds, with switches to Tool 3 and Tool 4 taking 1.40 and 1.57 seconds. Co Print puts a filament change on a single-nozzle printer at roughly 60 seconds for comparison.
How much less waste does the Co Print Quadro produce?
Co Print says the Quadro reduces filament waste by up to 90 percent. In its four-color chameleon test, the Quadro produced 34.16 g of waste, compared with 180.7 g on a single-nozzle printer.
What is IQEX on the Co Print Quadro?
IQEX, short for Independent Quad Extruder, is Co Print’s architecture that extends the IDEX idea to four heads. Each head runs on its own stepper motor and belt, and all four ride a shared 12 mm linear rail, with idle heads parked at docking stations on either end.
How much does the Co Print Quadro cost and what is its build volume?
The Quadro has an early pricing of $649 and a 300 mm (11.8-inch) cube build volume. It supports up to four materials per print.
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