Engineering:Prusa XL

On the 18th of November 2021, Prusa Research announced the Prusa XL. The Prusa XL (extra large) has a larger build volume of 36×36×36cm (14.17’’×14.17’’×14.17’’). This printer is a departure from the Mendel-based Prusa i3 product line in a number of ways - the most prominent is the fact that the printer is a large-scale CoreXY design. This means that the printer bed moves vertically downwards as the layers of the print increase (Z-axis), and the printhead also moves horizontally (Y-axis). In the previous i3 line, the printhead unit moved upwards away from prints as the layers increased, and the buildplate moved horizontally along the Y-axis. The use of the CoreXY design is intended to make extremely large prints more stable and resistant to vibrations, thus reducing unwanted print artefacts and errors in print quality. Normally when an i3 frame is scaled up, larger prints tend to produce an increase in print artefacts and errors. This is due to the increase of mass on full buildplates, which can cause unwanted vibrations as the printbed accelerates and suddenly stops when moving horizontally in the Y-axis. On smaller printers these issues can be mitigated by slower print times or better hardware (more accurate stepper motors) and software adjustments, however for very large i3 printers these issues become too difficult to fix and the trade-off of slower prints greatly reduces the benefits of printing a large part in one go. For this reason a CoreXY frame for the Prusa XL was chosen.

The XL will also feature a new extruder design, a new hotend, a segmented hotbed that will heat specific sections to be more efficient, and a toolchanger. Shipping is scheduled to start Q3 of 2022.