Prusa XL To Get Silicone Printhead, Fulfilling the Promise of Other Technologies and True Multi-Material
In partnership with "liquid filament" specialists Filament2, Prusa has given us a glimpse of the technology-bending future for the Prusa XL toolchanger.
True silicone 3D printing typically requires specialist hardware – dedicated machines for printing thick pastes and, usually, thick pastes alone. At the Prusa Day event last week, Prusa Research showed this needn’t always be the case with the fruits of its collaboration with Filament2.
To recap, Filament2 has independently been developing a filament-style delivery mechanism for thick pastes and liquids, making them printable on regular filament printing 3D printers, which Filament2 presented at Formnext last year.
It’s been quiet ever since, breaking the surface only now with a Prusa XL toolhead that can take advantage of its two-part silicone filament. Most intriguing of the offer if that, Prusa XL being a toolchanger, the silicone printing can be integrated into a regular filament-based print, letting you mix the extreme softness and stretchability of the material with rigid plastic parts printed by the printer’s other toolheads. That, or other silicones and pastes. When it launches it’ll be a pretty unique prospect in the desktop space.
The demonstration shown at the Prusa Day event showed the silicone printing live, forming soft, squidgy prints layer by layer just as any other filament based deposition. The examples shown used Polytek FS-20 two-part silicone rubber, which has a shore hardness of A20, although the implication is very much that other formulations will be possible and, given the Prusa XL’s up to five toolheads, mixed in the same print.
We saw the toolhead live and working at the event, though some work is still needed including how to tidily dispose of the “filament” casings, which is not printed as a part of the process. The toolhead and materials will be available in 2026 through the Prusa webstore, with more details to come at Formnext in November where Filament2’s work with the Prusa XL will be on show at the Prusa booth.
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