Hot or Hype? Mova Launches the 12-Nozzle AtomForm Palette 300 3D Printer

I just returned to the sweltering heat of Phoenix, Arizona after enjoying the lovely weather in San Jose, California for a couple of days. I was there courtesy of Mova, who flew me out for the launch event of their new AtomForm Palette 300 3D printer. It has been generating some buzz with its unique 12-nozzle system and I can now share some details about the printer, along with my opinions.

Mova has been pretty quiet about the AtomForm Palette 300 until now, but it was on display at CES. I had plans to write about it then and spent some time checking it out during the show. However, I didn’t get to see it running and there wasn’t much information available at the time. I decided to wait and now there is enough meat to give you something to sink your teeth into.

New tech

The big selling point of the AtomForm Palette 300 is the OmniElement automatic nozzle swapping system. That has a kind of rotating carousel that stores 12 nozzles. The printer can freely switch between those, allowing for multi-color and multi-material printing without purge waste. It is more compact and affordable than a toolchanger, but should still be pretty quick — more on that later.

OmniElement works in conjunction with RFD-6 units, which are similar to Bambu Lab’s AMS and Creality’s CFS. A single RFD-6 unit can house six spools of filament and has built-in drying functionality. Owners will be able to connect up to six RFD-6 units to a single AtomForm Palette 300 printer and the math wizzes reading will note that allows for up to 36 filament colors at once. Of course, with 12 nozzles available, that would require purging between color swaps.

The AtomForm Palette 300 also has quite a bit of tech packed inside, including four cameras and a whole battalion of sensors to maximize both quality and reliability.

Interestingly, it uses FOC (Field Oriented Control) step-servo motors instead of conventional stepper motors. Those are more expensive and sophisticated, with closed-loop operation that can correct itself. That eliminates any concerns about missed steps and I’m excited to see this motor tech entering the consumer 3D printer industry.

The live demo

But does all of that fancy tech work well? The truth is that I don’t know. Mova had demo printers set up at the launch event, but they were having issues and I only briefly got to see one running. I was not able to see the OmniElement nozzle-swapping in action, which was what I was most curious about.

That’s why I was unable to provide you with a real number for the nozzle swap speed. The process has to include the physical swap, heating the nozzle, and running filament to the nozzle, so it will take time. Unfortunately, we don’t yet know how much time.

I don’t want to give Mova a hard time about that, because these kinds of mishaps are common at launch events with pre-production hardware. Still, it would be irresponsible of me to write this article without the massive asterisk.

Rumors

There are still many pragmatic questions that Mova has yet to answer in an official capacity, but I was able to pick up on some rumors from other attendees.

First is the price and I heard several different figures. Averaging those out, I think we can expect the AtomForm Palette 300 to cost somewhere around $1500-2000 when bundled with an RFD-6 unit.

Next up is the release date and Mova reps said they’re anticipating shipping units to customers in Q2. However, the general consensus among the journalists present was that it will be late in Q2 — probably towards the end of June. I’m not expecting review units to ship much earlier than that and I wouldn’t be surprised if the release gets pushed back.

Finally, there was some gossip about the slicer. I was told by a very confident person that the slicer is a heavily modified version of OrcaSlicer. If true, that is a reliable foundation to build on and a good choice, in my opinion. However, Mova didn’t simply reskin OrcaSlicer. They added a lot of functionality, including a print queue system that will let you prepare many parts across several build plates at once.

Competition

It seems obvious to me that the closest competition to the AtomForm Palette 300 will be the Bambu Lab H2C, which has the Vortek nozzle-swapping system. But that only has six nozzles, so you’re getting twice as many with the AtomForm Palette 300.

Because I don’t know how fast the OmniElement system can swap nozzles, I can’t say with any confidence which printer will be faster for multi-color or multi-material jobs.

However, there are other practical factors we can consider. The AtomForm Palette 300 is quite a bit smaller in overall size than the Bambu Lab H2C, but only has a slightly smaller build volume: 300×300×300mm compared to 330×320×325mm (with several caveats based on nozzle selection). That’s thanks to the compact nature of the OmniElement system, which takes up far less interior space than the Vortek system.

Still, the AtomForm Palette 300 only has a single extruder, so it won’t be nearly as fast as the H2C when swapping back and forth between two filaments.

The future

So, should you care about the Mova AtomForm Palette 300 or is it just hype?

I think it is a very promising printer with the potential to be a serious contender in the market. But until I test it for myself, I can’t give it a stamp of approval.

That said, I do want to note that Mova seems to be taking their entry into the maker market seriously. I spoke to the lead engineer for the project and learned that they’re designing other machines, including a UV printer, a laser machine, and a CNC mill. Those may or may not make it to releases, but their development alone shows that Mova is doing more than simply dipping their toes into the maker arena.