[JamesUtah07]

> The key to the team’s nimble design lies in the printer’s compact printhead, which incorporates two new, speed-enhancing components: a screw mechanism that feeds polymer material through a nozzle at high force; and a laser, built into the printhead, that rapidly heats and melts the material, enabling it to flow faster through the nozzle.

That's the exactly what is making this new 3D printer 10x faster

[LeifCarrotson]

> a screw mechanism that feeds polymer material through a nozzle at high force

Practically all existing 3D printers have this.

The laser does seem novel - most use an electrically heated head nozzle to melt the plastic like a hot glue gun - but I remain skeptical when they list screw feed as an innovative ceature.

[jaclaz]

>Practically all existing 3D printers have this.

No, usually they have a rotary feeder, i.e. "pinch-wheel", it seems like what they propose is a screw feeder, likely a screw with the axis roughly in the same direction as the filament, with "higher grip" on the filament, but probably it depends also on the specific filament material:

>"In most desktop 3-D printers, plastic is fed through a nozzle via a “pinch-wheel” mechanism, in which two small wheels within the printhead rotate and push the plastic, or filament, forward. This works well at relatively slow speeds, but if more force were applied to speed up the process, at a certain point the wheels would lose their grip on the material — a “mechanical disadvantage,” as Hart puts it, that limits how fast the printhead can push material through.

Hart and Go chose to do away with the pinchwheel design, replacing it with a screw mechanism that turns within the printhead. The team fed a textured plastic filament onto the screw, and as the screw turned, it gripped onto the filament’s textured surface and was able to feed the filament through the nozzle at higher forces and speeds. "