Best Multi-Colour 3D Printers Australia 2026:
Purge Waste, Colour Systems and What Wears Out

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links to amazon.com.au. If you buy through one of these links iFix may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. It doesn't change which products we recommend. We focus on what actually lasts based on 16 years of repair-shop experience.

Purge waste is the running cost nobody prices in

Most multi-colour printers sold in Australia still have one nozzle. When the model needs a new colour, the printer cuts the filament, pulls it back, feeds the next one in and then pushes plastic through until the old colour is gone. That flushed plastic usually comes out the back as a little twisted blob, and the internet calls it poop. It's the bit the box doesn't mention, and on a lot of prints it's the biggest number on the job.

Here's the arithmetic with my assumptions stated. Say each colour change flushes around half a gram, which sits inside the range slicers commonly use, and say your spool cost $30 a kilo. A small four-colour figurine with 400 layer changes throws away about 200 grams, which is $6 of plastic for a model that might only weigh 40 grams. Run that a few times a week and you're binning a spool a month. The fix is mostly in the slicer: print several parts at once so each change is shared, flush into infill or a support where the colour doesn't show, and drop the flush volumes once you've tested what your machine actually needs. Most slicers now show an estimate of the flushed filament before you print, so check that number as well as the model weight. If the waste is bigger than the part itself, rethink the colour layout before you press print.

The other way to beat it is hardware. A toolchanger keeps a separate nozzle loaded with each colour and swaps the whole head, so there's almost nothing to flush. The FLASHFORGE Creator 5 in this guide works that way and it's the reason it costs more for the same build speed. If you'll mostly print single-colour parts and only want colour now and then, a single-nozzle combo is fine. If colour is the point of buying the printer, read the toolchanger section before you decide.

Four colour systems, two basic designs

Bambu Lab calls its filament unit the AMS, Creality calls its version the CFS and ELEGOO calls its one CANVAS. They're all the same basic idea: a box that holds four spools, reads or detects what's loaded, and feeds the one the printer asks for down a tube into a single hotend. The differences are in the details, like whether the box is sealed with desiccant, whether it reads RFID tags on the maker's own spools, how many boxes you can chain together and how well it copes with cardboard spools and third-party brands. Read the support pages for the unit as well as the printer, because that's where you find out what it actually handles well.

Chaining is how these machines get to 16 colours. Bambu says the P1S handles up to 16 with the AMS, and Creality says the K2 Combo can expand to four CFS units for 16 colours. In practice almost nobody needs more than four or eight, and each extra unit is more tubing, more feeders and more places for a jam. I'd buy one unit, learn the machine, and only add a second when you're constantly swapping spools by hand.

The toolchanger is the second design. Instead of moving filament to one nozzle, the Creator 5 parks four separate print heads and picks up the one it needs. FLASHFORGE says that makes colour printing up to five times faster than single-nozzle multi-colour, which makes sense because there's no cut, retract and flush cycle between colours. The trade-off is more moving parts in the head area and four hotends to keep clean instead of one. You'll also want to read our value 3D printer guide if a single-colour machine might do the job, because the money saved buys a lot of filament.

Enclosed or open, and what you'll print in it

Only one listing in this guide clearly states a fully enclosed body, and that's the Bambu Lab P1S. The others don't say either way on the Amazon AU listing, so check photos and the maker's site before you assume. It matters for the materials. PLA and PETG print happily on an open frame in a normal room, but ABS and ASA warp and crack when a cold draught hits the part, and an enclosure keeps the air around the print warm and still.

Smell is the other practical reason. ABS and ASA give off a noticeable plastic smell while they print, so put the machine somewhere with airflow and a door you can close, not on the kitchen bench next to the fruit bowl. The P1S listing is honest about materials: it says PLA, PETG, TPU, PVA, PET, ABS and ASA are ideal, PA and PC are possible, and carbon or glass filled filaments aren't recommended. The K2 Combo listing says its hardened steel nozzle runs to 300 °C and handles engineering-grade filaments, which is the more forgiving setup if you want to print the abrasive stuff later.

One more thing on flexible filament. TPU and most of the filament boxes don't get along, because soft filament buckles in long feed tubes. Most people feed TPU straight into the printer and skip the colour unit for those jobs, and that's worth knowing before you plan a run of phone cases. Our 3D printer filament guide covers which brands load cleanly and which spool types jam.

Wet filament breaks multi-colour printing first

If there's one thing that turns a colour printer into a frustrating one, it's damp filament. Nylon and TPU soak up moisture quickly, PETG does it more slowly, and even PLA goes brittle after a few humid months on the Central Coast. Brittle filament snaps when the colour unit pulls it back for a change, and then a broken piece sits in the feed tube until you pull the tube apart and push it out.

That's why I pay attention to how each filament unit seals. Creality says the K2's CFS is airtight with desiccant and keeps materials dry. ELEGOO's CANVAS listings talk about auto refill and tangle detection but don't state how well the box seals. Whatever you buy, keep the desiccant fresh, store spare spools in sealed tubs, and dry anything that crackles or snaps before it goes near the colour unit. A small room dehumidifier helps a lot in a garage or spare room, and our dehumidifier picks cover the sizes that suit a workshop corner. A small humidity card in the storage tub tells you when the desiccant is spent, and it costs a couple of dollars.

Tangles and cardboard spools are the other common stoppers. Cardboard edges shed fibres and can bind in a feeder, so a lot of owners print or buy plastic adaptor rings. Tangle detection, which the ELEGOO and FLASHFORGE listings both mention, pauses the print before a knot pulls the part off the plate. That's worth having on a 20-hour print, because a tangle at hour 18 wastes the whole lot.

The parts that wear, and where you'll get them

A multi-colour printer has more wear parts than a single-colour one, and that's the honest cost of owning one. On the single-nozzle machines the filament cutter blade dulls over thousands of changes, the PTFE feed tubes wear where they bend, and the feeder gears in the colour unit pick up dust and plastic shavings. None of those are expensive, but you need to be able to buy them. Buy from a maker that sells spares in Australia, or at least ships them quickly, because a printer waiting three weeks for a $10 tube isn't printing.

The electronics side is where it gets more serious. Heater cartridges, thermistors and the cable that runs to the moving print head flex millions of times, and a fault there shows up as a temperature error or a print that stops halfway. The mainboard and power supply are the bits that come into the shop, usually after a power cut or a poor-quality extension lead. Run the printer off a good wall socket, and if you get power drops in storms, a small UPS is worth a look. Our UPS guide explains sizing, and a printer's heated bed draws a lot when it warms up, so size for that, not the idle number.

FLASHFORGE says replacement parts for the Creator 5 are available at competitive prices and that nozzle changes take under 30 seconds without tools. That's a good sign on a machine with four hotends. Bambu and Creality both have large spare part ranges, and ELEGOO sells spares through its own AU storefront. Check the specific part for the specific model before you buy, because hotends and cutters don't always swap between generations.

Speed numbers and the settings you'll actually use

Every listing here quotes a top speed and an acceleration figure: 500 mm/s for the Bambu and both ELEGOOs, and 600 mm/s for the Creality and the FLASHFORGE, with acceleration from 20,000 up to 30,000 mm/s². Those are real limits of the motion system, but you'll rarely print the outside of a part anywhere near them. Visible walls print slower so they look good, and infill runs faster where nobody will see it.

The more useful number on a colour printer is how long each colour change takes. On single-nozzle machines a change is usually a minute or more once you add the cut, the retract, the flush and the wipe, and on a model with hundreds of changes that's hours. The toolchanger cuts that right down, which is where FLASHFORGE's five times faster claim comes from. The Creality's 40 mm³/s high-flow hotend also helps, because a faster flush finishes the change sooner, though it doesn't flush any less plastic.

Noise is the last practical point. Fast CoreXY printers rattle and hum, and the colour units add a whirr and a click with every change. Creality lists a Silent Mode and balanced fans, and that's welcome if the printer will live near a bedroom, but expect to hear it whatever you buy. If noise matters, look at where the printer will sit before you look at spec sheets: a solid bench, a rubber mat underneath and a closed door make more difference than any setting.

How I picked the five

Each pick had to be a new, current multi-colour combo inside the $600 to $1,500 band, sold on Amazon AU by the maker's Australian storefront or the maker's own Amazon seller account, with no import listings and nothing from an overseas reseller. Four of the five are sold by AU official stores (Creality Official Store, ELEGOO Official AU and Voxelab AU Official for FLASHFORGE), and the Bambu Lab P1S Combo is sold by Bambu Lab Technology, the maker's own seller account. Amazon AU doesn't publish a 3D printer category rank for these listings, so the ranks below are the website-wide Amazon AU sales rank on the day I checked, and the best-ranked one leads. A low website rank doesn't mean a bad printer, just fewer sales on Amazon AU, and new models start low.

I've kept this guide to colour machines on purpose. If you just want one good printer, the single-colour value picks cover the A1, A1 Mini and the first Centauri Carbon. Specs below come off the listings and nowhere else, and where a listing doesn't say something, like build volume on four of the five, I've said so rather than fill the gap. If a printer you already own has stopped heating or won't power up, that's a board-level job we look at in our Erina workshop.

The 5 picks, $799 to $1,229

Prices are Amazon AU at time of writing (10 October 2026) and move week to week. Amazon AU doesn't publish a 3D printer category rank for these listings, so ranks are its website-wide sales rank, checked the same day.

Side-by-side comparison

What we see fail in the workshop: multi-colour 3D printers

Most dead 3D printers that come in aren't really dead. They've usually got one failed part that stops the whole machine, and on colour printers there are more of those parts. These are the three faults that turn up most often, what causes them and how you'd spot them early, before a small fault becomes a long wait for parts.

Decision tree: which one should you actually buy?

• Want a colour printer that does almost everything well, and the biggest help community? → The Bambu Lab P1S Combo at $1,229, enclosed with the AMS in the box.
• Want colour for under $800 with room to grow? → The Creality K2 Combo at $799, with a sealed CFS unit and a hardened steel nozzle.
• New to 3D printing and want the machine to catch mistakes for you? → The ELEGOO Centauri 2 Combo at $849, with 22 sensors and pre-print checks.
• Planning to try tougher filaments with ELEGOO's colour system? → The ELEGOO Centauri Carbon 2 Combo at $999.
• Hate the idea of binning filament on every colour change? → The FLASHFORGE Creator 5 at $1,049, four heads and almost no purge.
• Printer won't heat, won't power on or keeps throwing temperature errors? → Bring it into our Erina workshop and I'll tell you whether it's the heater, the supply or the board before you spend anything.

Frequently asked questions

How much filament does a multi-colour 3D printer waste?

On a single-nozzle printer every colour change flushes some plastic, and on a small model with hundreds of changes the waste can weigh more than the model. As a rough example, half a gram per change across 400 changes is 200 grams. You can cut it a lot by printing several parts at once, flushing into infill or supports, and lowering flush volumes after testing. A toolchanger like the FLASHFORGE Creator 5 avoids most of the waste because each colour has its own nozzle.

Is a toolchanger better than an AMS-style filament box?

It's better for waste and colour change speed, because it swaps heads instead of cutting and flushing filament. It's not automatically better overall. You get four hotends to maintain instead of one, more moving parts around the docking area, and you're limited to the number of heads, which is four on the Creator 5. A filament box design like the Bambu AMS or Creality CFS can chain to 16 colours and has one hotend to look after. If you print colour most days, the toolchanger wins. If colour is occasional, a box design is fine.

Can I use any brand of filament in these colour units?

Mostly yes. The RFID reading on Bambu, Creality and ELEGOO spools only fills in the filament settings for you, and other brands load fine once you set the type and colour by hand. Cardboard spools are the usual problem, because the edges shed fibres and can bind in the feeder, so many owners use plastic adaptor rings. Flexible TPU generally doesn't feed well through long tubes and is better fed straight into the printer without the colour unit.

Do I need an enclosed 3D printer?

Not for PLA or PETG, which print well on an open frame in a normal room. You want an enclosure for ABS and ASA, because those warp and crack when cool air hits the part as it prints. Of the five picks, only the Bambu Lab P1S listing clearly states a fully enclosed body, so check the others with the maker before planning that kind of work. ABS and ASA also have a noticeable smell while printing, so give the printer a ventilated spot away from living areas.

How do I stop filament jamming in the colour unit?

Keep the filament dry. Damp filament goes brittle, snaps when the unit pulls it back for a colour change and blocks the feed tube. Keep the desiccant in the unit fresh, store spare spools in sealed tubs, and dry any spool that crackles or snaps easily. Clean the feeder gears now and then, replace the cutter blade when cuts get ragged, and swap feed tubes that are worn at the bends. Tangle detection, which the ELEGOO and FLASHFORGE listings mention, stops a knot from wrecking a long print.

Can you repair a 3D printer that won't turn on?

Usually, yes. A printer that won't power up after a storm or power cut has often lost its power supply or a part on the mainboard, and one that powers on but won't heat may have a failed bed switching part, heater or sensor. These are board-level repairs and they're often well under the price of a new printer. The main thing is to stop swapping parts at random, because that makes it harder to find the real fault. Bring it in and we'll diagnose it before quoting.

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