Creality SPARKX i8: four-colour printer with four channels in one print head, no prime tower

Alongside big tool changers such as the Creality K3 and the Bambu H3C, Creality also offers a cheaper route to multicolour printing: the SPARKX i8. The Indiegogo campaign started on 21 September; we had not covered it yet and are catching up here.

QuarTeks: four channels, one nozzle

Instead of swapping spools externally, the i8 feeds four filaments separately all the way into the print head. They only meet just before the nozzle, with a shared path under 1 mm (about 2 mm³) according to Creality. That is why a colour change is meant to take under one second.

• Purge waste: no prime tower. With suitable slicer settings, Creality says 0 g of waste ends up outside the model, with purge material going into the infill. Only a little filament is expelled at the start.
• Speed: in Creality’s own test, a four-colour tower with 3,000 colour changes took about 18 hours, roughly five times faster than printers with external feeders according to Creality.
• Colour mixing: layering CMYK filaments gives 16 to 32 colour combinations, though Creality says these are not exact colour matches.
• Monitoring: 13 sensors and an AI camera in the print head, for example for empty spools. When a spool runs out, the printer can switch to a second spool of the same material.

Specifications and price

• Build volume: 260 x 260 x 255 mm, open frame, auto-levelling
• Speed: up to 500 mm/s
• Material: PLA or PETG; Creality recommends the same material in all four channels and keeping all four loaded
• Software: Creality Print 7 or later

At launch on Indiegogo the i8 cost $289, with a list price of $399. The US shop currently lists it at $309. According to the press release, factory shipments were planned for October with deliveries in November. Creality’s German shop has no product page yet and Creality gives no euro price.