New modular approach = 5 second color change!
The team at Creality are celebrating being in business for 12 years with a present for all of us – a new nozzle changing technology that cuts color swaps down to just five seconds, reduces waste, and all with a single cable and two screws to replace it. That’s KliTek – a new next-gen nozzle-changing CMYK system that is headed our way in Q3 of 2026! Let’s get into the specifics on what makes KliTek a game changer.
The biggest improvement on display is the ability to switch heads in just five seconds. By swapping only the part that matters, the nozzle but not the printhead, you can now move between colors quickly and seamlessly. Because you’re not having to extrude other materials to switch, it also reduces color bleed, and also enables multi-material printing, with material changes happening in just 15 seconds. The waste is almost entirely contained to the purge tower, almost eliminating it entirely!
Since this new nozzle assemble is built around a single extruder, there’s no need to move the printhead. Even better, dropping it into position is a matter of unscrewing two screws on the nozzle and swapping out the USB-C cable and you’re done.
This new nozzle is also capable of handling TPU in 80A, 85A, 90A, and 95A hardness levels. Traditional 3D printers can only reliably reach around 95A, so this new nozzle should be able to handle anything from soft and squeezable toys like the one you see above all the way to those airless basketballs, shoe insoles, and solid hardened structures. As somebody who has jumped through the hoops of controlling the conditions precisely to get harder structures to print without stringing, breakages, or failures, this could be huge. Something that I can load and forget would be huge.
The biggest challenge to multi-material printing, other than waste, is clogging. This occurs most often due to big temperature changes needed to move between materials. Here, with discreet tubes and materials, we can print multi-color, multi-hardness, and multi-material objects (like shoes where the sole is one hardness and the rest is another) without needing to print them separately and then combining them afterwards. With KliTek, this can now be done with a single print job, and without separating it into multiple pieces.
The other issue that can cause breakages and failures is the way TPU is pulled into the nozzle. Typically, filament is pulled through a tube with a single roller head. This can lead to problems when the filament touches the sides around bends and curves. Creality’s new system has a new system they’re calling “S-Drive Dual-Drive Technology”. This new system uses both push and pull to connect with the filament at multiple points instead of yanking from the end, meaning you have far less force required to feed the filament through the length.
While we’re on the topic of filament, the team has been hard at work breaking the rules here as well. The new system is capable of mixing sizes in addition to hardness and materials. The 0.8mm high-flow nozzle handles fast internal infill, while the 0.4mm fine nozzle is responsible for precise outer walls. This is going to allow visible elements to look their best, while the internal structure gets a fast structure fill to improve speed. How much? The team is estimating up to 7.5X increase.
Last but not least is something the team is calling CMYK Full Spectrum, with “Water-soluble support” as a bonus:
There are SO many more features under the hood that aim to improve the overall printing experience, including a new sensor array and refined motors for stability:
It’s hard to quantify how all of this will come together given the MASSIVE amount of improvements under the hood. I imagine people are going to look at this and see a speedier way to change colors, but there is so much more than meets the eye.
We won’t have to wait long as more details including price and compatibility will hit between now and the launch some time in Q3 of 2026. Stay tuned, and congratulations to Creality on their 12th anniversary!
Ron Burke is the Editor in Chief for Gaming Trend. Loves RPGs, action/adventure, and VR, but also dabbles in 3D printing, martial arts, and flight!
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