Bambu Lab Patent Shows a Nine-Bay Hotend Rack

Bambu Lab has applied to patent a rack for spare hotends inside a printer, in a Chinese filing published on August 14, 2026 in which unlocking a hotend and parking it become one motion.

Figure 1 from the patent: the machine with its panels on, filament stored in the housing across the top.

Published as CN 122560413 A, the application is assigned to Shenzhen Tuozhu Technology, Bambu Lab's legal entity. Its priority date is November 6, 2025. The stroke that releases a hotend from the toolhead is the same one that seats it in the rack, so one drive does both jobs. Reusing it cuts steps out of a swap, the application claims.

Figure 2 from the patent: the same machine opened up. The rack runs along the back, fed by tubes from the supply unit above it.

What parks in the rack is a hotend, not a whole toolhead. The unit that detaches carries the feed tube, heat break, heater and nozzle, plus its own filament line. The extruder stays behind on the toolhead, its drive wheel and idler gripping the filament through a cutout in the unit's side. So every head shares one extruder. That makes it a hotend changer rather than a toolchanger of the Prusa XL sort, where every head carries its own drive. Bambu Lab already sells one as Vortek, and Bondtech's INDX works the same way: one driven toolhead picking up passive nozzle tools, in four and eight tool kits for the Prusa CORE One.

Figure 5 from the patent: everything on the left stays with the toolhead, drive wheel and idler included. The column on the right is what detaches.

The drawings show nine bays. Several claims cover packing them closer together. Because the toolhead drops straight down rather than sideways, neighboring bays need no clearance, so their centers sit closer than the toolhead is wide. The stated aim is more heads in the same space.

Figure 7 from the patent: the rack on its own, nine bays wide, with the motor and lead screw at the left end that raise and lower it.

Magnets hold each parked head. The application prefers a tilt of 15 to 40 degrees off the drop direction. Angled that way the pull stays weak while the head is moving, so it cannot drag the head off line, then bites once the faces meet flush. A spring latch closes over the head as the toolhead retreats.

Figure 19 from the patent: the rack is on the left, the head on the right, and the angle between the two magnet faces is marked a.

The extruder opens its wheels and lets go before the head unlocks. Left clamped, the application says, the filament would be dragged out of the melt zone and block the head. The bed drops clear too, for any swap in the first 6 mm of a print. INDX heats its nozzles by induction, with no wire to the tool at all. Bambu Lab's application keeps a wire to each head but lists induction among its alternatives. No nine-bay machine has been confirmed, and the patent names no model, no date and no price.

What does Bambu Lab's new patent cover?+

A rack that holds spare hotends inside a 3D printer, published as CN 122560413 A on August 14, 2026. Its main claim is that unlocking a hotend from the toolhead and seating it in the rack happen as one motion instead of two.

Does the patent describe a toolchanger?+

Not in the Prusa XL sense, where each head carries its own extruder. What detaches is a hotend, and the extruder stays on the shared toolhead. That is the same passive-tool approach Bambu Lab sells as Vortek and Bondtech sells as INDX.

Is Bambu Lab making a nine-hotend printer?+

Unknown. Nine bays appear in the patent drawings, but patent figures illustrate an embodiment rather than a product, and the claims are not limited to nine. The document names no machine, no date and no price.