I feel that the Revo nozzles are very analogous to toner cartridges for modern desktop laser printers. When you swap out the toner, you’re not just replacing the actual toner cartridge - you’re also replacing the imaging drum and a bunch of other parts (that I’ve forgotten the names of because it’s actually been almost 20 years since I was in that industry), many of which are a serious pain in the butt to replace individually.
Anyway, my point is that with laser printers, the high-end machines where they assume that a trained tech is doing the service work, and the very low-cost machines where they assume the printer isn’t going to outlast one maintenance cycle anyway, those parts can all be individually replaced but on a machine that’s mean to be long-lasting but user-serviced, most of the parts that wear out are replaced every time you change toner. When this first came out, it was derrided as being super expensive but as secretaries and office assistants realised how quick and easy it was to keep the printer up and running, it became very very popular. So then other companies started doing it too, and the cost came down to something more broadly tolerable and so it became more popular stll.
It’s not a perfect analogy, but it feels like things like the Revo are absolutely necessary if home/hobby 3d printing is going to become a widespread, reliable tool and not just a hobby for masochists who like tinkering with machines. I know that for myself, I wanted a Prusa XL and bought a Bambu X1 in large part because of their single-component hot ends. Fucking around with trying to get the nozzle and throat properly butted on my Ender-5 is such a horrible experience that I’ve been living with what I’m pretty sure is a damaged nozzle tip for three months on that machine, because it’s easer to use a bit of glue on the finished part to fix gaps where the perimeters didn’t merge than to try and replace the nozzle.
I want to get a Revo on that Ender, but until recently hadn’t found a mounting solution that would work with the MicroSwiss direct drive that’s currently on my machine. I’ve discovered one posted over on Printables, but right now money is super tight - and with the X1 at hand, I’m not sure I’m going to keep the Ender-5 anyway. At this point I’m only using it to print Silk PLA, because to get a good print in Silk you have to slow all the way down to about 30mm/s and doing that on the X1 would be like using your Ferrari as a snowplow.
Anyway, the point of this long post is that I do expect that simple, reliable, unskilled-user-replaceable parts will become more common, and even at the higher cost I think that’s a good thing. If I’m replacing a nozzle every six months, a Revo would cost me 60$ in parts and 5 cents in labour and frustration; your 3$ nozzle will cost me 6$ in parts, 30$ in labour (billed at Alberta’s minimum wage and assume everything went right the first time) and about 100$ worth of frustration (obviously a very personal cost). So for me, the extra dollar cost is more than worth it with all the frustration saved.
