December 2025 Newsletter
Hello all! This year has been an absolute whirlwind, but there is no industry we would rather spin ideas in than this one.
Formnext 2025:
Formnext is touted the largest tradeshow for additive manufacturing in the world, and our sources were correct. This show was absolutely amazing, and we weren’t even able to see the whole thing! Formnext took up four very large rooms, large enough they could be considered their own buildings.
We are hopeful that if we have the opportunity to attend again, that we could have our booth more in the hobby portion of the show. Our booth location was good, on an excellent corner, but in the wrong category. We were really pleased that people seemed to seek us out, even though we were a bit off the beaten track.
Formnext Highlights:
My favorite part of the show, besides speaking with other people in the industry, was seeing the concrete Benchy. When I saw that booth, I walked up to those staffing it, and said “Hey. This is awesome, and I love it. I personally can’t use concrete 3d printing, but I need to have my picture taken with your concrete Benchy.” Of course, they laughed, and told me to go ahead.
Of course, Bondtech’s INDX was there, and that was rather amazing as well. We can’t wait to get our hands on a unit after they begin the shipping process. In addition to INDX, Bondtech also had an LGX Lite Pro Metal on display. We believe this is going to be an excellent product for a lot of people who print with Chube Air and Compact. When stock is available, we will definitely be stocking it. In addition to having excellent items for 3d printing, the people of Bondtech are always a pleasure to speak with, and it was wonderful to see them again.
Upcoming New Products:
Filament: We have new filaments that we are adding to the Two Step brand late 2025/early 2026, including: Ultem 1010, more ASA-GF colors, as well as a new type of ABS.
Jupiter: We are hopeful that the Jupiter toolboard project will gain more traction after shipping outstanding Pika and Compact units. Updates to the board design have been made, and we will be able to do more testing once we are through this production slog with the hotends.
Chube Compact Update:
The silicone socks are in! The socks look wonderful, and will be available in both blue and black. These are up on our website already.
The Compact labels are here too, and we are very happy with them! Chube Air and Conduction labels have also been redesigned, and those are in too.
Pika Update:
These silicone socks are also in! They are all in black. Fitment is as we expected. I am sure Luke will be making another update via video again soon, I really can’t speak much on machining processes.
New Chube Website:
We found that the old Chube Hotends website often took several days for updates to go live, and it needed a lot of tender loving care. We decided the best way to go, was to create a new website mostly from scratch, and switched to a platform that offers live updates. Our hope is that accessibility will be greatly improved for users, and we will eventually redirect chubehotend.com to chubehotends.com
Chube Compact CAD is also now available on the website, see here:
https://www.chubehotends.com/integrations
Chube Toolheads:
There are images of most approved/tested Chube toolheads listed on the website as well! The images link to the Githubs, or listings, of those toolheads. We will be adding more as they are tested and approved. If you have designed and tested a toolhead for Chube that is not listed, and you would like it to be, you can reach out to us.
Chube Charts:
We have taken the time to create charts listing recommended heater wattages and sizes for all Chube hotends.
We will continue to improve the way we list this information, and will eventually lists reasonable flows as well. As many of you know, we don't prefer to list expected flowrates for our hotends, because there are just so many variables. When we create these charts, we will do our best to list as much information as possible.
New Flowrate Calculator tool
Luke spent some time putting together a website to help you figure out if you could use the flow provided by any of the Pika/Chube series!
Check it out here: http://flowcalc.net
Vendors:
On the new website, we have all of our Chube vendors listed and linked.
Updated Vendor List:
Northprint3d – Canada
West3d – Oregon, USA
Fabreeko – Florida, USA
KB3D – Ohio, USA
3DO – Denmark
MyRigs – France
3DKatten – Sweden
Hjort Creations – Sweden
JB3D – United Kingdom
DREMC – Australia
Meltbro – Germany
Matterhackers – USA (at this time, stocking only full Elegoo Giga Upgrades, and will stock Pika Hotends as well)
https://www.chubehotends.com/buynow
Updates to Luke’s Laboratory Website:
We have spent some time moving things around, and attempting to make the site easier for you to navigate. We think the new front page layout better represents what we do here at Luke’s Lab.
The Information/Help tab now has a direct link for making tickets, and we have also added our Flowrate and Belt tensioning calculators under that tab! We will continue to add useful tools like those as needed.
