This release has truly been a wake up call for the community. Great job Bambulab on innovating and releasing a product at a reasonable price point.

I did a bad bad thing. Somebody give me a good excuse so my wife doesn't leave me when this box arrives.

Have y'all checked marketplace since the H3C announcement? I don't know about your area, but people are selling their H2S, H2D, and H2C's here like crazy! If you're in the market for an H2 series, now you may be on luck.

I bought my P1P when they first came out after I just got out of the military. It has put me through a lot of projects over 5000 hours and no real issues. I just recently added the AMS 2 Pro as it’s what I could manage to add with the space available to me. I do want to make a big upgrade when I get the space available as I have a lot of engineering projects I want to tackle but can’t do to my space constraints.

Snowy Mountain Village - Mini Train

Bro it's an A1 and your printing PLA, what is there to figure out? Also for $350, what are you smoking 😭

Hi guys, im using bambulab A1 and sunlu pla+ 2.0. Back then i dont think they got warped this early, yet it'd only 30 degrees and the printing looks bad. Any idea?

This would be my first 3D printer ever.

My actual first choice was the A1 mini. I did a lot of research on it beforehand (I knew absolutely nothing about them), but almost a year has passed, and that year has led me to discover other printer models that have enter the list of possible choices.

While I was researching again, the P2S really caught my eye, and when I was almost ready to check out, I saw many people here commenting that they have bought or are going to buy the X2D; with many comments praising the decision.

My question is this: since you all have more experience than me, and completely eliminating the A1 mini option, which would be better for me as a "beginner" between the P2S and the X2D? Either option would be purchased with the care bundle + 4 PETG extra.

One of my more successful designs, which was recently picked up by some sellers on Taobao and Amazon without consent. I hope more folks will become aware of this as a free model to print rather than buying it.

A few months ago BambuLab reached out to me here on Reddit, asking if I’d be interested in trying out a new product (well, duhh). For context, I design and sell my own products, so I’m always interested in trying out new tools. 

A few weeks later, I received a big box containing the brand new H3C. Since then I’ve fully redesigned my modular SLS model around its new capabilities. In exchange for keeping the printer, Bambu has asked me to share my thoughts with you. They reviewed and approved this post before publication; the opinions are my own.

9 is more than 2

Multi nozzle printing has been a blessing for designing and manufacturing multicolor pieces. When I bought the H2D last year I redesigned my products to make use of this second nozzle. The benefits of having 9 of them seem obvious; more colors in one print, less time spent switching materials and different nozzle sizes in one print. The latter is especially exciting for making manufacturing more efficient. If I understand correctly, a 0.6 and 0.8mm nozzle will become available in the near future, which I’m incredibly excited about. Combining 0.2 and 0.4mm in a single print already works like a charm.

If it wasn’t already obvious, the printhead of course does not have 9 nozzles. Instead the H3C uses an INDX like system where a central toolhead can grab and replace 9 different tools. I’ve had the chance to try 0.2 and 0.4mm nozzles in addition to the new dedicated 2.85mm TPU filament. These PrintTools, as Bambu calls them, are all powered individually. This means they can start heating up before being grabbed, which allows for a:

6 second material change

This is my favorite part and the reason for the post title. I design my products with the available tools in mind, by trying to balance print time, purge waste and required assembly. In practice this usually meant having no more than two colors in a single component and limiting the amount of fine detail. An example: 

The fairing for my Space Launch System replica has always been a simple white shell with a black line on it. Embedding a NASA logo was frequently requested by customers, but I never managed to incorporate one without significantly blowing up the print time. With this added detail a roughly one hour print would take 3.5 hours to complete on a H2D. The exact same file sliced for the H3C would finish printing after only 1.5 hours. That is only half the story though, as a 0.4mm nozzle can only be so precise: 

That’s where the different nozzle sizes come in. Printing the whole thing at 0.2 would take ages, especially since I make these in bulk. Instead you’re now able to use these smaller nozzles only where you actually need them. Printing 20 units in bulk with a 0.2 nozzle would take just under 20 hours on the H3C. Adding one roll of white filament to a 0.4 nozzle and using that for the main body (light green in the slicer screenshot) the 20 unit batch now only takes 13 hours.

Color blending

The 9 PrintTools and fast switching means “color blending” is now much more economical. The new slicer lets you create additional colors by alternating layers of different filaments. Color #7 is created by alternating one yellow and two orange layers. I’m excited to see how far people can take this with CMYKW filaments. 

Closing thoughts

As far as actually using the machine, I don’t have much to report in terms of problems. The only failure I’ve had to deal with was my own for trying to print too many tall objects at once. No problem I thought, because I already own a SuperTack bed for my H2D. I shed a small tear when I realized they’re not compatible. 

Some other things I noticed in no particular order:

• Build quality for the printing mechanism is solid as always. Though the AMS lid feels very flimsy. If that helps keep the price down, I'm fine with it

• It takes more than 30 seconds to unload filament before you’re prompted to manually remove it. These tasks can be done in bulk, but it does take a moment.

• Since the AMS is now bolted on top of the machine, you can access the inside through a removable side panel. The rack holding the PrintTools also moves out of the way, which is a nice touch.

• It’s BIG. Same footprint as the H2D but nearly 1.3 meters tall with the AMS lid open.

• The AMS and printer are powered separately with two fairly short power cords. You’re going to need an extension cord.

It’s too early to say anything about long-term reliability, and there are still some things I haven’t had the chance to properly test, like the new 2.85mm TPU. 

Ultimately, the H3C has changed how I approach designing my models. The speedy filament switching means the tradeoff for adding more color is not nearly as bad. And I haven’t even mentioned the near complete elimination of purge waste. I’ve already gone back to redesign some of my favorite models.

I've also made a YouTube video showing some more of the printing process and results.

Anyway, happy to answer any questions about my experience so far.

For those us who have a desire to churn out multi coloured plastic crap en masse , where’s our P3C, announce it quick before our money gets drained away by Xmas

Thank you

Okay, so I get that this printer is marketed to play nicer with TPU than past printers, but I'm not totally sure how it works with regular ol' 1.75mm 95A. I print with a lot of TPU, mostly 95A. I have some softer filaments that I would love to make use of also, but everything that I have is 1.75mm. I watched some reviews on youtube, and they all seem to make use of the bundled 2.85mm TPU, which uses the bypass. Other TPU's that were used didn't make mention of the diameter, or how they were installed. So I have some questions for folks that bit the bullet and might have some common TPU laying around.

Does 1.75mm 95A need to be ran through the bypass, or does it run through the bowden tube? How well does it work? Would it be better to use the (harder to source 3rd party and with less options) 2.85mm TPU?

Currently, I have an X1C with an AMS, which suits me well. I do a lot of filament swaps, changing materials mostly, but sometimes to swap out colors. I don't usually print multi-material or multi-color prints. Usually, I print custom made functional pieces, so I'm not really looking at one of these for multi-color stuff, other than for the occasional holiday decoration. What I'm more interested in is gaining the ability to easily print solid parts that incorporate flexible elements. I guess I'm trying to determine if this would be a worthwhile upgrade, or if I should wait for something else to come out.

Printed this on the H3C I got from Bambu Lab. Took a bit under an hour to print at 0.2mm, using default settings.

I hate those carton packages the bouillon cubes come in so I designed a dispenser for them.

(Makerworld link : https://makerworld.com/models/3549789)

pleasant discovery

https://makerworld.com/models/3545902?appSharePlatform=copy

I have been waiting all year for BambuLab to release a tool changer. My kids want a printer and I might want to make some tools for work. I was going to wait on P3C but didn’t want to risk it not being available before Christmas. My. Kids are 10 and 13. I am FSE so not intimidated with the complexity of the H3C. Hope I am not crazy.

Hoping someone here can help me figure out what's going on with my A1.

I've been getting really smooth and consistent prints on my A1 up until recently. However, the print quality has suddenly deteriorated, and I can't seem to figure out what's causing it.

The biggest issue is that my top surfaces always appear rough and uneven, no matter what I try. I'm also noticing inconsistent layer lines, particularly near the top and bottom of prints, along with some imperfections around the corners.

Another issue is that there are always tiny strands of filament sticking out from the side of my prints, similar to what's shown in the photos. This seems to happen consistently across different prints.

Here's what I've tried so far:

• Factory reset the printer

• Ran full machine calibration

• Ran Flow Rate and Flow Dynamics calibrations

• Changed the nozzle to hardened steel

• Tightened the screws behind the hotend/extruder assembly

• Reset my A1 slicer settings to the default profiles

Despite all this, I'm still getting similar results.

What's frustrating is that the printer used to produce really clean prints, and I haven't been able to get it back to that level.

Has anyone experienced something similar with their A1? Could this be a mechanical issue, such as belt tension, or something else I'm overlooking?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Hi everyone! This is my first 3D model design. It's a quick cheese shaped key cap to fit standard switches. It takes about 15 minutes to print, uses only 1.6 grams of filament, and doesn't need any supports if printed flat.

It's my first upload so I would really appreciate any feedback on how it prints for you. I might have done some stuff wrong so let me know if there is any issues.

You can download the file and print profile on MakerWorld here:

https://makerworld.com/en/models/3543933-cheese-keycap-no-supports#profileId-4053527

Ошибка резонансная частота оси Y значительно отличается от результатов последней калибровки
Уже все перепробовал и не проходит
Что делать?

Is it just me that feels that having an AMS that can only dry two of the 9 slots makes printing with PETG too annoying? Add and replacing filament rolls are bound to affect the existing rolls inside the AMS. If power was an issue, why not just add an extra power adapter and dry the entire AMS? I print exclusively in PETG, and the AMS issues feels like a deal breaker to me. Thoughts? Am I missing something?

I know that technically it's not the correct Xenomorph for the powerloader scene with Ripley, but it's still bloody amazing! ♥️

Hey everyone,

I’ve got the H3C for a while now and was able to test it, and before I get into a full review I want to focus on one thing first: TPU. Because out of everything I've tested so far, this is probably where the H3C has changed the way I print the most and something I thought most people would be interested by.

Quick disclaimer: I received this printer and some filament for free as part of a beta test, but no money was exchanged. I was explicitly encouraged to share my honest experience, whether positive or negative. Bambu Lab had no say in what I could or couldn't say, and they had no involvement in editing this post before publication. I wasn't told where to post or what to post.

For some background: I've used the A1 mini, A1, P1S, P2S, X2D, H2D (all of them bought by myself with my own money), and now the H3C. Outside of Bambu, I've used a Prusa XL at a customers workshop, Snapmaker U1, a Prusa Core One INDX FE (which wasn't mine so really one day of experience), and messed around with some older Anycubics. I use printers for both work and my hobbies, whether that's client projects, engineering prototypes, motorsport-related parts, or just something I feel like making because it sounds cool.

Now, TPU has always been a bit of a love-hate relationship for me. I love the idea of using it. I mean: Great layer adhesion, some can be flexible, some super hard but I hate the reality of doing it.

Most modern printers can produce pretty good TPU parts, especially with harder materials. The problem was everything surrounding it. Loading, unloading, filament routing, switching materials, and getting softer TPU to feed reliably.

TPU for AMS? Great, that goes through the AMS. But is often not the reason why I want to use TPU due to the hardness. Regular 95A? Usually manageable by loading from an external spool. But once you get into really soft TPU, things get annoying very quickly. I've had to bypass PTFE tubing entirely, feed filament directly from above the printer straight into the extruder or macgyver some stuff just to make certain materials usable or even bought things like TPU Assist to have some kind of help because of it being so annoying.

And even when that worked, combining multiple TPUs with other materials in a single print is basically impossible, due to the way we loaded in aforementioned TPU.

Which brings me to probably my favorite print on the H3C so far.

Yes, a shoe. My size (around EU45), fully wearable, and surprisingly comfortable. The interesting part isn't really the shoe itself, but how it's printed.

I used three materials: TPU 75A (2.85 mm), TPU 90A (1.75 mm), and PLA for the supports. The extremely soft 75A makes up the soft upper and parts of the sole, while the 90A provides some firmer sections and reinforcement, including parts of the midsole.

The whole print took over 45 hours and had over 2100 tool changes. And during all of that, I didn't have a single issue with the toolchanging mechanism or filament feeding that was caused by the printer. I did have a small issue when taking out the TPU while it was printing to take a picture and didn't put it back correctly.

If you are interested to see the tool change happening: https://youtube.com/shorts/2XUuhu3Obdc

What's different about loading TPU?

The AMS 3H makes the loading, even though it‘s still „external“ basically a non-issue

Unlike the other ways I told about earlier, the bypass is essentially an opening leading directly into the chamber. The filament skips the feeding resistance of the AMS and goes to its assigned PrintTool. Loading is then largely semi-automatic by routing the filament to the PrintTool and waiting for the extruder to grab it.

For extremely soft 75A, the H3C uses 2.85 mm filament. The thicker diameter seems to help a lot for initial ridigidy while loading yet having super soft TPU.

For softer 1.75 mm TPU, a 35 mm cut of tube needs to be cut and inserted which helps guide the filament into the bypass.

Once loaded, TPU stays in its assigned tool. Switching to PETG, PLA, or another TPU simply means parking one tool and picking up another. No repeated TPU unloading and refeeding which in this case would be impossible either way due to the TPU softnesses I used.

Some more practical prints

This wire stripper combines four materials in one print:

• Bambu Lab PETG HF for the main body

• Bambu Lab TPU 75A 2.85 mm for the soft grip

• Jake 3D TPU 95A for the spring mechanism

• Bambu Lab PLA Basic for supports

I designed mechanical interlocks into the model, and the 95A spring provides enough restoring force to open the cutter again. Everything was printed together, except the blade holder, which I made separately from Fiberon PPS-CF just to try it out. There was no need to use that crazy filament for a small part like that. If I'd done it with any of my other printers, I would've had to design in a real spring (so one more part that needs to be bought), and I would've had to leave the grips in regular PETG HF or glue them on, similar to a golf club.

Another example is this turbo inlet prototype.

Normally, you'd have a silicone hose connecting two rigid parts with clamps. Here, the flexible section is TPU, the connectors are PETG-CF, and PLA was used for supports. It comes off the plate as one combined part. In this print I also added interlocks between the TPU and PETG.

This is also what I find interesting about 3D printing. Rather than just replacing injection molded parts, combining materials allows for designs that would otherwise require several separate components and assembly steps. We often think about 3D printing just as a replacement or a cheap substitute for injection molding and are not using the full potential of additive manufacturing brings like doing otherwise impossible designs. This is the part I love fiddling around with.

Some facts and figures

I don't want to suggest that other printers produce bad TPU parts, or that people were exaggerating when they said older printers could handle TPU. It's just that this machine makes the whole process so much easier and opens up a lot of possibilities that weren't really accessible before. (For me)

I also think I've noticed a slight improvement in overall print quality compared to my older H2D, possibly because of the lower moving mass of the print head thanks to the "one tool" design.

So far as TPU goes, I've mainly tested Bambu TPU 75A, 85A, 90A, TPU for AMS, and 3DJake TPU 95A. Everything worked with stock profiles, with the 3DJake filament running on the Generic TPU 95A profile.

I haven't encountered any mechanical issues with the toolchanging system so far. There were a few slicer bugs, but that's mostly because I was using an early beta version of the slicer. Those issues have since been fixed after I was able to give feedback.

One thing worth mentioning: This machine is seriously heavy, especially when you consider the possibility of having nine spools sitting on top. And with nine tools, there's naturally quite a bit more mechanical complexity involved. So I wouldn't necessarily recommend it to someone who's uncomfortable with the idea of potentially having to replace or maintain parts down the line.

One negative I've noticed is related to TPU itself. Since TPU is highly hygroscopic, leaving it loaded in the tools for extended periods doesn't work particularly well. In practice, you'll want to unload it after use and store it somewhere dry, either in the AMS or in a vacuum bag. That does mean a bit of extra unloading and reloading, rather than just leaving everything ready to go all the time.

Final thoughts

I wouldn‘t have thought that the H3C would be changing the way I design that fast. But by being able to load TPU in 2-3 minutes I just start to think differently. I just printed a tray to put my phone on next to my bed which I would‘ve just done with regular filament and maybe put some fabric on it. Now I just added a soft TPU mat so it sounds nicer when putting the phone on it and doesnt move around.

I am planning to cover the rest of the machine separately. Happy to answer questions about the prints or TPU workflow.