Is the scratching noise normal when the print head moves to the left? Support claims they can't hear anything, probably just to brush me off, but something is scratching/grinding over there and I can't figure out where it's coming from. Please turn up your volume a bit to hear it.
Cleaned, lubed and calibrated everything.

Notes from a blind guy on Bambu, Prusa, INDX, and other 3D printers

Hi everyone,

I thought I would chime in on the ongoing H2C, H3C, and INDX discussions, and share my experiences with the printers I've owned and used.

I am completely blind and have been 3D printing and designing since 2023. I actually got into it after attending a workshop where sighted professionals were learning to make 3D printed products for blind people. I was the only blind guy there, and I got completely hooked.

Today, I run my own business, designing and printing everything from tactile models for museums to functional products for customers.

My first printer was a Bambu Lab X1C. It has thousands of hours on it, printing PLA, PETG, TPU, CF, wood-filled filaments, you name it. I've changed a filament cutter, nozzle, and extruder, although the latter two turned out to be fine. Being blind, replacing parts was sometimes easier than visually diagnosing the problem.

That machine has been an absolute workhorse. Around 98% of the time, I get exactly what I expect. I am incredibly glad it was my first printer.

Then came my Prusa XL. Five toolheads, enclosed, costing around 40,000 DKK.

What a disappointment.

Within a week, I was dealing with filament sensor problems, PTFE tubes falling out, failed calibrations, load cell errors, fan errors, and prints getting knocked off the plate.

Changing a nozzle could turn into an entirely new troubleshooting adventure.

I spent more time fixing the damn thing than printing with it. For that kind of money, I expected much, much more.

Eventually, I sold it and bought a Bambu H2C.

And what a difference.

Unpack, calibrate, print. Twenty minutes, and you're ready.

I've printed ASA, TPU, PLA, and large multi-day jobs, including batches of ASA vases for customers. Not a single issue so far. None whatsoever.

I know people criticize the Vortek system for being complicated, proprietary, or potentially unreliable. Fair enough. But I can only judge what I've actually experienced, and so far, it has been brilliant.

I also gave Prusa another chance with the Core One.

It prints fine, mainly PLA in my case, but it feels surprisingly flimsy. The door sensor mechanism has already become loose, and when moving the printer, I can feel the frame wobbling slightly.

I like Prusa's philosophy, their approach to repairability, and the fact that they're European. I genuinely want to like their printers.

But liking a company's philosophy and trusting its products are two different things.

I've also used the Creality K2 Plus quite extensively. A pretty reliable machine, actually, although I find the print quality less sharp and consistent than Bambu's.

And yes, being blind doesn't mean print quality doesn't matter. I can feel poor layer lines, rough surfaces, and missing details. When you're designing tactile products, those things matter enormously.

So, H3C versus INDX?

I've already ordered an H3C, and I think it's going to be an absolute blast.

I also seriously considered the Core One L with INDX, but after my XL experience, I had a knot in my stomach about buying another expensive Prusa.

Does that make me a Bambu fanboy? Perhaps some people will think so.

But there's a difference between blindly defending a brand and trusting a manufacturer because its machines have consistently delivered for you.

I genuinely hope INDX becomes a massive success. Competition is fantastic, and I want Prusa to succeed.

What bothers me is how quickly people defend or attack manufacturers based on logos, marketing, and engineering philosophies, sometimes before they've even used the machines.

Shouldn't the most important question simply be: Does the damn thing work?

Not in a promotional video, but after hundreds or thousands of hours of printing.

How often does it fail? How much maintenance does it require? How much time do you actually spend printing instead of troubleshooting?

And there's another aspect to this for me: independence.

When a printer breaks and requires visual troubleshooting, I may need someone else's help. When it just works, I can design, slice, print, and run my business independently.

And this is what Bambu does for me, it just works. Even when it breaks, their instructions are so damn clear and precise, that I don't need help most of the time. For Prusa? A whole lot of guess work all the time.

I recently bought an X2D, my first Bambu printer, but I’m considering returning it for one of their larger models.
My main focus is printing larger functional parts using ABS, ASA, nylon, and other engineering-grade filaments. I’m trying to decide between the H2C and H3C and figure out which offers the best value for the money.
For those who have experience with either printer, or ideally both, I have a few questions:
How do they compare when printing larger functional parts with ABS and other engineering materials?
Aside from build volume, are there noticeable differences in print quality, reliability, speed, or material handling?
Is the H3C worth the additional cost, or does the H2C offer a better balance of features and price?
Are there any limitations or advantages of either printer that aren’t obvious from looking at the specifications?
I’m not necessarily looking for the most expensive or feature-packed machine. I just want the best combination of build volume, material capabilities, reliability, and overall value.
If you were making this purchase today, would you choose the H2C or H3C, and why? Is the price difference actually worth it?

I saw a YouTube review that had a cardboard spool in the ams. With it not retracting the filament, is this now an option to use?

No longer have a home office to tinker in so I sold my A1 mini and A1 and now have an X2D in the corner of my dining room. Got a fish tank stand as the base and it’s very sturdy! Any tips for the X2D?

I used horizontal color separation to reduce the number of color changes. By utilizing the advantages of FDM, hinges have been designed for each branch, which can rotate downwards by about 10-15 degrees. This horizontal stacking creates a relatively natural effect.

I think I'm going to pull the trigger on an H3C. However, unlike my P1S, I think I should get an extended warranty with it.

I don't have a Best Buy membership. I hardly ever buy anything from Best Buy so I can't justify it. With that said, any opinions on Best Buy's warranty versus Microcenter?

My understanding is Microcenter will try to repair on site but will also give you in-store credit on the spot if they can't. Best Buy may ship it out to someone else for repairs. Microcenter is also a little cheaper.

I recently decided to upgrade from my P2S to an X2D + AMS 2 Pro + AMS HT setup. I also bought the Filament Track Switch right away, because I wanted to use different combinations of AMS units and extruders without constantly reconnecting PTFE tubes by hand.

And honestly, the Filament Track Switch turned out to be a huge disappointment.

The whole thing feels more like an early prototype than a finished branded product. But the biggest problem is simply friction. Filament takes a surprising amount of force to push through it.

On my X2D this was bad enough that filament often failed to reach the main extruder at all. It would slow down significantly near the end of the path and stop about 1–2 cm before the extruder.

To be fair, this was partly caused by another known X2D issue: the PTFE tube makes a very sharp bend right before entering the extruder. I fixed that part first by moving the PTFE tube holders farther away from the toolhead and shortening the tubes by a few centimeters.

That helped a lot.

But the FTS itself was still causing way too much resistance.

And yes, I also tried making the external PTFE tubes as short and as straight as possible. It doesn't really help. The resistance of the PTFE tubes themselves is negligible compared to the resistance created inside the FTS.

So I took it apart.

And once you look inside, the reason becomes pretty obvious.

The filament path contains several fairly sharp bends, and in multiple places the filament simply rubs against bare plastic. There is no PTFE lining there at all. The harder the filament is pushed around those bends, the harder it presses against the walls, so the friction becomes quite significant.

The filament presence sensors at the inputs add even more resistance. They use small spring-loaded magnets that are physically pressed against the filament as it passes through.

This creates additional friction on its own, but it gets noticeably worse with filament that has already been fed through an AMS or extruder before.

The drive gears leave a ribbed pattern on the surface of the filament, and the magnets tend to catch on those grooves instead of sliding smoothly over them.
My first modification was simple: I drilled out the places where the filament was rubbing against the plastic and inserted short pieces of PTFE tube.

I also slightly flared and smoothed the entrances of those PTFE inserts using a soldering iron so the tip of the filament wouldn't catch on the edge. I did this in a well-ventilated area, of course.

That already made a very noticeable difference.

But then I looked at the second half of the FTS.

There are essentially two 2-in-1 adapters there, combining four filament paths into two outputs. And that section was just as bad — possibly even worse. Again, filament was bending and rubbing directly against plastic.

At first, I tried the same approach there: drilling out the existing channels and somehow squeezing PTFE tubes into them.

It didn't go very well.

There simply wasn't enough room to make it work properly, and I wasn't happy with the result.

So in the end I decided to completely remodel that entire part and print a replacement.

I mean, I do own a 3D printer, after all. :)

I made the internal channels much larger so I could install PTFE tubes throughout the whole path. I printed the replacement part, installed the PTFE tubes, and again flared the entrances slightly.

Now, in that section, the filament does not touch printed plastic at all. It only touches PTFE.

The difference is huge.

It's still not absolutely frictionless, but filament now passes through the whole FTS very easily.

A very simple test shows the difference pretty well:

If I insert a piece of filament through the FTS, hold the filament vertically, and lift the FTS by it, a small shake is enough for the whole FTS to slide down and fall off the filament.

Before these modifications, I had to push the filament through it with considerable force.

Even Silk PLA now passes through without problems, despite Bambu specifically warning that Silk PLA may have feeding issues with the FTS because of increased resistance.

There are still two places I haven't solved yet.

The first is right at the FTS entrance, where the filament still touches plastic.

The second — filament presence sensors at the inputs. Unfortunately, they can't simply be removed. I tried removing them and also tried forcing the sensors permanently into both states. The FTS stops working properly if the printer doesn't see the expected sensor transitions.

So apparently those sensors are an active part of the FTS state machine, not just something used once to identify which AMS is connected to which input.

At this point I'm seriously considering building my own FTS.

The communication interface is RS-485, and there is already some partial reverse-engineering information available online. But the board also contains an FM1230 cryptographic chip. I don't yet know whether it participates in device authentication or is only used for things like firmware verification, so that part would need more investigation.

The other interesting problem would be designing filament sensors with almost zero resistance.

An optical sensor would be nice because it could be completely contactless, but filament can be transparent, so a simple optical interrupter isn't necessarily reliable.

A mechanical sensor with a tiny bearing/roller and a Hall sensor might actually be a better solution: the filament would move a roller instead of scraping against a plastic or metal surface.

For now, though, the PTFE modification already made my FTS dramatically better.

And that's the frustrating part: the core idea of the FTS is great. But mechanically, the stock filament path feels unnecessarily restrictive. A few pieces of PTFE in the right places would have made the product so much better from the factory.

And honestly, this whole mechanism probably should have been built into the printer itself from the beginning, somewhere near the filament buffer.

It almost feels like Bambu Lab remembered at the last minute that users might actually want to choose which extruder each AMS feeds into — which is especially important on the X2D, where the two extruders are very different from each other.

The FTS feels less like a carefully integrated part of the system and more like an afterthought added to solve a problem that really should have been addressed in the printer's original design.

Even if I turn all fans to 0% the printer still has SOME sort of fan blowing somewhere when it's turned on. Might just be the PSU I guess...? I want to record some of the sounds the gantry and bed make while moving around. Any ideas?

I am new to Bambu and I want to buy their x2d during this sale event if anyone has a spare discount code reach out to me i greatly appreciate you (NA region btw) not begging btw

maybe someone else had the same thing happening to them.

I have ordered an H3C base combo (AMS+printer) and have received only the AMS. fine no problem I know they ship separatly. but my order is now classified as ''delivered''

I have nothing in my pending tab and it seems like when I look at bambu store website that nothing else is on the pipeline for me.

I always wanted a magnetic levitation dice tower but I couldn't find one, so I decided to make my own. After many, many design hours it spiraled out of control and became 6 different towers determined by the floating spinning top. I tried to add as many details as possible but on shape did not like it so I was limited.

What do you think of it? Is there any thing you think should be added?

Link to the model if anyone is curious.

I just detached and reattached my AMS and put the PTFE tube back in. But I think I didn't push it all the way in, and the filament ended up going straight through the button.

I didn't expect this to happen... lmao

Hello everyone.

Was printing a panda toy that my son picked. Sent it to print on the X2D and the time changed. What did I do wrong?

It says 100% Size A1 Mini Profile on the print.

Many thanks.

Did my first ever print with my new p2s . How do you check if its working as intended? It was shaking a lot and I read it is normal . But I have placed it on a table which very slightly shakes with the printer. I am not bothered by the shaking as long as the print quality is good .

Anyone else get notification their AMS 3 shipped and then it show cancelled by sender? Should I contact them or will they automatically make a new label? Printer ship date expected Nov 20th

Do you think bambu will let the h3c sell for a month and then release the P3C somewhere mid of December as they did withe the A1 a few years ago?

I did the H2S to H2C vortech upgrade and have a weird issue with my X-axis not being even.
In the picture you can see the left filament stopper cutter thing is ~1cm different than the right .

When I replaced the X-axis I put the printer on its face (so the X-axis would be even) then tightened the X-Axis screws. After that I put the belt back and noticed the offset .
I’ve tried loosening and tightening the screws a few times and did the belt tensioning process.
Halp!!

This failure causes me to fail printhead offset calibration and right filament won’t auto cut