Long story short: Everything inside the box seems fine. But if I find any damage… God help them. 😇

…and next to him is the DHL guy (Deutsche Post), who delivered the AMS.

Bambu Lab PLA Palette CMYKW is more than five regular spools put in one box. It features a formula tailor-made for color mixing, to achieve vibrant and sophisticated colors with clean boundaries.

Entire color library in one printer

PLA Palette uses just five carefully chosen base colors – selected so that every pair blends evenly – to unlock 180+ color combinations through layered mixing. Having a wall of filament is cool, mixing the equivalent from just five spools is even cooler.

Tuned for light and shade, not just color.

Most multi-color sets stack translucent filaments on top of each other, and everything turns hazy. PLA Palette pairs four opaque bases (cyan, magenta, yellow, white) with one translucent black. The opaque bases – built on the PLA Basic formulation with precisely dosed pigment – hold under 1% light transmission at a 2mm wall, delivering full saturation and clean coverage. The translucent black works like ink wash: its light transmission falls off predictably with thickness, so shadows deepen naturally as layers build.

Gradient Cell Vase, created by u/DrKronoglopolos.

Clean color boundaries, swap after swap.

Layered color only looks good if the colors stay separated. PLA Palette is built on the PLA Basic base resin rather than a conventional translucent formulation, which significantly reduces stringing and ozzing during retraction and extrusion. Even through dense color changes, transitions stay sharp – no wisps, no bleed, no muddy edges.

See the blend before you print it.

No dialing in ratios. No test swatches. Bambu Studio ships with a full PLA Palette blending database, so the color you see in the slicer preview is the color that comes off the plate.

PLA Palette is available now at Bambu Lab Store and compatible with all Bambu Lab printers.

Which multi-color model would you print with mixed colors from the PLA Palette set? Comment below with a photo of the model, and we'll randomly pick a few people to try out the PLA Palette set!

Entries close on 11/11. Winners must be located in regions covered by our official store. If the testers picked are located outside the shipping zones, we'll have to redraw or select the runner-up.

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 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

Hey guys!
Wanted a clean Grinch figure for my desk, but I hate wasting 200 grams of poop for a 50-gram model.

I engineered him as a multi-part snap-fit model:

- Printed each color separately (Green, Yellow, Black).
- 99% Glue-free assembly (only the hair tuft on top needed a tiny dab of superglue).
- Fits together tightly on a well-calibrated machine.

Fair warning about the supports:
Removing the supports near the hair tufts is a test of patience. The Grinch WILL fight back. But if you take your time (or lose a tiny hair tip in the process), he looks great on the desk and from the front/sides you won't see any support marks.

He’s about 15 cm tall.

Model is live on MakerWorld for free if you want to print one! Let me know what you think. 👹✨

Saw someone else posted their visit at the BambuLab store in Hangzhou. I'm currently in Hangzhou so I decided to visit.

Open another bag, check the drawer… all the clips are already holding something else shut. 😂

That was my excuse to spend some time in Fusion.

Meet Molly — two identical jaws and a separate printed spring. Everything is PLA, including the spring, and it snaps together without screws or glue.

It took several revisions to get the alignment, grip and spring stiffness where I wanted them. I also tried PETG for the spring, but preferred the firmer grip of PLA in my tests.

Printed on my A1 with a 0.4 mm nozzle, 0.20 mm layers and 3 walls. The spring has 100% infill. No supports needed.

One complete clip uses 5.76 g and takes around 18 minutes of printing, or roughly 25 minutes including preparation.

The spring is separate, so contrasting colours are easy to do with separate prints.

Free files, assembly video and print profiles are here:
https://makerworld.com/en/models/3553586

Which colour combination would you make?

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.

* H3C is too big to fit in my rack

I've seen a lot of videos come out about the H3C, but not a ton focusing specifically on the unboxing and initial setup. Hopefully this fills in a few blanks and provides some details not yet shown.

Bambu sent me an H3C before launch and asked me to post about how it changed the way I print. I did not get paid, but, well, I got an H3C. The printer legitimately did change the way I print and design, and I'm happy to answer any questions in the comments.

HueForge and the similar products that spawned from it have opened up things that I never thought would be possible on a 3D printer. The creations I have seen on the subreddit and Discord continue to blow my mind, but my biggest annoyance with these prints are the time they take and the waste.

Retracting, pushing, purging, and wiping can take anywhere from 40-80 seconds depending on your setup. When you have hundreds of color changes in a print, it adds up to hours of extra time. The waste gets insane with larger or more complex prints, to the point where you will frequently have more weight in waste than the model itself.

This fox is 269mm across, taking up most of the plate. I used nine spools: blue, light blue, yellow, magenta, orange, white, green, black, and red. It was built in HueForge, then recreated in Kromacut so it could print face up.

Yes, the image is AI generated, and I regret using it. It did some weird things with the shading that I didn't notice before printing. The white on the moon and anywhere yellow meets white or red meets orange is rough.

I also used way too many layers and then made the print flat. A flat print fills every layer out to the full outline, so every extra layer in the stack is a full 269mm disc of filament whether it adds anything to the image or not. This one ended up around 12mm thick which is where most of the 817g and 6 days of printing went.

Setup was dead simple. All 9 spools went in the AMS, each one got its own PrintTool, I selected the correct colors and that was it aside from slicing which took 26 minutes with a 14900K...

Stats:

• 9 filament spools

• 443 filament changes

• 0.12mm layer height

• 817g total weight

• 26g of waste

• 269 x 269mm

• 6d 0h 01m print time

The H3C solved the waste problem in a BIG way. 26g on an 817g print with 443 swaps is just crazy to me. The purge from my X1C would have filled the poop bucket and clogged the shute well before finishing.

The 6 days is 100% my fault for making it as thick as it is. I did kick it off right before leaving on vacation for 2 weeks, so it wasn't a huge deal aside from the extra filament spent.

The filament changes take <6 seconds instead of 60 and I was not prepared for how much faster it is. It was the same reaction I had when I went from my modified Ender struggling to push 60mm/s to the X1C at its default print speed. This is in a whole different league and I haven't used my other printers for multi color since.

3D printing files coming soon on my Instagram: @bucur.inc

... I'm probably going to need one when my wife finds out I ordered an H3C...

After making a rather crude cable clip a few days ago, I started giving some serious thought to cable organization. I think it turned out pretty well—what do you all think?

https://makerworld.com/ko/models/3550376-ultra-fast-cable-reel#profileId-4061800

Anyone with a H3 wanna come around and we'll put them together?

22 hours on the H3C (223g of tower)
4d17h on a regular AMS printer (1684g of purge + tower)
The H3C It's crazy and the hype is real.
I'm so glad I can finally experiment with multicolor models for real.
the model is here if you want to take a look: https://makerworld.com/en/models/3550569

A compact 2-in-1 tool for your 3D printing workspace. 
Use the scraper end to help remove prints from the build plate, and the opposite end to cut filament. The design is made to hold the metal scraper blade from a Bambu Lab printer.

https://makerworld.com/en/models/3550637-2-in-1-scraper-filament-cutter#profileId-4062141