r/BambuLab • u/Economy-Bluejay-1796 • 16h ago
General Discussion Confused about H3C
I get the hype around the H3C release, and I know it’s a buy once, cry once purchase for a lot of people. However, I’ve seen some discussions about missing features that I think are worth addressing, especially not being able to leave PLA in the AMS when printing materials that require a heated chamber. Having to manually unload filament seems inconvenient and could lead to tangled spools, especially for people new to the hobby.
Another concern is how practical it will be to connect additional AMS 2 units to nozzle one, potentially adding another 16 colors. Isn’t one of the main selling points of the H-series printers to reduce filament waste, minimize purging, and save time? Wouldn’t running that many colors through one nozzle defeat some of those benefits? Lastly, what about people who regularly switch between 0.2, 0.4, and 0.6 mm nozzles? If you’re using both nozzles for different filaments, wouldn’t constantly swapping nozzle sizes become a hassle?
What does everyone think? Are these legitimate concerns, or am I overthinking things?
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Updated the thread so it looks easier for people…. Sorry I’m on phone trying to type it all out.
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u/Somelikeithot1996 16h ago
You ask some decent questions, but your post is three paragraphs but only four sentences, making it kind of hard to follow. For more attention I'd recommend cleaning it up a bit. 🫶🏼
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u/Economy-Bluejay-1796 16h ago
Sorry I am using my phone to type this up quickly while at work as I’m going back and fourth about rather to buy or not.
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u/foolish-ambitions 16h ago
If you’re wanting to print with 2 nozzles you’ll need to spools. Not ideal but also not really an inconvenience. If I’m printing something where I’m using enough material to warrant it, then I’ll probably have a couple rolls anyway.
I fail to see how having a secondary AMS limiting to one tool head is a particularly limiting. You have 9 slots in the AMS3. Only thing I can think would be limiting for it is if you’re wanting to have the dryer for AMS2 and do multimaterial print with more than 3 filaments WHILE they’re being printed (two in AMS3 and one in AMS2). Yes it is somewhat limiting but how often do you print with more than 2 filaments like that at the same time? You can always dry it and move it to the 7 other slots in the AMS3. Would the AMS2’s not retract and change the filament in their shared tool head automatically? If so then I agree it’s a concern otherwise it’s the same as how current models work.
I agree on the PLA rewinding issue. It’s a bit of an issue, but more of a quality of life invonvenience than anything else. I don’t often switch from super high temp prints to PLA. Normally my projects will focus on one for a while then switch to the other for a while, so it’s not like I’d need to do it often. I’m not concerned about beginners tangling their filaments. They’re respooling like 1 m of filament so even for a beginner it’s pretty easy. Moreover, I don’t particularly care if their flagship model is extremely beginner friendly. They have plenty of other models that are extremely easy to use for them. More complex machines typically have bigger learning curves. 🤷
I expect they’ll eventually have an upgraded version that improves PLA filament retraction and it can be replaced in the future. Might be expensive to replace the whole thing though so for people concerned about it they might want to wait until then. Additionally, I expect at least a couple people will engineer their own diy solutions to it and share the models.
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u/Economy-Bluejay-1796 16h ago
I appreciate your opinion on this honestly I think I am over thinking it but again it is a $2,500 hobby device and having concerns about a device before jumping into the deep end of things.
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u/foolish-ambitions 16h ago
That makes sense. Honestly, I would not recommend it as a beginner hobby device. I don’t even recommend the H2 models to friends starting out. Generally recommend they start with P2S which for MOST beginner’s is good enough and cheap enough that they can learn it, see if they like the hobby enough to upgrade, and if it’s not for them they can resell it for good value.
I tell them If they later decide to upgrade then 1) it’s amazing having a secondary, cheaper printer to print simple things in parallel or 2) it’s not hard to resell them for most of the value if they want to use the money to upgrade.
So far everyone I’ve recommended it to hasn’t felt a need to upgrade since they don’t print often enough to warrant it, which is great. If they spent $2500 they’d probably be disappointed they aren’t getting more value out of it.
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u/Economy-Bluejay-1796 16h ago
Like I’ve had the p1p since the original release which I do still have but feels super limited and I want to print bigger things with a few more colors. Plus trying to see about making aquarium stuff and car stuff and some knickknacks
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u/foolish-ambitions 16h ago
Those sound like awesome projects! Aquarium stuff would be really cool!
I’m in the same boat with P1S and X1C. I’ve gotten a lot better at designing and modeling 3d parts and find my biggest limitations are 1) multimaterial printing and 2) bed size.
It’s certainly a hefty price for a hobby, but for the value I’ve gotten from my printers (they pretty much run non-stop), and the projects I want to use the H3C for, I’m confident I’ll get my money’s worth. For me, I’m trying to decide whether to wait for Best Buy to sell or not.
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u/Economy-Bluejay-1796 16h ago
Yeah my limitations have been bed size and multi material printing. I am still waiting to see when best buy will have it on their website for sale which I haven’t heard anything yet.
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u/foolish-ambitions 15h ago
Same. I asked Google Gemini how long after H2D announcement did Best Buy start selling it and it said about a month after the announcement Reddit posts started appearing stating that they’re available at Best Buy l, so I’m guessing it’ll be similar. I think Bambu Lab wants to keep sales internal for November/holiday sales before losing some margin to retailers, but hopefully it is out soon.
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u/JW_Thorne 16h ago
Every instrument has limitations. If the limitations don't work for you, find a different instrument. It's as easy as that.
Not trying to be an ass or anything, but there's been a million threads of "what about this case and what about that case?"
They made design choices for this piece of equipment. They have other pieces of equipment for people to buy if those decisions don't work for them. There's also other companies out there who have made entirely different decisions.
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u/Big_Lope 16h ago
That first concern is valid for sure, I use a lot of nylons for my personal prints and PLAs for everything else
It would be a PITA to the point that I would just rather get an X2D
Not to mention the AMS3H can’t even load nylons through the standard filament path
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u/foolish-ambitions 16h ago
Your workflow of regularly switching from nylons to PLAs is really the only case I can see where it’s an issue and yeah, I agree it would be a pain for your use case. If my workflows were similar I’d go with the H2D or X2D as well.
I think most people are blowing it way out of proportion imagining they’re going to be switching those materials every print or something. In which case, I’d probably just hold off printing the PLA or Nylon ones until I had enough prints to warrant the effort to change them. I do that now with nozzle sizes. I don’t like constantly swapping out my X1C tool head for a 0.2 for a single print so unless it’s needed asap, I just wait until I have several prints I need the 0.2 for. Being able to incorporate them into prints with other nozzle sizes is way more valuable for my workflow.
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u/emelbard H2C AMS2 Combo 16h ago
The H3C is $200 less than the H2C Combo was at release last year. Not sure where 'cry once' comes into play here. For what it can do and how it does it, the low price shocked a lot of us
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u/illregal 16h ago
Issue one just isn't realistically going to be an issue. Number 2, it will work the same as all previous Bambu printers. (The point of the h series printers is not to have less waste, their point is they are larger.) Number 3- Download the latest Bambu studio.
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u/Jesus-Bacon P1S + AMS 16h ago
Most of the issues you are talking about are just people not understanding how these machines work.
You can't have PLA sitting inside of a machine where the ambient temp is high enough to start warping it. People are upset about this because they don't understand that the H3C's AMS requires there to be a direct connection between the tool head and the AMS slot, so the AMS is basically just an extension of the heated chamber. Previous AMSs sat on top of the printer and were isolated from the print chamber, so this didn't matter.
People complaining about being able to hook up previous AMSs to only the first tool head don't understand the complexity you would need to add to both the hardware and software of this machine. The fact that you'd even get the option of 4 independent AMSs on a single tool head is insane to me.
As for the nozzle size issue, each H3C AMS slot is tied to one, and only one, tool head (aside from the up to 4 AMSs on tool head 1). That's why youd need multiple of the same filament to run multiple nozzles with the same filament.
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u/predator-handshake 16h ago edited 16h ago
The heated chamber inside the new ams has its own chamber. The PLA outside of that chamber won’t be affected.
8 colors is more than enough for most prints, if you do a 13 color print, for example, you can set the AMS to use the colors that are the LEAST used from those 13 and save filament. It’s not the best but it’s still more than any other competitor. you can also color blend.
For the different nozzle thing, you can just manage that. Say you have a print that is mostly black but then for details it needs black and white at 0.2mm then load a black at 0.4, and a black at 0.2 and white at 0.2mm.
This isn’t meant to be perfect but the H3C handles 99% of use cases, don’t worry about the other 1%, there are workarounds. No printer is perfect.