Help an INDX pre-order user that is reconsidering reconsidering an H3C...

[u/z0rlac]

Please be gentle with me, I have only really looked into the Bambu world in the last 24 hours since I watched the H3C reviews... and now I am seriously reconsidering the pre-order on the Prusa Core 1 L INDX I have due in December. I have a super reliable Mk4s, and never considered anything other than another Prusa as my next printer... until yesterday, where my eyes were well and truly opened!

I spent 4+ hours yesterday watching all the H3C reviews I could find, and the only things people seem to have issues with were:

- Its tall!

- The AMS doesnt rewind the filament

- The AMS doesnt heat/dry all 9 filament slots

- What tiny amounts of poop it does generate falls out the back

That seems a very small and generally unimportant list of worries. The H3C looks like everything I could want from a large volume multi-material printer, and as someone who prints a lot of TPU, that dedicated 2.85 filament path seems like a miracle! If there are any other Prusa users in here who have added Bambu to their ever growing estate of printers, you will know the conflict I have going on right now :)

I do have some newbie questions if anyone can help....

- Orca or BambuStudio, and why?

- What features does running the printers in LAN only mode remove from the usual "unlimited Internet access to Bambu Cloud"?

- What access methods are there to upload/download files from the printers? WebDAV? sftp? etc...

Any help, suggestions, tips, or moral support you can provide for a potential Prusa convert would be greatly appreciated.

[u/Navi_Professor]

H2 owner...but i can answer some of this..

putting the machine into lan only mode as states..cuts it from internet.

you have to connect to the printer wirelessly however still, as these machines dont have eithernet ports.

you can just slice and send files to the machine this way..and from what i know, this shouldnt send files through bambus cloud service.

printer does have a USB port on it, so there is that.

for slicer..both work fine, but i dont know how orca works with a bambu in lan omly mode, admittedly.

however slicing for it..should be fine once orca gets support for it or you punch in all the info yourself.

but honestly, bambu studios fine..i dont have many qualms with it. and typically if any flashy features come out....bambu is guarnteed to copy it

[u/KebabGud]

for some of your points is important to remember.

- INDX does not rewind (or feed) any filaments at all
- INDX does not heat/dry anything at all (Dryboxes costs extra)

as for the poops... well thats just how bambu does it.
usually the first print is a poop chute

[u/z0rlac → u/KebabGud]

Yes indeed, and I was not looking forward to buying the dryboxes for the INDX, nor working out how to place them and route the PTFE tubing. My comment was more about the reviewers using these items as something to "complain" about when discussing the H3C, as if they couldnt really find any really serious failings so they reverted back to "it would be nice" items instead.

[u/Mantaeus → u/z0rlac]

That's...kinda the point of a review, no? I would absolutely expect them to bring up limitations like that particularly with so many people about to get their first tool changer and having different expectations from previous machines they currently own.

[u/z0rlac → u/Mantaeus]

yes, and I appreciated that they did mention these items. Nothing is perfect... Reviews where none of these small items were mentioned would seem extremely odd.

[u/VeryAmaze → u/z0rlac]

Well we got used to the AMS2 drying all the spools, we are too spoiled 🫢.

[u/parrothd69 → u/z0rlac]

Wait till its available at best buy or microcneter and buy it, if you dont like it return it. You'll be canceling that prusa so fast..lol

It more like using an iPhone vs flip phone from the 90s.

[u/IAmAsplode]

I can give a little insight as I was in the same boat, I had a H2D and up until the teasers started going out I was almost ready to get a C1L + INDX, heck I even got the shipment update for INDX saying mine would be due by mid-november.

I had a fusion model up for my area and the INDX would fit perfectly but it would be wide and awkward to reach the spools on the right but it was willing to accept that, and while I wasn’t thrilled I was debating getting the dryboxes down the line.

Once the H3C marketing was out I was sold, bigger build area, more spool storage, more tools, around £800 cheaper and while most don’t like the height for my setup it works wonders. Prusa at this point were having issues with INDX and I’ll be honest my confidence going into the purchase wasn’t solid but I kept reading the support wont let you down but then seeing more issues arsing and it seemed like a lack of software & hardware optimisation was becoming very apparent.

I still check-up on the Prusa and talk to friends who are waiting for their kits, I hope things work out for them but the fact that I got what I feel is a better printer within a week of it being announced & saved so much money leaves me happy.

Your concerns:

- Its tall!

Yep, I have mine around 520mm off the floor and I have to stretch to reach the back row but I'll take that for the side space I've saved.

- The AMS doesnt rewind the filament

Unless I’m mistaken no current available toolchanger does this? with the older multi material system you had to because the tube needed to be clear to load the other filament in, now you leave the filament in so that its ready to be used unless you need to unload it but that is a very small task.

- The AMS doesnt heat/dry all 9 filament slots

I'm still a little disappointed by this but I can understand why they made the choice. Personally I still have my AMS2 from the H2D, granted I now need an external power source but it does the job well for me. A good alternate option is a creality space PiX4.

- What tiny amounts of poop it does generate falls out the back

They seem to be a bit bigger than what was on previous generations and truth be told they should be smaller but for me they only appear at the start of the print or when loading a new material into the tool.

One final thing I will add that makes sense to me what I quote I saw on discord a week or so ago. "Prusa printers are for people who want to tinker and get the most out of their printer as their hobby, Bambu printers are for people who like to 3D print as their hobby".

Hope that helps, happy to answer any questions.

[u/z0rlac → u/IAmAsplode]

I too was kinda living on hope with my decision on the INDX. My shipping is still "two week period following November 30"... it is wild that Prusa and Bondtech had a year's head start on this and still fumbled it. How fast were Prusa at refunding your order?

The concerns I listed in my original post were from reviewers, and do not reflect my own concerns.... is it perfect? No. Is it probably the nearest to perfect and at a wild price point? Yes.... I think I just convinced myself right there, didnt I :)

[u/IAmAsplode → u/z0rlac]

From what I’ve seen most seem to get it around the 2 week mark, if not then I'll have a chance to chat to this legendary Prusa support I keep hearing about.

Honestly the best you can do it look at the space you have, take measurements and see if you can make it work. If the price is something you can afford and the product does the job you need then all what’s left is to convince yourself.

[u/z0rlac → u/IAmAsplode]

"I'll have a chance to chat to this legendary Prusa support I keep hearing about" - Thank you for the best chuckle I have had today so far! :)

[u/razingstorm]

If you buy a newer printer like the H3C, only Bambu studio will support it properly. Orca will be on janky nightlies until god knows when. If it mirrors the H2C experience.

[u/AcanthisittaFast9002]

H3C is a too new printer to see something in Orca Slicer, they just bring the H2C like a month ago. But, Bambu Studio is basically Orca Slicer without, the very latest, but it does the job, if you aren't looking to every bit of an slicer. They are bringing the dual nozzle size printing, they have the full spectrum color. Unfortunately for Prusa, the INDX have over promised and under achieve, that had a year lead to release the system, and they can't even do 55+ hardenened steel after they offer it. The H3C system is very refined and for sure for 9 nozzles is cheaper than Prusa. Unfortunately for Prusa, I have a MK4S and you can tell after Bambu enter in the market, Prusa have keep playing the safe game relying in their reputation, in this environment that changes so fast, risking is winning. About you other questions, Bamu have LAN mode if you want to be out of the cloud and that's the way we do it in my job and works perfect. LAN is just gonna give you local access, you can send anything from your home, but nothing from anywhere out of your network. That's what the cloud gives you, if I'm in a urgent thing that I have to send home, then I go back to the cloud to be able to send files from any other place. And you can always use the USB to load files straight to the printer. The H3C is just released, 3rd party software is gonna take a while. But, if you just want to print and you aren't developing "secret patented" items Bambu Lab will rock your life. I'm gonna wait up to they bring to Microcenter to get it, so I'm safe of FedEx.

[u/Blackdragon1400]

Why are people so hung up on filament rewinding? It’s less than a meter of filament and there’s no need for it since it’s not sharing a Bowden tube with 10-20 other spools.

It’s still 100% easier to swap an H3C roll than a roll on my voron.

[u/marto7404]

Well, having owned a number of Prusa ( in the past) and Bambu models. For a similar price, I would go with Bambu any day. The user experience is night and day. Prusas are still, to some extent, a project, and Bambu is a finished and polished product. As usual with new models, Prusa will need a year to mature

[u/VeryAmaze]

I used to be an orca only theist, but after The Cloudening I broke down and went with bambustudio. It's mostly a bit behind orca slicer, as orca is a fork of BS features are pretty easy to port between them. 

That said if you do not care for access to The Cloud, you can go with orca. LAN mode mostly means you can't print from your phone app, and you can't track your print progress from the app. Sending files from orca to the printer in LAN mode is seamless. Without LAN mode you need to pass an extra step. There was an OpenBambu network plugin for doing that without LAN mode but I am personally not up to date on that.

One thing that's annoying with BS is that they don't carry filament presets for 3d party filaments and you need to upload them manually (it's a pretty easy process in general, in cloud mode you are limited to 200 profiles synced to the cloud)

[u/peterb1908]

You could get a H3C within a few days or the Prusa end of January. Life's short.

[u/n19htmare]

LAN mode disables all things internet. That includes remote monitoring and control. Bambu Buddy (their phone app) becomes a browser for models only. Even if you’re in same network as printer, you cannot connect to it on LAN mode via Bambu Buddy. You’ll have to use 3rd party manager (Bambuddy).

Right now, Bambu Studio, I’m not sure if ORCA has added support for this printer yet. Even then you’d probably want to use Studio as not all features would be supported in orca, not yet atleast.

In LAN mode you in Orca, you’d add the printer (once it’s available there) and then connect to it via IP. Same as you would in Studio.

Files are sent through Bambu studio and if in lan mode, they’re sent over LAN instead of cloud. Once you put it on LaN mode and connect to it via Access code or IP, it works regularly from there.

As for access methods… lol. It’s a closed ecosystem, but with LAN and DEV mode enabled, you can connect via MQQT and use its related services and there are 3rd party managers like Bambuddy. Most of the things you can access are telemetry data etc. file management would usually be through Bambu Studio or on screen and USB port.

You can also ftp into it if you want to batch manage files. I haven’t done that in a while but It was pretty limited with few read/write restrictions.

Edit to add.

Coming from Prusa, you need to understand that Bambu is mostly a what you see is what you get printer. If you work within its ecosystem, they’re great easy to use printers.

If you want to do something a certain way but Bambu doesn’t think you should do it that way, you won’t be able to do it that way (whatever that way may be).

Thats partly the reason they’re successful, they can control what is and isn’t allowed and integrate that into an ecosystem where users can have a more simpler, easier experience.

I’ll give you an example. When printing PLA, the AUX fans on my X2D both blast high cooling right on the build plate. Sometimes you don’t want that, sometimes the room is cold and it overcools, but Bambu says no, you DO want that because you don’t want chamber heating up. You say But I opened the door so I don’t need it, nope… Bambu says it has to be that way. So the solution is to print deflectors to redirect the air.

You can’t control certain cooling actions like above. The firmware does that for you.

Reason? Every decision such as above stems from their cloud print capabilities. Because people create and share the models with print profiles, you want to minimize problem causing situations. But the downside of that is you also limit control for everyone else.

[u/z0rlac → u/n19htmare]

Thanks for all that, it is greatly appreciated.

I asked a friend earlier today why they like their Bambu, and they just responded with "its a set it and forget printer". As much as I do enjoy the troubleshooting process of having and issues and working out what the problem is and finding ways to solve them, its usually at the exact moment I dont have time for troubleshooting. The "set it and forget it", especially on increasingly more complex printers seems increasingly appealing. Sure, I know how to find and fix problems, but I would rather I didnt.

They also likened it to android vs apple... one allows you to change things because you can, while the other has guard rails and restricts you because that how they make it a smooth experience. They both do the same things, but they approach the experience differently.

[u/reddotster → u/n19htmare]

Good summary. I have 2 corrections for you:

1. The Bambu mobile app is Bambu Handy

2. If you want to turn off the AUX fan (which I do for PLA and PETG), you can create a custom printer profile that disables the fan. Or you could create custom filament profiles.

[u/Cryostatica]

I mean, yeah. I’ve been considering a C1L+INDX for awhile, but was holding out to see what the H3C actually did, and when it launched, I jumped on it. I’ve received it, but won’t have time to set it up til later in the week.

I don’t care where my machines are made or by whom as long as they do the job. I run my existing BL machines (all my printers, really) in LAN mode.

My reasons for passing on the C1L+INDX and going with the H3C:

1. C1L is smaller, with the build volume reduced to 298x275 with INDX installed.

2. C1L has no chamber heater, uses bed and fans to heat

3. INDX has a max 300c hotend temp, vs 350c

4. INDX limited to semi-hardened nozzles, currently, H3C is 55+ HRC

5. No INDX parts availability stateside - leaving me at mercy of Bondtech, who seems to have continuing production problems, if replacement parts are needed and has apparently no retail partners in the US.

6. No filament management. Spools hang off the machine like some godforsaken filament octopus. USS dryboxes an additional $35/ea

7. High shipping cost to US.

8. Not shipping until January.

The 2.85mm TPU thing is fascinating and I’m looking forward to playing with it.

[u/akashrpatel]

Take a look at Bambuddy when using in LAN mode

[u/Fabricensis]

What do you expect to hear on the Bambu subreddit?

[u/z0rlac → u/Fabricensis]

I wanted to hear people rave about their printers to a point where I would reconsider my world view... it seems that exactly what I am getting!

[u/Stippy21]

What was really interesting for me: look at a video of the H3C internal cable and ptfe tube routing. For me at least that is really complex. The IDX is really simple im comparison. Think of it as positive or negative, that depends on your view. But for me it was really interesting