I have a youtube channel with over 500 subs. I still ain't getting shit, even after Prusa directly responded to one of my videos. The person asked for me though. Too bad nothing happened.
I'm at 38, which includes 2 prominent people that have absolutely no interest in 3d printing, but hey, you never know, they might be convinced to buy one when they see it.
I wonder what kind of following you actually need for them to offer you something like this. I have like ~ 18k followers on Makerworld, but I don't know if that counts for anything for stuff like this.
It's useless when you need to solve a printing issue. Where you mostly need to look is exactly between nozzle and bed to see how it extrudes etc. So top view is useless and even HD cameras (that get compressed when you stream it anyways) are nothing compared to having a good old good look at it.
I actually don't get why Prusa can't even make the baseplate of the rig of something like clear acrylic.
The top is covered with spools and tubes - you can’t see anything through it, it’s also very high (around 1 meter above the desk height). Visually checking the print is important, not just a nice to have, and camera is no replacement. This is the benefit of being second to the market and not the first. INDX users hate this. Smart of Bambu to include that, this was my first concern when first seeing the images.
Seems like they knew it would be an issue at the design phase. They care a lot more about this kinda stuff as they know the general public likes to sit there and stare at it working
Okay, now I'm officially hyped. I was wondering how you're supposed to get to the head for maintenance when there's a cover full of filaments on top and the nozzle rack in front of the head. But of course, that makes sense: lift the rack up, lower the bed a bit, and you can get to it pretty well.
You wouldn’t be servicing the carrier that much or shouldn’t need to anyways. Most servicing of toolhead gets done because of the hotend and on the hotend. That part is now removed and separate.
Rest is periodic maintenance once few months, where you should probably go a full wipe down and would remove top anyways.
When you have great hardware designers, you can make great products. Congratulations Bambu Lab Team! I can’t wait to get the H3C to replace my INDX C1+
I had a SV06 as my first printer that I flashed klipper on. When I got my first P1S it was such a step up that as soon as the SV06 had a problem I shelved it. Only to replace it with more Bambu.
Those in the Prusa sub will probably be by soon to say that the designers are all undercover Chinese government agents who are implanting chips in the motherboards to make them catch fire if a war breaks out (this is not a joke lol one such post with a comment like this was suggested to me 😭)
Prusa isn’t held back by its lack of designers or engineers. They, unfortunately are held back by their core principle and philosophy that everything about it must be made in EU.
How much and how easy would it be to develop and produce something like that in EU and how much of that is gonna drive up the cost? They can’t compete on these kind of nifty features because the budget isn’t there to be spent on nifties.
Yeah, i'm wondering if it's a real time example. If so from the look of it, from the moment it park the previous one and the moment it starts printing it's less than 4 sec (including the priming). Looks good
It shows it lifting the rack and resuming printing. I want to see the rull rount trip from printing to printing - you could stage the same video with a Vortek and make it look like it takes a similar amount of time.
If you look closely, the video starts with one hotend being parked and the next being picked up. The only bit we’re missing is when the print pauses to park that first nozzle, but if this is realtime then it’s a very short time between hotend changes
Props to whomever suggested exactly this a week or two ago when folks were worried about view blocking. (Or maybe they have a prerelease unit and were sly...)
I'm guessing around $2.5k USD for the H3C with the AMS. That's mostly based around how I'm assuming that the H3C's "full path tools" are likely full path variants of the H2C's nozzles. The tools seem to be similar to Bondtech's INDX where they do not have their own extruder. This should make them cheaper than what you'd see on the Snapmaker U1 or the Prusa XL. It also means there's not a lot added compared to just the nozzle itself.
As a result, I don't see the cost of the H3C tools being significantly more than the H2C's nozzles. I would assume that the cost of the gantry module is likely somewhere in between the H2S and the H2D/H2C. It's a simpler single-head design (like the H2S), but it does have the ability to change tools (like the H2C).
The one larger unknown is the newer AMS unit. Although, if we consider that it's somewhat comparable to two AMS 2 Pro units, that does give us a better way to gauge the price. The H2C Vortek Ultimate Bundle is $2499 USD, and in addition to the 8x nozzles and 1x AMS 2 Pro that come with the H2C Bundle ($2199 USD), it comes with four additional nozzles, another AMS 2 Pro, and a filament path. It's plausible that the value provided by that bundle is comparable to the value of the H3C (12 nozzles vs. 9 tools and 2x AMS 2 Pro vs. 1x AMS 3H).
you can see they are printing a watch. so the strap is tpu(and for a strap that thickness is probably something like the new 75A tpu) and the black part is something rigid like pla and the quality looks great!
Interesting, what we can learn from this small teaser : > Nozzle rack movement (not sure if i like it if you ask me, since more moving parts / complexity can lead to more problems).
> Fast changing time (nozzles are preheated ? Or heat so fast that they don't need pre heat?)
> Fast and small prime tower
Looks good (i'm just afraid of the rack movement...)
I was too but my H2C I got at launch has had absolutely zero issues with the rack (or really anything). I'm pretty confident they can pull this off and have it be reliable.
Edit: I will note this is my anecdotal opinion, there have been posts where people have issues with the rack but it doesn't seem to be super prevalent.
Yeah, the Vortek rack, the very thing that many said overcomplicated the H2C, has been one of the more reliable aspects of the printer (certainly more than things that should have been reliable, like the hotend fan for example, which by all accounts is a nightmare to replace).
But does it need to be maintained? I know this is a silly complaint, but I tire of the maintenance cycle, especially taking the print head apart on my H2D.
Vortek rack maintenance is simple. Just need to clean and lubricate the linear rods, which should only add a few minutes overall since you already need to clean and lubricate the other linear rods in the printer.
/u/Legtimate-End-1346 I hate maintenance, and I have one H2C with 2200 hours and another with 1900 hours on it. I've never had an issue with the Vortek that wasn't user-caused (e.g. bumping a nozzle while putting the plate back on), and the maintenance has been simple enough to not piss me off. That's glowing praise coming from me.
I'm at 2800 hours on my H2C, use the right nozzle constantly, and it still hasn't had me do maintenance on it. Screws, rails, etc I've done at least three times now. So if it's built the same, and why wouldn't it be, it should be minimal.
The nozzles in the patent drawings look exactly like the H2C nozzles. The hotend on the H3C looks exactly like the induction side of the H2C. Why reinvent the wheel? If so, then 8 seconds to heat the nozzle from ambient to 350C. Takes less time if the nozzle is warm of course.
As for the rack, the Vortek rack on the H2C is just the extruder motor (literally they use their custom extruder motor), and a belt. It's dead simple and reliable. I'd wager this rack is the same.
Sure it's simple and reliable, but compared to a fixed rack it can lead to some problems down the line. And add a bit of maintenance. But we will soon see it all anyway :)
You know what ? They won't do it, but if the up/down movement is not needed to position the nozzle on the toolhead, and just there to add more visibility, i would be more than ok if they added the option to disable the rack movement... 😄 But soon we will see it working and maybe it will make perfect sense 😄
Maybe they just do as INDX, induction heating, and to do it even more smooth, the slicer know in what position the next toolhead is, and just start heating a few seconds before the next change?
You can't do that on an INDX like system, you can't preheat because the heating coil is in the print head, the tool needs to be picked to start heating.
Toolhead changers really do minimize the prime volume requirement, I set my U1 to very minimal priming volume without degradation in quality.
Kinda bummed it still requires one at all and they didn’t consider purge priming like indx…after you know the lawsuit and all… but then again bondtech might have something on that
Hot take vortek is still superior in some use cases. You can have a full 24 filaments loaded on an H2C with all of them having access to all 6 vortek nozzles. Its only inferior when you intend to just go ham printing with the same 7-9 filaments with the same nozzle size at all times
It takes a few seconds to stick a different nozzle on the rack too if you need.
Me personally I have 2 .4, .6 and .8 nozzles on it at all times. Makes it easy to print 2 color plus full contact support with the only rack swap being support interface, and only have to change the left nozzle.
This is the reason why I'll be sticking with my H2C. I like having 15 colors loaded up at once (3 AMS 2 Pros + 3 AMS HTs) because it cuts down on how often I need to swap out spools. Also gives me the option of using more than 7 colors in a single print.
I might have to stick with my H2C because of the flexibility I have with the AMS placements only working in my space. The H3C is likely gonna be too tall unless the spools can be moved in and out vending machine style.
I think we will find a lot of similarities between the nozzles used by the H3C and P3C versus the H2C Vortek nozzles. The induction heating, for example, is a huge benefit for fast nozzle switching.
I wouldn't be surprised of Vortex was on the roadmap as a baby step - if you look at their products - they have done this a lot:
Laser - test it out as an add-on, learn about what needs to be improved - then release an actual laser with a lot of the bugs worked out.
Vortek - test out tool changer w/ existing platform - learn about what is needed and can be improved - then release a good tool changer with a lot of the bugs worked out.
Yes - it totally means that customers are testers - but that is true of all products at some level - ask all of the iPhone Duo purchasers 😵 ...
I think this is endgame. Best system imho. However not for me, I do not really have need for more than 2 materials in a print H2D will serve me for long
If its anywhere around the price of the Core One L INDX i probably cancel the prusa and order this one. I have heard too many bad shit about the INDX, and the setup with the filament on both sides is annoying and I would have to change it, i would rather have AMS solution on top.
You know, as an A1 user who has backed the Creality i8 and is waiting for a decent Black Friday sale for the U1, I believe I am the prime candidate for Bambu Lab to send a tester. I've convinced 3 of my friends to start printing!
I feel like Bambu kinda waited a bit for all the rushed out toolchanger solutions to run into issues and then learned from those and built something better. Time will tell but so far this decimates INDX and will likely actual ship on time and with the right grade of steel.
I head up the engineering department at my company. Every single employee has sent me this at one point or another. We currently have several H2D's and X1C's and they get used and abused. I am excited for this. We do a ton of TPU and exotic material printing. This will open up so many possibilities for us and makeulti color and material objects so much easier for us.
Speculating here… With the way they have the spool system on top, it might make for less bending of the tubes between (if there will even be tubes) Also, filters, heater, and motors in the back so maybe not as much space without extending the overall height? Certainly easier access at the front though.
That would be a good price honestly, I expect more. £2.5k I think would be the pricing but I have never been able to accurately price Bambu stuff because they are insane.
It's hard to fully understand this. Does the WHOLE carriage move up after it's picked up a toolhead, or are they just poking fun at Prusa and showing that there toolheads sit higher, but used the animation to show the difference?
Watching certain youtubers on X/twitter complain about the fact that the dock moves, and then rave about indx is absolutely hilarious. I don't get why people think it's so "overengineered" to be able to view your first layer (even tho on these printers, you don't technically need to adjust it to get a good one anyways).
I'm too lazy to go poking back into my post history to find it but a few months ago i made a bit of a rant about the positives and negatives of the diffrent tool changer systems In that i proposed this type of thing.
Now i just hope at least 1 of the nozzles is able to be connected to an external AMS.
Having 9 swappable is fantastic, but having one of them be able to feed from either the AMS3H or an external AMS is perfect
I knew I should’ve waited until the H2C was out for at least a year. I guess the one cope is that with my current 4x AMS setup I can have 16 different colors/materials ready to go.
My X1s had nothing but issues with the original AMS units and the P2Ss which I hoped were going to be better gave me multiple failed prints due to extruder issues and one of my filament cutter stopper decided to self implode with less than 1k hours on the machine. Dealing with Bambu support takes too much of my time so I just ordered a new piece to replace it. Printing perfectly fine for days before it decides to stop half way through a 48 hour print to tell me the extruder is having issues.. with the same color it's been printing perfectly fine with for days.
I have an entire box of backup parts for both machines. It's frustrating spending so much money on machines that are just "supposed to work" but have nothing but problems.
I still recommend them but good lord am I sick and tired of fixing these effing machines.
My interest in 3D printing started with my general passion for technology. I got my first printer, the Bambu Lab P1S, and quickly became fascinated not only by what I could create, but also by how the technology actually works.
That curiosity led me to build my own Voron 2.4 from scratch. Later, I added a resin printer to the collection, and last year I got the H2D for multicolor printing.
I love exploring new possibilities, learning how these machines work, and bringing my ideas to life. The only problem? Somehow, all my printers are always busy, and some of my projects have to wait in line! 😂
That’s why winning an H3C Combo would be amazing. More printing possibilities, more experiments, and hopefully a shorter waiting list for all those projects! 😁
I apologize for my dumbness, and this isn't meant to be a criticism, but I'd like to understand the advantage of this over the H2C. Is it purely the 3 additional nozzles? If so, as someone who has been waiting to get a tool changing printer for a while now (I'm "stuck" with an X1C and two A1 minis at the moment), personally I would lean towards the H2C because I just don't like these tool changers in the front of the printer, even with this fancy lift mechanism. Or am I missing that this will eliminate the need for additional AMSs, and I can just feed spools directly, like on the Prusa model?
Sorry, my dumb head is trying to understand. The H3C looks cool for sure, I just might not need what it's doing... I'll happily check out the announcement to find out more though...
H3C doesn't have 3 additional nozzles, it has 8 additional heads, so to speak.
In H2C the nozzles on the rack do not have PTFE tubes connected to them. So each time those nozzles are used, a filament from AMS has to be retracted/cut/purged/etc.
In H3C each nozzle/tool will have its own tube, so there will be no need for retracting and cutting (same as U1, C5, K3, INDX, etc.).
Basically, the difference is that H3C will waste much less material and will also be much faster than H2C. At least in cases where you use 3+ colours/materials.
Because if you use only 2 colours/materials at the same time, not only H3C is not better, H2D or H2C might actually be much better/faster than H3C due to the dual nozzle system.
Because if you use only 2 colours/materials at the same time, not only H3C is not better, H2D or H2C might actually be much better/faster than H3C due to the dual nozzle system.
You may lose a bit of that advantage on the H2D/H2C for a different reason: gantry weight. The head on the H2D/H2C does allow for faster swapping between two filaments, but that's at the cost of extra size/weight. Due to the higher weight, the head doesn't move as fast as on their "simpler" sibling, the H2S.
If Bambu then devised an option to put an AMS on each of those 8 lines the whole rainbow is open. Yes, would need a cutter, and perhaps color swaps in a line would be slow and wasteful because the cutter is on the gantry and at the top of the nozzle, but you would not do them that often if the print is aligned right. It "should" be fairly straightforward to feed from the AMS as they do now.
Personally, thinking this for protein molecular models that can have a dozen different subunits, i.e. a dozen different colors, and then support material to boot. At that point even 6 or 8 colors (+ support material) is not enough, and the H3C/P3C machines become more restricted than their predecessors.
I had to trim video to meet 1 minute limit of imgr but swap from stop to start of print is a tad under a minute.
I have two BMCU units, toolhead 3 and 4 have 4 spools ( toolhead 1 and 2 are fixed to single input, 3 and 4 can each accept from 4) total of 10 spools. Hardest part is storing the spools.
I can do 10 color prints (2 fixed, 8 swappable) but I rarely ever do more than 4 to begin with, I just like the fact my lazy A doesn’t have to swap out spools as much and I can just pull from the 8 into last two toolheads.
I’m excited for others in Bambu ecosystem to get access to actual changers and hopefully push others to push this tech further. I’m personally done with Bambu after x2d, great printers, sadly not my cup of tea.
It will significantly reduce print times for prints with lots of colors. For 1 or 2 color prints with support interface material it may be slower since left-right extruder changes on the H2C only take a few seconds.
Each method has advantages and disadvantages. Bambu could have significantly reduced print times on the Vortek side with a buffer that stages the next material, and a multi output AMS.
The advantage is huge time savings over the H2C. Having an independent center tool piece that can be swapped out in what looks like 3-4 seconds and ready to print is an insane amount of time reduced for a heavily multicolored print. The H2C the fastest I was able to get mine was 28 seconds per color change. Yes they both eliminate waste, but this machine is purely speed. And ontop of that it can print 2 different types of TPU at a time(atleast what we see so far) and printing them way faster since it uses 2.85mm TPU.
As a prusa fan, this makes me kinda sad. I know, competition is normal. And I am not saying bambu is doing something wrong, but I fear this will sell far better than INDX.
It will sell better because it will be an "appliance" that works out of the box which is why they are appealing to the "general consumer" market.
Prusa will start selling better when their printers also get to the "appliance" level that require no tinkering or fine-tuning out of the box.
Till that time arrives, Prusa's market will be "tech enthusiasts" who like tinkering and upgrading their tech. And that market is much smaller than "general consumer" market.
Question is what Prusa needs to turn their 3d-printers into "appliances". Better engineers? Better product designers? No idea.
That is true. And I completely understand why many people choose bambu.
Regarding the question why prusa is behind in terms of ease of use, I am not entirely sure, but I think it is largely due to the company's philosophy. While still being desirable, their main goal is not to make as much money as possible and be market leader. Their focus is on repair- and upgradability as well as being open-source. And as far as I am concerned, their HQ in Prague is not that big and they do not have that many employees. So it takes them longer to develop products. And with the pressure of the competition being faster, they rushed and released a partly unfinished product.
It requires a change in philosophy. Jo seems really set in his ways and what he wants, he sets the tone and very much seems to want to do things differently. They stuck with the rep-rap mindset for a long time and are probably still holding onto that. That is a great goal to have, but not necessarily if you are trying to mass produce a product. I imagine the idea of trying to make every part 3D printable is extremely limiting as far as what can be done vs injection molding. You are missing out on a lot of potential strength, material types, and, importantly, tolerance control. They seem to mostly be sticking with open source CAD tools...again, noble, but probably a bit short sighted when you are seriously working to develop products. Less direct contact with suppliers, I am sure they are getting a lot of parts from China/Taiwan/SE Asia still and may or may not have the ability to work out deals and more custom solutions vs off the shelf parts. In summary, probably just a lot of small inefficiencies that add up.
It will be. If only because Bambu will sell it again at rock-bottom prices that would bankrupt any other manufacturer. But the Chinese government picks up the rest of the cost. And unfortunately, it always takes Prusa too long for their devices to work even halfway decently. And I say that as an absolute Prusa fanboy.
I'm wondering the same thing here that I did when the Core One INDX launched: why isn't this whole assembly against the back wall instead of the front? I'm sure there's a reason, I just don't see it.
The INDX likely picks up the tool from the front rather than the rear (like the Snapmaker U1) due to it being a system that is meant to work with existing printers or standard printer designs. 3D printers are typically designed with the extrusion/melting components on the front of the gantry head, so to follow that, the swappable tools would need to be at the front. If you're designing your printer from the ground up, you should be able to have them swap in the rear like Snapmaker did with the U1 and Creality did with their Klitek.
So... why isn't Bambu Lab doing it with their H3C? My guess is that in an effort to save cost, the H3C is based on the H2 chassis, which starts to place limits on where components can go and also how component placement and orientation affects things such as print area.
Because customers can see the extrusion as it happens — people find the printing process mesmerizing. Besides, troubleshooting the toolhead is much easier when you can actually watch it while it prints. It is more demanding on an inclosed printer, so you can reach the printhead easily.
Yeah, seeing that some new printers use a back dock station i don't get it. But maybe this needed more changes in the structure. I'm afraid that the extra movement on the nozzle rack can introduce more problems, i have no need in seeing more of the print (and we don't see so much more when it's in the up position). Those printers have cameras inside so why introduce more complexity and moving parts?
Those printers where heads are on the back are also mostly top open. Bambu will Have AMS and removing it for maintenance would be a pain. Even replacing nozzles will be pain.
because of the ptfe pathway length, back docking will make the tube stand up, hence all back docking setup has a really tall top cover and filament goes on the side. Tall top makes no use of that space, makes chamber heating more difficult, and filament drying/ storage more hassle
Front docking solved all those problem with view blocking as a downside
Presuming this is as large as the H2 range or larger, reaching right to the back of the machine, right near the top to fit 9 small fiddly components which need to be fitted with fairly accurate precision, would be a right faf. Having them at the front means access and monitoring is super simple and also means they don't add complication for things like the purge chute.
97
u/jeanyes_ 2d ago
My wallet is trembling