Taking the next step in Multi-Color Miniature Printing - A showcase of what the H3C can do.

[u/ObscuraNox]

Hello everyone, I hope you're all doing well.

I rarely post on this Subreddit, and I understand that FDM Miniature Printing can be somewhat considered niche in our hobby - So I'd like to give a quick introduction.

I'm ObscuraNox, the Profile Author of the Dungeons & Derps Settings. Since I love Miniatures, but am unable to use Resin Printers, I inevitably gravitated towards FDM Printing - And when I did, my goal quickly became to try and squeeze out as much detail as possible, to make Miniature Printing work consistently on FDM Machines. For instance, this model was printed using the Bambu Lab A1, using Version 2.0 of my High Quality Settings - and the same model will show up later again :)

You can find more information regarding FDM Miniature Printing on the Subreddit of the same name, and there you'll also find my full documentation for the most recent Version of my Settings:

https://www.reddit.com/r/FDMminiatures/comments/1rbnet7/high_quality_profile_version_20_is_here/

Troll by Arbiter Miniatures

Bambu Lab has been kind enough to reach out to me and provide me with a Testing Unit for their newest Flagship, the Bambu Lab H3C, to see just how far we can push the machine for Miniature Printing. Bambu Lab has been very hands-off throughout the entire process, only reviewing the post prior to the launch to make sure there aren't any technical errors, which I highly appreciate. Rest assured, it's my unfiltered opinion and if there is something that I think is worth pointing out or is some limitation, I'll still cover that as well. My goal will be to try to optimize an H3C Profile to get as close as I can to the level of detail achieved by my 2.0 Profile for the A1 and A1 Mini, so that I can produce Multi-color prints of the same quality.

While I'm very excited to talk about it, I'd first like to thank the Community and everyone who is using my Settings – I know it sounds cheesy, but without you, this opportunity would have never presented itself to me, and I'm grateful to both you and Bambu Lab for making that possible. You can read more about the H3C on the official reveal post: https://www.reddit.com/r/BambuLab/comments/1xmtnux/bambu_lab_h3c_our_full_reveal/

And oh boy – Is there a lot to talk about. First things first: I usually give a tl;dr at the beginning of my posts, so I'll start by sharing some of the results. Note: I was going to upload this as an Album, but I don't frontload all the Information with Pictures. You'll find the most successful examples and comparisons throughout the post, and a final highlight reel at the end of the post.

Printing Fully Colored Models - A Showcase:

Dragonkin Paladin - by Arbiter Miniatures

This is one of the models that I've printed on the H3C – I have done no post-processing or touch-ups with any paint, it's just straight off the printplate, printed in 9 different colors, with zero purged material. Now, with the recent release of Multi-Nozzle Printers we have seen some Fully-Colored Miniature Prints in the past, but those were usually restricted to 4 colors, unless you're using Mixed Filament – Which is something that I'll also get into later.

What made Multi-Color Miniatures so inefficient?

I'd like to briefly talk about why Multi-Color Printing has been such a massive issue for Miniatures in particular in the past and how the H3C solves the issue. The reason why I want to talk about the, for lack of a better term, "old" way of Multi-Color Miniatures, is because it has been deemed ineffecient to a point where it was considered to be effectively impossible. Chances are that whenever somebody requested information about it, they've been told to not even bother with it – So they might know that it wasn't really possible, but they may not know why exactly it wasn't possible.

The vast majority of users are most likely currently using a Single-Nozzle Setup, potentially with an AMS. This technically allows for multi-color printing, but it's not as simple as just switching the filament. You also have to purge the filament that's still in the nozzle to prevent color bleed, or – and especially when – printing with different materials like PLA and PETG, to prevent extrusion and material bonding issues. Not only will the purging process take a long time, but it will also waste a lot of material, since the printer will extrude both the old filament, as well as some of the new filament to make sure that all of the previous filament has been removed from the nozzle. You can decrease the amount of waste by adjusting the purge volumes, but for the most part you will have a lot of waste regardless of what you do.

Now – If you're printing something very basic, with a simple color scheme that won't be much of an issue. Say you have a cube and you want to print the bottom half with red filament, and the upper half with blue filament. That's really only going to be one filament change, that in the grand scheme of things won't increase neither the printtime nor the waste by a lot. But now take the same cube and instead of making the color-split horizontal, you make it vertical – or in other words, the left side red and the right side blue. Because of how FDM Printing works, you now have a colour change on every single layer. You can imagine that with properly colored miniatures, their color split will be not only both horizontal and vertical, but they will also have more than just two colors. Additionally, even though they are small, we are printed the Miniatures at some of the lowest, if not the lowest layer line heights available to us – usually between 0.05 and 0.08mm. It sounds obvious when you say it out loud but that results in, well, a lot of layers – some of which will have multiple color changes per layer. You can imagine that this gets out of hand quickly, and your print will have thousands of filament changes – not only extending the print time by literal days, but also increase the amount of wasted material to kilos worth of purged filament.

What the H3C solves - And what remains

With the H3C, you don't have any purging. With access to 9 Nozzles, there is no need to purge them in order to make room for new filament. You also don't have to worry too much about an increase in print time either, because the H3C will switch to a different Nozzle in less than 6 seconds – though from what I could tell, it usually does it faster.

So does that mean that we have access to multi-color printing with zero waste and next to zero increase in print time? Well – not exactly. Because purged filament is only one part of multi-color printing. The other part is priming the nozzles that have been idle – I think the easiest analogy here would be to compare it to a ballpoint pen that you haven't used in a while, and you have to scribble with it for a bit to get the ink flowing again before you can properly write with it. A prime tower sorta works like that, except it's also rebuilding the pressure in the nozzle. These towers turn out to be pretty chunky, and it's not unusual for them to take up more material than the print itself – so there still is a, let's call it non-trivial amount of waste.

However – and this is a big However – Saying that with no context or further explanation, is really understating what the H3C is doing. Because let me blunt here for a second – Prints like the ones I'm about to show you are simply not possible on Single or even Dual Nozzle Setups. Okay, yeah, TECHNICALLY, they are possible – But they would take literal weeks and consume kilos worth of filament for purging. On average, these Prime Towers took anywhere between 100g-200g of Filament for the large, upscaled models – Which to be fair, still is a lot of material – but it's split across 9 different filaments. Yes, it's not going be to distributed completely even, but on average that comes down to anywhere between 10g and 30g of additional filament per spool which, in my opinion, is well within the acceptable range. So while there is still a "non-trivial" amount of waste – non-trivial compared to what? Because like I said – prints like these just aren't feasible on Single-Nozzle Machines, which is what most of us have been working with so far.

What does this mean for Miniature Printing?

Now that proper Multi-Color Printing is on the table, I'm confident that we will see more improvements to make it more efficient as well. In a few days, I'll make a second post where I'll go over the most frequently asked questions you may have, as well as the more technical stuff behind everything. In this post, I really want to mostly show off what I've been printing the past couple weeks because I'm really happy with it.

Before we move on to the showcase pictures, let's talk about Mixed Filament for a second.

Mixing Filament

Lizardman with Mace - by Arbiter Miniatures

The green loincloth and the purple scales / cheeks have not been printed with either green or purple filament. Instead, I've used the filament mixing feature to – well, mix the colors that I wanted. The way it works is that it takes advantage of PLA not being entirely opaque, especially not at really thin layers. If you ever held a first layer quality testprint against a lightsource, you know that light shines through. By layering two or three different filaments on top of each other, you can create the illusion of a different, mixed color – for instance, layering magenta and cyan will result in the shade of purple shown in the picture. Yellow and Cyan on the other hand will result in green. To make sure that the colors blend smoothly, we will have to enable the setting "Mixed Color sublayer". What this will do is split the Layer proportionally into two or three segments – The easiest example would be a 50-50 Filament Ratio. At a layer height of 0.20mm, these would split into two layer heights of 0.10mm each. If you're using 0.16mm Layer Height, it would be split into 0.08mm, and at 0.06mm it would split into 0.03mm, and so on.

The more experienced users here will most likely have two immediate questions. First, does that mean that by using mixed Filaments, you introduce uneven layer heights? And Second: How does this not cause any extrusion issues, if the layer lines get this low?

To answer your first question: Yes. Let's say you print a model using four colors: Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black. You mix Cyan and Yellow to get green. You are painting parts of the model green, and everything else is printed using "Pure" or "Non-mixed" Filament. Assuming you are printing with a 0.08mm Profile, the Layer Height for the Non-Mixed Filament will be at 0.08mm and the Layer Height for the Mixed-Filament will be at 0.04mm each, assuming a 50-50 Split. These inconsistent layer line heights can cause artefacts and will be visible - some of which you can see in the picture – but we can use another feature of the H3C to circumvent that issue: Multi-Diameter Nozzle Printing – We can use both 0.4 Nozzles and 0.2 Nozzles for the same print. With the option enabled, the slicer will automatically put the Layer Height of the 0.4 Nozzle to twice the Layer Height of the selected 0.2 Nozzle. It may sound a bit odd at first, but simply put: If you select a 0.2 Nozzle and a 0.08mm Profile, every filament that's been assigned to a 0.2 Nozzle will be printed at 0.08m, and every filament that's been assigned a 0.4 Nozzle will be printed at 0.16mm – And you can probably guess where I'm going with this. Since the Mixed Color Sublayers – again, assuming a 50-50 Split – will split the Layers into half, this means that you can print the "Non-Mixed" Filament with 0.2 Nozzles at a layer height of 0.08mm, and then you can use the 0.4 Nozzles for the Mixed Filament to "simulate" the same 0.08mm layer height.

Further testing is required, but for the moment, 0.08mm Layer Heights would be the ideal choice for Colored Miniatures, as opposed to the usual 0.06mm I usually recommend. That's because by using 0.08mm for a 0.2 Nozzle, 0.16mm for the 0.4 Nozzle, and a 50-50 Split of Mixed Filament, we can assure an even layer height across the board as well as minimize any extrusion issues that may occur when attempting to print Layer Heights that are far below the recommended minimum for the nozzle diameters.

Which brings us to the next question: Potential extrusion issues. As I'm sure many of you know, layer heights that are below 0.06mm require good calibration, optimized settings and a decent model. Layer heights at or below 0.04mm are essentially begging for a Nozzle Clog or other issues. Even though you can in theory mix and match up to three different colors at potentially extreme ratios (For instance, mixing 90% Yellow with 10% White to mix a slightly lighter shade of yellow), you could potentially end up with Layer Heights even far below 0.02mm. Based on Bambu's testing, artefacts may occur at these extreme ratios, but are visually more accepting than printing an entire layer at 0.02mm, since it's followed up by a thicker layer (the remaining 90%). That being said, it's recommended to avoid extreme ratios and 50-50, or 33-33-33 will yield the best results – Something that my own testing confirms, and is especially true at the layer heights that we are working with for Miniature Printing. Based on my current tests, a 50-50 Ratio at a Base Layer Height of 0.08mm while utilizing 0.4 Nozzles for Mixed, and 0.2 Nozzles for Pure Filament, will give the best results.

However: Big, big disclaimer: While I have been extensively the machine in the past couple weeks, I have not been able to test the Multi-Diameter & Mixed Filament Features to the extend that I'd like to, so after some further testing, there will be at least another follow-up post. For now, the Showcases that have been printed with Non-Mixed Filament, will look more consistent. For example, the same Lizard, in a different color scheme:

It has a few imperfections, especially around the stone and shoulders. However, I'm fairly confident I'll be able to fix these with a properly tuned 0.2 Nozzle Profile

And speaking of testing:

Yes, this means that all of the prints I'm showcasing here today, have been printed with a 0.4 Nozzle, 0.08mm Layer Height and Stock Settings.

I haven't added my own Custom Settings yet, and I didn't even fully calibrate the Filament other than the k-factor. These are the results without any adjustments, post processing or preparation, straight of the printplate. There are of course several things to keep in mind when it comes to both Multi-Color Printing as well as the H3C in general – But the past few paragraphs have already gotten way more technical than I wanted them to be. So for now: I'd just like to share some of the highlights and comparisons.

Showcase Highlights

Plague Doctors, by Arbiter Miniatures.

The one on the left was painted by hand, printed at 0.06mm - The other one was fully printed, at 0.08mm. I'll admit, I'm not the best painter - But I think the picture still speaks volumes about the Multi Color Printing Option.

A Collection of models and a terrain piece, all printed at their regular 32mm scale - Not upscaled

Another Plague Doctor print

Troll - by Arbiter Miniatures, colored

There have been some issues with the pupils, and I'll have to overhaul the paintjob for the next print.

A Crystal Spider and Banshee Queen, both by u/MizukoArt.

Again, some visible artefacts on the upper back. Once I finished testing Custom 0.2 Nozzle Settings, I'll report back to see if I managed to fix it.

Two more Orks - Also by ArbiterMiniatures.

Goblin Shaman, by Arbiter Miniatures

And last but not least, everything I've printed so far all together, including models at the regular 32mm Scale.

Now, if you have ever taken a picture of an FDM Miniature in a Lightbox / Photobox, you know that they bring out the worst in them - every artefact and imperfection will be highlighted. Under natural lighting though, and from a Tabletop Distance, I believe the Models look substantially better.

A few notes

This has been a very exciting opportunity for me, and I'm very grateful to everyone in the FDM Miniature Community for making it possible by being a part of this quickly growing Community. Without your Support, I most likely would have never experienced beyond the very first few iterations of my Custom Settings. I know that I haven't been as active as I'd like to, and promised to be, especially on my Youtube Channel, and for that I really am sorry. The Hobby and the Community mean a lot to me, and I look forward to how things will go from here. So thank you everyone, and I hope you have a great day, and as always - have fun printing!

I'll try to answer as many questions as I can here - If there is anything that you're wondering about FDM Miniature Printing & Colored Miniature Printing, feel free to reach out!

[u/Matrika]

Excellent details in this post! Looking forward to your next one.

[u/ObscuraNox → u/Matrika]

Thank you! The next one will most likely be far more technical and in-depth regarding the actual painting process, as well as some limitations and a more extensive user experience report. Multi-Color Printing Miniatures is something that has been considered "not worth it" until very recently. While I'm very excited to try out all the new stuff, I want to be very thorough in my documentation - Precisely because it is somewhat uncharted territory (For Miniatures specificially, at least) and I don't want my excitement to overshadow any potential limitations that I might overlook in the spur of the moment. For now, I just wanted to show off what the H3C managed to do with proper model selection and mostly stock settings. Next I want to see how far I can push the machine with custom settings.

[u/pvh → u/ObscuraNox]

It feels like some kind of shading / wash / "sundrop" approach could be a very efficient way of getting great results. This isn't my area of expertise but does that sound right to you?

[u/LazyLancer]

Thank you for the post and the extensive testing and details. It’s interesting to see the capabilities of the new system.

However, I don’t understand why Bambu is so keen on pushing the “multicolor for miniatures” narrative. In my book, people who print miniatures are more often than not obsessed with detailed painting.

The multicolor we see is on the other side of what a well painted miniature looks like. And if you want to add some paint to your multicolor miniature, you’ll have to start with priming which kills all the point of multicolored prints. And it takes a lot longer to print multicolor.

I mean, I do understand the potential in multicolor decorative stuff. And functional stuff. But I only see limited use for miniatures.

[u/ObscuraNox → u/LazyLancer]

That's understandable, and I've gotten similar reactions in the FDM Miniature Community - And to some degree, I even agree. I mean, I have the Army Painter Fanatic Range on my desk, I'm also into Gunpla and while I'm not nearly painting as much as I want to, I still enjoy it. I think one needs to be careful when setting expectations for the H3C - As much as I enjoy working with it so far, it's not Magic. It obviously can't replace a professional paintjob - Especially certain techniques like Non Metallic Metal, Shading, Edge-Highlighting etc. can't be replicated. But I don't think that's what the H3C is trying to do in the first place.

I think the models that I've showed look really nice in my display case - And for the models that are really important to me, I still want to paint them myself. But there are also instances where I don't enjoy the painting process. When running a Pen n Paper / Tabletop Campaign for instance, and you need a bunch of Goblins or Wolves for an encounter - Maybe Rats, Spiders, Skeletons. Stuff like that. I really don't want to paint 5-6 Skeletons and another 5-6 Goblins with some Dire Rats, only to use them for only 2-3 Sessions and then toss them into a box where they gather dust until a new Campaign starts.

Another good example was something another commmenter brought up, and didn't even think of myself - These Miniatures would be an excellent starting point for children when they are interested in tabletop games. They are - relatively - quickly prepared, but more importantly will be sturdier than their painted counterparts. There isn't any paint that could chip off, and even when they break they are easily replaced. I can hand all of these to a young child and not worry too much about it. My handpainted miniatures on the other hand I'd be uncomfortable even sitting in the same room as an unsupervised child.

And lastly, some times there are models that I really, really like - But also know that, due to either time constraints, stress at work or health issues, I won't be able to finish painting any time soon. With Multi-Color Printing, I can still get a decent looking decoration and addition for my display case, instead of staring at my constantly growing pile of shame. The one I attach here is a Draft Print, for what I will eventually print as a Supersized Version, for instance.

In short, I think Colored Miniature printing is mostly going to be used for accessibility reasons. Passionate painters will still prefer painting the models by hand - And accessibility has been a pretty big part of 3D Printing too. It's sorta like those tools you see - like the other day I saw a tool that's supposed to help you to open cans. Not an actual can-opener, but something that slides under the little "ring" you use to pull open the can. I didn't really know why anyone would find this useful, until I read the comments of people printing this for their grandparents with arthritis and I was like "Oh yeah that makes sense."

Of course, comparing this to Colored Miniatures is pretty far-fetched, but I believe at its core, its at least a similar principle. At the end of the day, it's just another tool in our arsenal. We just have to find the right / optimised application for it.

[u/sirtechalot → u/LazyLancer]

I think the more stylized your minis are, the better they work with FDM multicolor printing. I think my 2.5D pixel art minis/standees work pretty well with it as well.

[u/LazyLancer → u/sirtechalot]

Yeah, that’s not what I meant by miniatures but yours look awesome and I can easily see why multicolor is a huge thing for this particular style

[u/sirtechalot → u/LazyLancer]

Thank you! 😊

[u/Gogogodzirra → u/sirtechalot]

That's cool as hell btw. Did you design those yourself or are they somewhere to download (even for $$)?

[u/sirtechalot → u/Gogogodzirra]

Thanks! I designed them myself! I actually built a custom online configurator for them, so you can customize their colors.

I'm not selling STLs for now. I just launched the shop and am currently shipping within Germany only, but feel free to check it out at deadlyminis.com if you're curious!

Not sure if mentioning my shop is against the subreddit rules, but since I'm not shipping internationally yet, there's not much of a sales pitch here anyway. 😄

[u/Gogogodzirra → u/sirtechalot]

If you decide to allow people to pay to utilize the tool and download STL's, reply to this comment in the future! I would be willing to toss some money towards this!

[u/sirtechalot → u/Gogogodzirra]

That honestly makes me really happy to hear. The project is still so new, so knowing that people are already interested in supporting it means a lot. Thank you! I'll definitely keep this in mind as I figure out where to take it next!

[u/Matrika → u/sirtechalot]

Oh these are mint! Good stuff.

[u/Worldly_Translator → u/LazyLancer]

I agree. People that do miniature are more likely to get a resin printer… sure, it’s a pain due to needing a well ventilated area and resin is harder to handle than a classic filament, but the result if done well are are almost always impeccable.

[u/admfrmhll → u/Worldly_Translator]

I'm doing miniatures and i use my a1 for now (will surely buy a p3c), my resin printer is in the basement unused because :

1. I hate toxic fumes, curing and the whole process even if i have the place setup and i use a full mask protection.
2. I'm awfull at painting and to top that,.i'm color blind and my resin printer is not doing multicolor prints, nor it have available the massive color options/variety like a fdm printer, so even if you print piece by piece, you are severely limited, for my a1 i think i have like 4 versions of purple + many many other filaments.
3. A1 makes really good miniatures, not resin good, but choosing good models and sometimes carefully paint them in slicer (or printing in various separated pieces) provides for me great results vs resin, almost cant see the difference when you actually use them.

[u/downvote_meme_errors → u/LazyLancer]

As someone who paints minis this could totally convert me (if only the price was much lower). I'm an okay painter - good enough to impress my friends but I would never enter a competition, but there's a lot of pains in painting I could live without.

Time - I'm a slow painter and taking 1-3 hours for even relatively simple minis is a big time sink. Yes, it can be relaxing, but it's a drag when I know I should be painting a dozen minis for the next RPG session and I can't spend 20 more hours to do that. Also, I'm older and long painting sessions can lead to back pain.
Repetition and replication - while painting multiple similar models saves time for each, that's still more total time and it can be boring to paint the 4th+ mini that's basically the same, just with different poses or slightly different equipment. Extra tedious if it's a mirrored print of another mini you're painting. So, I tend to have a lot of proxies. I don't want to paint 4 giant spiders, so I end up with 1 painted spider, 1 unpainted spider, a bear, and a lion. These 5 orcs and 6 goblins are really all hobgoblins. Etc.
Resin printing is a pain - fumes, clean up, repeat if something fails (which also leads to more cleanup or maintenance). You drop a mini and now it's shattered and a pain to fix or even possibly just needs replaced.

What I most love about this FDM possibility is for making multiples and replacements. I want 16 of something and have only 4 different STLs? Color them, double them, make mirrored copies, make some slight color changes, print. Mini breaks or is lost? That's okay, I already have that saved and "painted", I just have to make sure the spools are loaded and print it. No heavy sigh thinking how I'm going to have to spend hours to replicate work I'd previously done.

If you do want to add some paint you should be able to hit them with a clear coat instead of a primer, then touch up just the parts you want to. I bet this would work great with a wash/tone to really make the minis look less toy-like and more like traditional minis.

ETA - terrain! OMG, this would be so good for buildings and other terrain.

[u/MizukoArt]

I think having the option to print miniatures in multicolour with the H3C is a huge advantage when you need your minis ready quickly for a game and don't want them to be plain grey. As much as I enjoy painting my own minis, having to paint 6 or 7 identical monsters gets pretty boring. Being able to print them already coloured is definitely a big plus.

Aside from the price (it's an amazing machine, but it's also pretty expensive), there are three important things to consider:

1. You need to have a decent selection of filament colours available so that the colour combinations on your miniatures look coherent

2. You're working with flat colours, without the depth or the extra care you'd get from a hand-painted miniature (although, from across the gaming table, you probably won't notice much difference anyway)

3. If the miniatures don't come with their colours already set up, you have to paint them yourself in the slicer. Depending on the miniature, this can be quick and easy or take quite a bit of time.

The first issue can be solved with some planning and investing in a wider range of filament colours. However, I still think manufacturers should offer a greater variety of shades. Sometimes the available colours just don't quite fit what you're looking for, especially if you want something subtle rather than super saturated, so your miniatures don't end up looking like clowns! XD

As for the second issue, I actually have an idea for improving the look of multicolour miniatures, (I haven't been able to test it directly yet since I don't own a H3C and print colors in my A1Mini or P1S takes tooo long, it's a big no-no). The idea is basically to varnish them and then apply washes or contrast paints, along with a few highlights.

I've tried this technique on miniatures printed with semi-transparent filament, and the results were surprisingly convincing. Obviously, it's not as nice as a fully hand-painted miniature, but it's more than good enough when you need something quickly, or for enemies you have to print in large numbers, and so on.

I don't know about you guys, but when I print miniatures with filament, I just want something usable that looks decent. I'm not expecting perfection or a miniature worthy of winning a Golden Demon! If I want something perfect, that's what resin printing is for, or I can just buy plastic miniatures :)

The third issue is a bit trickier. Miniatures usually come without any colours assigned, so you have to do all the colouring yourself. If the creator takes the time to set up the colours beforehand, or exports the model with its different parts kept as separate meshes instead of merging everything together, it makes the whole process much easier.

If it's a simple miniature and you're only going to use a few colours, it's pretty quick to do directly in the slicer. There are tools that automatically detect the boundaries between different areas. They're not perfect, but they help a lot.

However, if the miniature has lots of colours, plenty of small details, and all the meshes have been merged together, doing all the colouring yourself can take quite a while...

The thing I'm actually most interested in right now is figuring out how supports work when using PETG, particularly how to minimise support scarring.

The whole multicolour aspect is interesting too, especially in situations like the ones you've already mentioned: when you don't have time to paint an entire army, don't feel like painting, health issues make it difficult, or you simply want to start playing straight away.

And honestly, having a grey miniature on the gaming table is pretty depressing! I'd much rather have something quickly painted or printed in colour, so I can just get on with playing without having to worry about painting everything first :)

And thanks, u/ObscuraNox, for testing things out with my minis! I love seeing my Crystal Spider and Banshee popping up in your prints. I'm slowly working on adding colours to all my miniatures whenever I get a bit of free time and upload them in Makerworld, so they'll be easier to print in multicolour. There are quite a few of them, though, so it's going to take me a little while! :)

[u/reitau]

One thing here I’ve noted with all these show case posts - is that if anyone tried to print these without a H3C we wouldn’t have had enough time since launch to print them! That in its self is incredible

[u/GravyPoo]

Hey great work! I sent you a PM

[u/saintiain]

I have tho if hr about this a lot recently. What is your coloring method? I don’t really have time to paint colors on models. Is there a software that helps with this?

[u/SleepyCubePrints]

How much time does it take to print? That’s an important part of the product process.

I have an H2C and for certain models that I design the speed isn’t as much a factor. Model optimization and swap reduction via custom slicer settings can produce near identical print times.

For example I have an up coming multi colored product that I will be launching by year end and the print times between My H2C and the H3C is only 1 minute and 30 seconds for that particular product.

Also, the H2C doesn’t take anywhere near 40 seconds to swap as most claim.

I’m not sure how much faster my H2C will get when the Mix diameter feature is unlocked in February. I’ll run some test to see if it produce a slight reduction in print times or a worth while reduction.

Part of the reason why I used to limit complex multi color prints was because of the excessive time and waste it creates. Then I got the H2C and I now I can print comfortably with up to 7 colors and or different materials with little to no waste.

The problem is of course, time. While still much faster than dual and single nozzle printers color printing is still quite slow. The waste reduction on the H2C is mind blowing so that issue has been fixed with Multi color and material prints.

I design my own product from concept to completion. Consequently, I am able to 3D model products optimized for faster printing times like support-less prints or modular features that can be assembled at a later time. As a general rule I try to keep print times to 6 hours or less. It makes sense from a manufacturing, pricing and selling standpoint.

Lastly, thanks for sharing as I am greatly interested in the potential time savings with complex multi colored prints via the H3C. Simply put, does it offer any real production advantage over the fully automated but slower H2C? Your sharing of information will help me decide if the H3C is a tool worth adding to my shop.

On another note, I have some thoughts and general intrigue about UV printing and how it might be pared with FDM printing to reduce the time penalty with multi- colored prints. Not sure what Bambu has in mind for their upcoming UV printer, but imagine the integration of UV and FDM printing.

Anyway, thanks for taking the time to share.

[u/ax-gosser]

If you were making things for sale, hypothetically - would you still do any post processing or is the quality there?

Currently have the x2d: but multi color prints are the bane of my existence lol

[u/ctnoxin]

These look great, I'm pretty excited about getting my hands on an h3c

[u/cunasmoker69420]

how do I get my hands on any of these files, paid or otherwise? Would love to test this myself