Seems like Bambu Lab has a new trick for reducing waste. Rather than a toolchanger like the Prusa XL or the Snapmaker, they’re swapping just the nozzle. As far as I can tell from the video, the printer still has a second nozzle which won’t swap in and out, meaning a print can be run with 7 nozzles (six from the Vortek system, plus the second nozzle in the toolhead). So if you’re using 7 or fewer filaments, no pooping is necessary.
The cool bit here is that they’re using wireless chips in the nozzles to communicate the thermistor data to the printer, so no pin-based connections are needed.
Pretty cool solution, I think. I assume you’d still need a prime tower, but that’s a small amount of waste if they’re eliminating poop from purging the nozzles.
I’m curious to see how they’ll handle calibration, surely the nozzles aren’t all going to be perfectly aligned all the time.
From what I read, it’s supposed to have only the one hotend. But perhaps I misread.
The swap-able nozzles are a clever idea. And does have it’s advantages over tool changers. And despite the in house testing Bambu says they have done, it will be interesting to see what happens when you turn such an unproven system loose on all the knuckle dragging, hoof handed, club footed, thumb fingered masses of the world.
But I suspect the price puts it out of the range of most hobbyists. Much like the Prusa XL, this is perhaps aimed at print farms more than the hobbyist.
Yeah, I think it’s very clever, but like you say it will be interesting to see how the system fairs outside a lab environment over time.
And even if it does work flawlessly, there is no way they will price it lower than the H2D which is already outside what I consider reasonable for sporadic home use.
If all my dreams come true, the competition heats up and they end up dumping the prices over the board.
Realistically though, I’ll keep an eye on the H2S over the next few months and see if people have issues with it before I give away even more of my hard earned money.
My opinion is these printers are aimed a lot more at print farms and other businesses that use 3D printing than the average consumer/hobbyist. And the pricing will reflect that. I think that the X series printers get faded and Bambu keeps the A and P Series printers. The A series for beginners and the cheap bastids like me. The P series then becomes the flagship consumer models. While the H series is the prosumer market. The nozzle swapper is aimed at the heart of print farms where every milligram of waste is money lost.
I’m quite sure Bambu has all the patents locked up and it’s going to be a good while before we will other printers with similar technology.