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.
Build plates are just sheet steel with a coating. And Bambu filament is just Sunlu with an RFID tag that isn’t worth the extra cost.
Extra cost? Where are you getting filament? In my country it is very competitively priced at least the refill filament. Even Amazon is maybe a buck cheaper.
I’m not hung up on any one brand. I’ve been doing this long enough to know I can make any cheap filament print well. I watch for sales and I can easily save $5 or more per kilo without needing to buy 10 or more kilos at time. I have 4 kilos of AnyCubic filament I just payed $10 per kilo for. So, yes Bambu filament costs a lot more for no better quality.
Unlike many here, I’m super big on inventory management. Storing large amounts of materials that I have no real immediate use for costs money. Money I can use elsewhere to better effect. Right now, discounting the spools hanging for my Bambu Mini and Prusa Mk3s, I have 6 kilos of new unopened and a few partials that are getting used up.
Yes and no. It‘s about being able to select Special Materials from the Printer After loading to be Synced with the slicer. Happened when they extended the materials range.
2 mouse clicks and I can tell the slicer what filament and color is where on my AMS lite. If you are running a print farm and swapping filaments constantly, that’s maybe one thing. But I have 2 printers, only one of which is a Bambu. And the one spool of Bambu filament I bought demonstrated very clearly to me that the RFID tag is not worth any money to me.
Good for you! Everyone is different. It’s nice to be able to sync the filament I set when loading it to the AMS. That isn’t possible with the updated firmware if I use anything other than Bambu Studio. That’s why I haven’t updated and thus have missed out for instance on the TPU for AMS as my current firmware refuses to let me print TPU from the AMS period.
I don’t think one can reasonably defend a company taking away options from users that have already bought the product. What bothers me is the reason they used was demonstrated to be complete BS.