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Bluewing

@ Bluewing @lemmy.world

Posts
4
Comments
588
Joined
2 yr. ago

  • Hot on the heels of the H2S, Bambu Lab announces the seven-color, wireless nozzle-swapping Vortek H2C

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  • Prusa costs more for a reason. They are built in the EU, which is frankly a far more expensive place to manufacture anything compared to China. But, Prusa will also support your printer for longer than anyone else will support their printers. And Bambu and all the rest of the China made printers still lag behind in customer service. Customer service is very expensive to offer. While Bambu's service is better than the rest of the Chinese made machines, that's a low bar indeed.

    I have an A1 Mini combo. My opinion about Bambu is: Good hardware, as good as anyone else's. Not so good software/firmware-- they need a lot better software engineers for sure, CS is getting more and more spotty, and everyone pretty much agrees-- questionable business practices.

    I'm not trying to talk into buying one or not. Just giving you my personal experience with my one Bambu printer and one Prusa printer.

  • Hot on the heels of the H2S, Bambu Lab announces the seven-color, wireless nozzle-swapping Vortek H2C

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  • As an old and retired engineer, I see the wisdom of really chasing the concept. The system SHOULD be cheaper and more reliable due to fewer parts. But that doesn't mean YOU get to see the price savings.....Toss in a few patents and buyer lock-in is assured.

  • Hot on the heels of the H2S, Bambu Lab announces the seven-color, wireless nozzle-swapping Vortek H2C

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  • My understanding is they do have prototypes that aren't quite ready for primetime. From an engineering perspective, the system should be cheaper due to fewer expensive parts like motors, heaters, and thermistors-- fewer parts generally means better reliability too. And it's far more compact and can even fit into a smaller printer if desired.

    I do see some issues, nozzle manufacturing is going to need to be E3D quality or better. And the number of nozzles is odd. They claim 7 nozzles, but their AMS system can hold 4 spools. You can daisy chain up to 3 AMS I think for either 8 or 12 spools per machine. This means with 7 nozzles, you are either going to have 3 extra nozzles with 1 AMS or 1 or 2 extra spools with the extra AMS you can't use with your 7 nozzles. A strange design choice if 7 is the number. It's kind of the number of hotdogs in a pack vs the number of hotdog buns in a bag problem.

    And the even more basic question-- Just how many nozzles do 3D printers really need? Can the average user make use of all those extra nozzle enough to justify the extra cost? Now, print farms and companies that do a lot of prototyping and perhaps some limited on-site manufacturing can benefit, can regularly take advantage. But Geoffrey or Maybeline? Perhaps less so. Maybe even a whole lot less so based on price sensitivity. To use another real world example, Shaving razors. Just how many blades does it take to shave with? 1 or 100 at a time. 1 blade will work, 2 might get you an improvement, but are you really getting enough improvement with dragging 6 blades across your face at one time vs the extra cost? Does the cost of the poop out weight the cost of the extra nozzles for the majority of user needs?

  • Hot on the heels of the H2S, Bambu Lab announces the seven-color, wireless nozzle-swapping Vortek H2C

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  • The affordable tool changer wars begun they have. Thanks to Snapmaker. It does remain to be seen if a "cheap" tool changer can withstand the use and abuse of the great unwashed masses. Something we won't really know for 6 months to a year from when they really get out.

    While I'm not a customer for anyone's tool changer, as I have 2 bed slingers I'm quite happy with, but engineering advantages are large and doable enough. And if Bambu is truly successful with it, it's going to wreak the market.

  • What in your country/area is totally normal but visitors get excited for?

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  • Some west of the iron range.

  • Hot on the heels of the H2S, Bambu Lab announces the seven-color, wireless nozzle-swapping Vortek H2C

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  • My personal opinion is the H2 series is going to be a real problem for other brands. While I don't see it as a threat to cheap and simpler printers, like Soval or Crealty is in no real danger, brands like my beloved Prusa and others like Snapmaker and Qidi or are going to be in for a rough time while they try to catch up. If they can.

    I wonder what printers will be cut from Bambu's current lineup also. I think the X series is the most likely. With the A series being in no danger, Bambu needs cheap entry level machines on offer to hook consumers into the brand. And I can see the P series hanging in there too for mid-tier machine.

    The only thing I see slowing down Bambu series printers is the cost. But advanced hobbyists, print farms, and other business will pay the freight. I'm not so sure the average casual user will though.

  • Upgrading from Bambu Lab A1 Mini

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  • I ranked them pretty much in the order I have them. Snapmaker might be a tiny bit above the Carbon, but it needs to be see yet. It seems Qidi is also making it difficult to run vanilla Klipper on the new Q2. But they have been very good about open software in the past. Owners of the Q2 aren't complaining yet. So perhaps they are just slow. Again, YMMV.

    What is really scary is Bambu's new H2 series. Bambu is building a new eco-system with them. And the waiting to be released H2 automatic nozzle changing system is going to break 3D printing I believe. Instead of a traditional tool changer like the Prusa XL or Snapmaker's version, Bambu is going to just swap the nozzles. Which makes for a far more compact and noticeably cheaper system. This appears to be the first real original idea Bambu has designed vs using already developed ideas.

    No matter what you think about Bambu's business practices, you need to give them flowers for the disruption of the status quo and then delivering good hardware to back it up. It took several years for manufacturers to catch up with the AMS systems that everyone and their brother offers now. Bambu even got Crealty to up their QC and offerings. And now a new idea tool change system? It's about to get real for the rest of the field.....

  • What in your country/area is totally normal but visitors get excited for?

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  • I live in the middle of a very sparsely populated forest. Tourists want to see the black bears, wolves, eagles, loons, and deer. You will see the deer, eagles, and loons if you are on a lake. But you probably need to spend serious time in the forest on foot to bump a bear or wolf. If you want to see those, we have a bear and then a wolf center where biologists study their behavior and keep a small number in captivity. And evidently, both centers are pretty famous for the work they do with other wildlife biologists around the world.

    And oddly enough come fall, they drive around to see the leaves on the trees turn pretty colors. It's popular enough that news stations in the one large metropolitan area we have in this state, actually tracks and includes the rate and areas where the leaves are turning color so tourists can drive and see them.

    When winter arrives, we get a fair number that drive here to go ice fishing when the ice gets safe enough to drive on.

  • Tesla sales plunge 40% in Europe as Chinese EV rival BYD's triple

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  • That was for show. And not to fix the underlying problems. If he cared, he would actually find and fix the problems.

  • Upgrading from Bambu Lab A1 Mini

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  • First, leave the mini on the current firmware if you enjoy using Orca. Mine is locked to 1.04 and on LAN.

    I'm a Prusa fan boy, so I would recommend the Core 1. If I was starting over, that's what I would buy. But there a some other good choices out there.

    Qidi often gets over looked, They have the Plus 4 and now the Q2 both can be used with the Qidi box, their ams knockoff.

    The Elegoo Centari Carbon has been more good than bad it seems, but it seems there have been complaints about the klipper version it runs is locked so vanilla klipper won't run on it. And Elegoo won't release the open source parts of the code to allow it. YMMV

    The new Snapmaker is interesting, but I would be wary until it gets out into the wild and the great unwashed masses start breaking it before I would invest.

    Crealty has upped their game, but I'm personally still wary.

  • Fediverse still going strong and stabilizing

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  • Ordinary people know what Linux is, they just don't care about. So the effect is the pretty much the same, but for different reasons.

  • Tesla sales plunge 40% in Europe as Chinese EV rival BYD's triple

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  • I don't think Musk much cares or ever did. The goal was to milk tesla for every last dime.

  • The Browser Wasn’t Enough, Google Wants To Control All Your Software

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  • I spent a mere $500 for my Pixel 9a. Most expensive phone I've ever owned. But at least I can send a text message from inside my house and make phones from out in my yard now.

  • Bambu Lab announces the Vortek H2C, an automatic nozzle-changing version of the H2D

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  • 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.

  • Bambu Lab announces the Vortek H2C, an automatic nozzle-changing version of the H2D

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  • 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.

  • Framework unveils a second-generation Framework Laptop 16 with a swappable Nvidia RTX 5070 GPU, an industry first, shipping in November 2025

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  • It's getting harder and harder to afford high end computers. I have already decided my next new computer will be a mini desktop. They are noticeably cheaper, can be well spec'ed, and powerful with a small foot print.

  • Bambu Lab announces the Vortek H2C, an automatic nozzle-changing version of the H2D

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  • 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.

  • Bambu Lab announces the Vortek H2C, an automatic nozzle-changing version of the H2D

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  • I still have my Mk3s too. But, there was a a harder learning curve to getting a quality print from that Mk3s than there is to the Mini/AMS combo I have next to it. And casuals want that ease of use. Just unbox, plug it in hang a spool of Bambu branded filament with RFID then slice and print.

    Like it or not, few people want to spent time running calibration models and temp towers. Raging against the sea is a losing battle.

  • Bambu Lab announces the Vortek H2C, an automatic nozzle-changing version of the H2D

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  • 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.