RE:
I see the INDX system uses no thermistor on the hotend...how does that work then ?
RE:
I'll repeat myself here, from a design perspective the only thing about the INDX system I'm not thrilled about so far is the weird lid thing. Hopefully that design isn't set in stone and something else can be done, it doesn't even have to be complex just something clear and a bit more subtle than that black boxy thing will do.
All other aspects I'm pleased with.
Well, there are a few more aspects where they have not proven performance and robustness:
- Part cooling and heatbreak cooling, as mentioned earlier. This is pretty central to extrusion quality, and I trust that Bondtech know their stuff in that area -- but we have not seen much yet.
- Calibration of the relative XYZ positions of the different nozzles. I saw somewhere that a pin-probing approach like in the XL is intended. But that would need full firmware support, and I don't see an obvious place to install a pin robustly. It would be ideal if this is not needed at all because manufacturing tolerances and reproducible docking tolerances are tight enough -- but that seems like a tall order.
- Bed probing -- seems like the announced load cell sensor was not even installed in the trade show demo units yet?
And there are a few integration questions which I am wondering about. E.g. it seems we are losing the side filament sensor. So how will filament runout detection -- and in particular unloading of the remaining bit of filament -- work with only a printhead sensor? (Or will it be a printhead sensor?? I can't quite see how that works with the exchangeable tube & nozzle combos. It's listed as "will be there for the Core One version, but is not implemented on the Formnext demo unit" in the INDX specs.)
RE:
I see the INDX system uses no thermistor on the hotend...how does that work then ?
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Contactless Infrared Temperature sensor I believe.
RE: INDX is coming for CoreOne?
I think part of the answer is in the head's mass. fewer mass, fewer thermal inerty.
Maybe the CoreXY frame will help to dissipate through thermal conductivity on support.
The good question is the way PRUSA will handle part cooling, I have not seen any one on the Bondtech demo, nor any large size part in demo.
Bed sensing is also a challenge, in my experience the best one is mechanical sensing.
Challenge is to make sure all heads stay aligned on the same Z within a tight range, because you can only sense bed before printing, not in the middle. The guy from BT talked about some "grease" that would guarantee accuracy, not clear for me. On the other hand, this can be overcomed by avoiding as much as possible multiple head printing on the 1st layer, the most sensitive to Z accuracy. In this respect, model Z accuracy will be interesting to check against nextruder for instance.
In fact the demo yesterday is a quite flat model we have not seen anyway, which cannot allow to evaluate technology performance on large Z models.
I would not make any decision before having seen a XL demo model printed on a Core One.
As I said before, I think there are some technical uncertainties that need to be handled by Prusa.
Regarding my Prusa experience, I am confident they will issue a good solution that will provide at least the same quality as Nextruder.
Businesswise, I understand the agreement with Bondtech as a win win deal.
Bondtech will get orders and business first, and Prusa will get visibility that will boost sales. On a larger time frame, I think Prusa will win ultimately, because they will enhance further technology and provide an end user fully packaged solution while Bondtech will stay on their niche market with other players while getting licence fees from Prusa and others, hopefully no Chinese brand. The real risk here is if Bondtech is acquired by other inamical company.....
No doubt Chinese will copy this technology, because they don't give a sh*t to intellectual property.
The challenge for Prusa is to enhance basic technology based on Bondtech IP enough to make profitable the Core One product line with licence fees paid to BT.
I think the maker community who rushed on preorder will also play a role in beta testing technology and possibly providing open source solutions that Prusa can use to enhance his closed source solution. Thanks to them.
Very clever.
So I am waiting next episode in Q1/Q2 2026.
RE: INDX is coming for CoreOne?
The only solution I think also.
RE: INDX is coming for CoreOne?
The real risk here is if Bondtech is acquired by other inamical company.....
I bet that Prusa and Bondtech have discussed this. From a financial perspective Prusa would probably be able to acquire Bondtech, and strategically they might have a keen interest to do so. So I assume the Bondtech owners are just not interested in selling at this time.
But it would be a common move to agree on a "right of first refusal" for Prusa in the OEM contract: If Bondtech ever change their mind about selling the company, Prusa has the first right to buy them (for the same conditions that whichever third party may offer) or decline.
RE:
I agree. Bondtech would probably sell out to Prusa over anyone else.
The real risk here is if Bondtech is acquired by other inamical company.....
I bet that Prusa and Bondtech have discussed this. From a financial perspective Prusa would probably be able to acquire Bondtech, and strategically they might have a keen interest to do so. So I assume the Bondtech owners are just not interested in selling at this time.
But it would be a common move to agree on a "right of first refusal" for Prusa in the OEM contract: If Bondtech ever change their mind about selling the company, Prusa has the first right to buy them (for the same conditions that whichever third party may offer) or decline.
RE: INDX is coming for CoreOne?
Agree.
Initially I thought Prusa would announce Bondtech acquisition.
Reason was this agreement & associated risks, plus the fact Bondtech is not very large (16 people) nor very profitable company, and it is owned by a Prusa sized company, Ernströmgruppen, whose strategy is at the same time niche, but whose identified strategic directions are somewhat different from 3DPrinting.
If this group would get rid of a non strategic, not cashcow subsidiary, the best would be to make it shine before selling it, and that's exactly what is happening.
Bondtech got yesterday around 5M skr orders, or 1/6 of their annual 2024 turnover, which is 28M skr, and this is not bad.
And the real risk is here: BT value is raising, and even if Josef PRUSA announced in Forbes end of october he would acquire another thing, I wonder if this is a good thing for PRUSA on the short term, other than giving a bonus to the founder(s) for extra sales.
So the question is still pending: will Prusa acquire Bondtech or anything else?
RE: INDX is coming for CoreOne?
Things are developing very fast at the moment, and with all these 'upgrades', the cost of a base printer will skyrocket. ie, having to purchase the Core One (which made me feel like a beta tester), then bolting on each upgrade as it comes, will make the total cost of ownership way too high in comparison to a 'ready to run' printer - look at the U1 for instance......
As a result I didn't bother pre-ordering. I don't know how much more money I want to through at this. I'll keep my Core One as a single material printer for now, and have a H2D for anything multicolour. To be fair, I rarely print heavy multicolour anyways - even though I have 13 colours loaded in my H2D its more for convenience - being able to send a 1 or 2 colour print job across without having to load appropriate colours every time - they are just there ready and waiting. More laziness then anything else I guess! But its also handy for using a different material for supports - PETG for a PLA model for instance.
I do like the INDX system over the Vortek though - it just makes so much more sense to me and I do think it's the future of 3D Printing. I'll just let it mature a little first.......
RE: INDX is coming for CoreOne?
I do like the INDX system over the Vortek though - it just makes so much more sense to me and I do think it's the future of 3D Printing. I'll just let it mature a little first.......
It's a little off-topic here, but I will ask anyway -- because I expect more objective responses than in the Bambu forums:
Could someone explain why the Vortek system needs the vertical lifting action of the parked hotends? Why can't they just be presented in a stationary row, similar to the INDX solution? Is it because the print head is wider, and hence the parked hotends need to be spaced further apart? Or just to keep an unobstructed view of the print in progress when the hotends are moved down? Or is there some deeper technical reason?
RE: INDX is coming for CoreOne?
That is an interesting question. To raise the nozzle to the top of the printer to avoid knocking over the print? To look cool? No idea.
I do like the INDX system over the Vortek though - it just makes so much more sense to me and I do think it's the future of 3D Printing. I'll just let it mature a little first.......
It's a little off-topic here, but I will ask anyway -- because I expect more objective responses than in the Bambu forums:
Could someone explain why the Vortek system needs the vertical lifting action of the parked hotends? Why can't they just be presented in a stationary row, similar to the INDX solution? Is it because the print head is wider, and hence the parked hotends need to be spaced further apart? Or just to keep an unobstructed view of the print in progress when the hotends are moved down? Or is there some deeper technical reason?
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Chuck H
3D Printer Review Blog
RE: INDX is coming for CoreOne?
Yeah I've been thinking that, the Vortek system is the ultimate in convenience for filament selection, like a jukebox. Almost like printing directly from your filament shelf. Even changing up nozzle sizes without touching the printer.
INDX makes a lot more sense when it's actually printing though and is going to save hours of time once you take the time to manually set up the configuration before the print 🙂 Vortek is also an enormous number of moving parts to rely on, I guess Bambu is really good at this, so we'll see.
Also interesting a Core ONE L with AFU and 8 tools is around the same price as an H2C with the recommended 2 AMS units and 7 nozzles.
As a result I didn't bother pre-ordering. I don't know how much more money I want to through at this. I'll keep my Core One as a single material printer for now, and have a H2D for anything multicolour. To be fair, I rarely print heavy multicolour anyways - even though I have 13 colours loaded in my H2D its more for convenience - being able to send a 1 or 2 colour print job across without having to load appropriate colours every time - they are just there ready and waiting. More laziness then anything else I guess! But its also handy for using a different material for supports - PETG for a PLA model for instance.
I do like the INDX system over the Vortek though - it just makes so much more sense to me and I do think it's the future of 3D Printing. I'll just let it mature a little first.......
RE: INDX is coming for CoreOne?
Has indx a filament sensor? For example for spool join etc..
RE: INDX is coming for CoreOne?
The Vortek system seem to be a lot of moving parts and complication to still have pretty slow tool change, seems like its optimised primarily to rely on the AMS but the complete system doesnt look great, the INDX makes so much more sense in my head, no cutting and retraction etc, always loaded nozzles. Anyway, thats definitely offtopic in this thread.
RE: INDX is coming for CoreOne?
The Vortek system seem to be a lot of moving parts and complication to still have pretty slow tool change, seems like its optimised primarily to rely on the AMS but the complete system doesnt look great, the INDX makes so much more sense in my head, no cutting and retraction etc, always loaded nozzles. Anyway, thats definitely offtopic in this thread.
The Vortek system looks like French women doing the can-can.
RE: INDX is coming for CoreOne?
The Vortek system seem to be a lot of moving parts and complication to still have pretty slow tool change, seems like its optimised primarily to rely on the AMS but the complete system doesnt look great, the INDX makes so much more sense in my head, no cutting and retraction etc, always loaded nozzles. Anyway, thats definitely offtopic in this thread.
There are always pros and cons. The reliance on a single filament path and the AMS means that the switching times are still dominated by cutting and retracting the filament, then feeding new filament to the head. But it also means a low-profile path which fits inside the regular enclosure, avoiding the tall PTFE tube arcs.
I wish I understood why the vertical dance of the parked hotends is needed in the Vortek. I am sure there is a good reason, but am not aware that Bambu have ever discussed it. I'm leaning towards "they need the wide distances between the hotends in order to move in the print head and dock". I much prefer the clean and simple INDX solution in that respect.
Regarding automation and convenience, Bambu (as usual) has thrown in a few extra sensors. So they can detect which hotend types the user has loaded where, and they can automatically calibrate the XYZ position deviations, with camera support. We have not seen the corresponding INDX/Prusa solutions yet, but I would expect them to require more user interaction.
RE: INDX is coming for CoreOne?
Has indx a filament sensor? For example for spool join etc..
Supposedly it will have one. The comparison table (tinkerer's version vs. Core One upgrade kit) on Bondtech's website states:
Runout Sensor—Included
* Design not implemented during Formnext 2025
I wonder where it will be placed. They probably don't want up to 8 separate sensors where the filaments go from their spools into the individual PTFE tubes (i.e. where the current side sensor is). So it must be close to the extruder drive gear, which is the only other place with physical access to the filament. Maybe they detect that the dual drive gears no longer have filament to grab, i.e. they give that cam mechanism an additional function?
But then, what does the system do when it detects a filament runout? It cannot push the filament back through the tube to let the user grab it, because it will just be a short stub. Maybe you are just supposed to push in new filament, they purge out the remaining stub, and resume printing?
RE: INDX is coming for CoreOne?
RE: INDX is coming for CoreOne?
The Vortek system seem to be a lot of moving parts and complication to still have pretty slow tool change, seems like its optimised primarily to rely on the AMS but the complete system doesnt look great, the INDX makes so much more sense in my head, no cutting and retraction etc, always loaded nozzles. Anyway, thats definitely offtopic in this thread.
The Vortek system looks like French women doing the can-can.
(Project manager hat...)
"So what I heard you say is that it'll work for the French?"
RE:
I do like the INDX system over the Vortek though - it just makes so much more sense to me and I do think it's the future of 3D Printing. I'll just let it mature a little first.......
It's a little off-topic here, but I will ask anyway -- because I expect more objective responses than in the Bambu forums:
Could someone explain why the Vortek system needs the vertical lifting action of the parked hotends? Why can't they just be presented in a stationary row, similar to the INDX solution? Is it because the print head is wider, and hence the parked hotends need to be spaced further apart? Or just to keep an unobstructed view of the print in progress when the hotends are moved down? Or is there some deeper technical reason?
The reason that Vortek works the way it does is the decision they have made to tuck the nozzles out of the way at the side, but still load the toolhead from the front.
Because of the depth of the toolhead and gantry there is only room for 3 individual tools to fit.
Also the vortek method of engaging tools requires them to be lifted vertically as part of the load process.
I think they decided to use the same lifting mechanics to add a 2nd tool rack - to increase the number of tools to 6.
They could probably add more 2 way tool racks for a total of 10 tools on each side if they need to.
I would imagine the x1c Vortek version will have 3 or 4 racks with 2 tools each.
You can't have INDX tools at the side because the PTFEs would interfere with the gantries.
You could however have some sort of similar mechanism with two interleaving racks on the C1 to allow for a total of 15 tools.
The recent move of the INDX tool release lever from the side to the front means all of those little orange spring loaded bumpers would also somehow need to be moved out of the way or shifted over.