Beginner notes on hotend/filament use

Bambu Lab H2 Series
1

I haven’t found a concise summary anywhere, and I’m probably looking right past it, but I welcome any feedback on what I think are the details regarding H2C hotend/extruder use cases. I’m trying to get up to speed and hopefully maybe this can help others starting up also. Of course realizing that there are a number of useful tables in the Bambu wiki - these I gathered answered a number of questions for me at least.

I believe…

  • All of the H2C hotends supplied and for sale are hardened steel
  • Only induction hotends can be used as the right hotend
  • PET-CF, PPA-CF, PPS-CF can’t be used with a HF hotend

Given that all of the hot ends are hardened steel, any filament could in theory be used on either the right or left side, however…

The exceptions are

- TPU (excluding Bambu’s ’TPU for AMS’) 95A HF/90A/85A, which needs to be used with a right hotend. This is not because it is or isn’t hardened steel (it is), nor because it is induction or standard (non-induction), nor because of how it can be fed into the extruder (could manually feed either side)… but rather it needs to be used on the right because the extruder mechanism raises/lowers.

— In the future, TPU 95A HF/90A WILL be supported on the left hotend through a firmware update (timing unknown as of Jan 2026)

— TPU for AMS can be used in either side, and CAN use either the AMS HT or AMS Pro (this is the case although the Bambu customer support robot told me that ‘all TPU materials, including those compatible with the AMS, are restricted to the right hotend on the H2C…')

- “Brittle” filaments (PET/PPS/PPA-CF) need to use the left hotend, due to the fact that there are conditions where the tube to the right hotend will significantly bend during a print, resulting in likely filament breakage

- PVA supporting PETG can’t be used on the left hotend as the lifting mechanism can cause issues (though I don’t get why PVA can be used on the left with PLA and won’t clog…I’m thinking maybe it is because of the temperature differences in printing PVA v PETG that causes the issue?)

Other comments…

- TPU (excluding ’ Bambu TPU for AMS’) cannot be used with AMS HT’s automatic feed and return function

2

Just to mention it: the 0.2 nozzles are not hardened.

3

I have already read that ABS can be used on the left side hotend only, but I am wondering if that is correct, and if so, why…as I didn’t think it was as brittle as the other left hotend-only filaments (PET, etc.)

4

Thanks @sebkoe . Was chatting with Bambu support today, and they actually said that the included 0.2 induction nozzle for the right hotend is hardened, but the 0.2 available for the left side are not. I’m not sure why that is, but that is what they told me.
Then after more digging, I found this Bambu page, which shows the 0.2 induction as stainless (only).

I don’t feel so bad getting confused now :smiley:

1 Like
5

I always use the magnet test when I don’t know. Hardened nozzles are magnetic; the stainless nozzles typically are not.

If you’re making a decision when buying and support says the opposite of the website… good luck. :wink:

6

ABS can be printed on both the left and right side hotend.

7

Has anybody been using a 0.6 high flow hot-end with PPA-CF?

If so what volumetric speed and any other setting are you fiddling with?

Man this stuff is slow to print haha