The new H2C build plate is the size of the vision encoder plate. A Redditer figured it out. So looks like to do a H2D upgrade will require a new smaller build plate that allows room for the right nozzle to have a path to the nozzle change system.
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So THAT is why the vision encoder, cutting mat all came in at that weird slightly narrower size (so that these work across all 3 H2s).
An expensive-ish pursa style kit of swapping things out.
Personally I don’t see this as to much of a loss once as long as the price is right you lose what .8 inches compared to buying another probably 3-4k machine when that drops in Q4 of 26
330mm marking on the printer, but I wonder what the left only nozzle printing size will be.
Probably safe to say you’ll need to subtract 15mm for the left and right exclusion zones. So left or right only would be 315 and dual nozzle print would be 300
I don’t think the left nozzle area will be affected
Yes, a tool changer requires some portion of XY travel area, similar to many conventional CNC mill or router.
Thankfully we have both the H2S and H2D options for greater work area. Not everyone’s work will benefit from the H2C/toolchanger capabilities. It will be the most expensive variant.
Jgrimm thanks for posting his thread, I agree with those conclusions and it definitely explains why it may take 6+ hours to conduct the upgrade (convert another H2 to H2C)
Jupitor: the H2C will be out end of this year apparently. I’m sure it will be shipping well before the conversion kit.
I think they were meaning when the second variant of tool changer is released which will probably be 350x350 plus tool changer
I’m still stuck on the realization that the tool changer seems to be locked to the AMS, which will limit brittles and TPUs to the non-changer nozzle. For me, this is too limiting to warrant any spend, because the H2D will be its equal for the TPUs and brittles with standard filaments. But for those of you that like color printing there is still value… albeit at a high price (assumedly). It will also allow multi-material and multi-support materials (non-brittles), which may open up some new options. However, the more I think of this, the less I find it useful for me.
All said, I am still geek’ing out over what it is… which is cool. But I don’t think there is a purchase in my future. The potential of losing build area isn’t the end of the world for me, but the other functionality issues seem to be. I’m hoping there is a little more that we can’t see that cleans things up, but I’m not holding my breath.
I don’t see that happening any time in the next couple years. Wishful thinking (second variant toolchanger, bigger machine)
Mike, agreed for brittle or tricky filaments including tpu, the other machines make more sense. The toolchanger is going to benefit a different range of materials, this is new territory and exciting to see how it unfolds.
Yes there is not a lot the H2C can do for engineering use that the H2D cant. The only thing that I find attractive in the H2C is being able to load up 0.2, 0.6, HF, Tungsten etc nozzles and have them at the ready so with a press of a button you can pick, kind of like a multi tool CNC mill. I assume they will have both HF and tungsten nozzles for it, I hope I am not wrong. We will have to see how the nozzle selection works in slicer and if they can be assigned manual. I hope they wont limit the Vortek to nozzles of the same size, not for use in one print just for standby and selection for specific prints.
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That would be VERY annoying.
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You got it. Tool changing is great if you’re in the habit of changing tools often (nozzles), to me personally that’s more important than material swaps (I don’t care about wasting a little filament).
I think there are some very positive implications with the tool changer, Bambu studio/slicer capabilities opening up. For example: maybe we will actually see the opportunity for more than one nozzle size in a print? It becomes more likely than it has up till now.
That feature would make me want to get one. Although the print time would increase exponentially if you used 0.6/0.8mm for the model, and 0.2/0.4mm for external wall for example. I just did a test slice with a 200mm cube, with one 0.6 nozzle it was 1 hours, with two nozzles went to 3+ hours. Would be useful for some specialized prints though, like 0.2mm nozzle text on bottom of the print for control panels etc.
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Well, I still doubt we’ll see multi nozzle size per layer, that’s a tough nut. Instead consider: print most of a part in 0.6, and some top surfaces in 0.4, stuff like that. It becomes low hanging fruit once you’ve got a magazine of options with tool changing during a print 
What if the the H2C allows the filament directly connecting to a permanent line by using 8 AMS HT?? This way the ams would not have to reload filaments!
That right there would put it in line with a normal tool changer! Doesn’t the ams ht allow 8 to be connected? Why 8, well this would answer why 8.
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They can all run to one connection right before the buffer, that’s a pretty quick retract/reload from there. AMS HT are pretty quick, but so is the AMS2.
regarding AMS speed, I would assume a multi-HT regime would be very fast, they’re a more advanced feed motor so they should be able to do some pretty slick change time on that short run.
What’s the correlation with the 8? I’m only aware of 6 nozzles on the right hand, and one on the left. is there one more going somewhere?
(edit: oh yea duh, you can send as many HTs as available to the left nozzle too, it would just need to purge completely “the old fashioned way”.)
We can clearly see two PTFE tubes on the interior and there is only one extruder for the right nozzle.
But what if the filaments can be loaded from the individual ams ht with filaments parked just outside the case of the h2d? I know the filament doesn’t go to the extruder but if it was just outside it would make things faster. Kind of like the AMS lite
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I thought about this also, when they showed video, they only used ams 2pro, but where other 2 filaments came from? Most likely other ams or ams ht
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