I am looking for information on how quick the filament change times are for the Vortex system. My guess is that an AMS colour change takes the same length of time as any other H-series AMS (about 2 minutes with standard length PTFE tubes) and a toolhead change is 30 seconds?
Internet seems to be full of incorrect AI “summaries” and I’m unwilling to use youtube for political reasons.
In addition, I also can’t find a competent independent review of the Vortex - in all cases I could find, either Bambu has provided the printer, or the reviewer has no idea how to use a 3d printer.
EDIT The context of this is that I’m considering the vortek upgrade for an H2D. Or selling the machine and replacing it with the H2C. Although it’s extremely difficult for me to sell an H2 due to the weight and the complexity of shipping.
I measured it with a stopwatch: 40-45 seconds from the end of the print to the start of the next color. During this time, the printer changes the hotend, reloads the filament from AMS, and prints the tower.
So 40-45 if you’re switching to a new toolhead with a different filament in. which limits you to a number of different filaments equal to the number of toolheads.
However if you need to do a full change via AMS it’s not quicker than the H2D as then it has to purge as well.
Yes, if you use more than 7 colors (1 on the left, 6 on the right nozzles), the color change will require a purge of the previous color but I found that the purge is faster and purge less on the induction nozzle that on the regular one, certainly because it knows if it comes from dark to light or vice-versa (I feel it still needs some optimization). Also that purge is needed only for this 7th color and the one it has changed into (again I think some optimization is still required there), most of the time it has the other colors available so no need to purge those. Temperature rise is also 3 times faster with the induction nozzle.
For the actual colors that you print with if they are already loaded in the induction nozzle from previous print, the purge at the start of the print is also minimal, regular nozzle needs a huge amount of time because it has no way of knowing what was loaded previously.
I timed it and it’s 38 seconds from stopping with print to starting with the print again.
Changing between the left and right nozzle is about 14 seconds. I’m on the latest firmware (1.05)
I don’t own a H2C nor any of the other high end printers. I have a question though: would it go faster if you brought the AMS unit closer to the printer and use the shortest PTFE tubes possible? (without introducing dangerous bends)
It sounds like most of the time is lost in rewinding the filament back to the spool and feeding the new one, no?
Yes a little bit. But there is some time lost in wait actions as well. If Bambu Lab could lower this, I think they can get it down to 30 seconds. And the extruder change could be less than 14 seconds as well.
The H2C overlaps some operations (done in parallel). I don’t remember which. Like, it rolls back the filament at the same time it’s swapping nozzles. But there are some other times when it’s waiting for operations to complete sequentially and it’s not clear some of them couldn’t be overlapped, too.
Maybe I’m easily amused, but I really get a kick out of watching the automation in operation. And provided I’m not doing something that requires a nozzle purge, filament switches are much faster than they were on my X1C.
I think the AMS 2 Pro is faster than the original AMS, too.
So, between 5 and 10% faster on the colour change… still a gain but not a major one indeed. The downside being that you need to have room to setup your AMS that close to the printer to really get a gain out of it.
More likely people will do the opposite, add a few seconds to the change, and mount a bank of AMS away from the printer. (Edit I dont know how long it can go and still work, but a meter is known to work)