No this isn't rocket science, and there's definitely a vibrant FOSS community actually pioneering this and that is probably the best place to be on the true frontier, but there is productization effort here. Considering people always advocate for Bambu for "making it easy to buy", Prusa also deserves credit when they try. They certainly get knocked when they don't.
As someone deeply embedded into the FOSS community myself, it's sometimes really annoying when we sabotage the better players. It only helps the worse ones.
PrusaSlicer is used as a base by some others, they’ll get this.
Version 3 is coming soon, they’ve promised good things. I’m curious what shows up.
They also open sourced their color mixing model so if people think it’s better they can switch. And they’re using and adding their stuff to the open print tag database they’ve already cooperated with others on.
This seems like all upside to the community to me.
For what it's worth, CMY filament bundles have been available forever and they're well characterized for use with HueForge there are open databases with measured color and TD values. It's great that Prusa is launching their own bundle with their own measurements. I'm just trying to point out that this all exists and has existed for a long time, and there are multiple resources available for it.
> As someone deeply embedded into the FOSS community myself, it's sometimes really annoying when we sabotage the better players
Not trying to sabotage anyone, just trying to help the community with some more information.
INDX already has fast color changes and produces far FAR less waste than an AMS. And that’s what sold me.
Then the coloring mixing stuff started coming from the community. Now you don’t need to buy 30 colors of filament for many uses. Thats a serious upside. And it really benefits from multiple toolheads.
It’s a great confluence of events if you’re in the Prusa ecosystem or just don’t want a Bambu or U1.
I'm excited for INDX too, but like you said it's not a Prusa exclusive system. I think this is great news for people who like to play entirely within the Prusa ecosystem, but I also think it's good to let people know that there are a lot of options outside of that ecosystem.
The Snapmaker U1 is looking good at $899 shipped for a 4-color printer with no waste https://us.snapmaker.com/products/snapmaker-u1-3d-printer
I do agree though that direct feeding each tool head offers the best experience vs the AMS approach.
I’m glad to see Prius’s catching up to Bambu on the color mixing front, Bambu has had CMYK filaments for a long time and has supported color mixing in their slicer for at least a month.
INDX no longer needs a tower. They say there is 13 milligrams of waste (which they call less than a grain of rice) on each filament change. So a print with 1,000 changes wastes 13 grams of filament. Details:
https://blog.prusa3d.com/prusa-core-one-indx-orders-now-open...
So... honestly it's kinda silly IMO. If I wanted to mix colors in a hacky way I'd just... wait, hold my beer.
I understand OSS people don't like Bambu, but as pure end user, they are great and well put together.
It can be multiple times the weight of the actual thing you’re printing. Exactly how bad depends on the model. Here’s an extreme version:
https://www.reddit.com/r/BambuLab/comments/1jluvde/35_g_mode...
It makes one of those little color blobs every single time it changes colors.
This might seems like a lot but this is the reality of the system.
And it also takes time. The difference can be a few hours vs a day of print time. Plenty of videos online that show case examples.