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> 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

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If I wasn’t already in the Prusa ecosystem the U1 is what I’d want. I was jealous of it until INDX was announced.
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The AMS doesn’t cause the waste, it’s purging the old filament out of the tool head. The H2D and X2D can print two colors with an AMS without needing to purge and the H2C can do 7 without purging. You still need a prime tower when switching tool heads, but that is significantly less than a full purge. But I believe the INDX has the same restriction.

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.

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> You still need a prime tower when switching tool heads, but that is significantly less than a full purge. But I believe the INDX has the same restriction.

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...

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I'd kind of considered printing a rather small thing (seriously, 3x3x3 cm or so) in grey using this technique (using white and black filament). It told me it'd require 140 (== number of layers) filament changes and it'd take 5 hours. (In fairness, if I wanted to print 10 at once it'd probably take a similar time.)

So... honestly it's kinda silly IMO. If I wanted to mix colors in a hacky way I'd just... wait, hold my beer.

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at home printing values, is filament waste really such a problem?

I understand OSS people don't like Bambu, but as pure end user, they are great and well put together.

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I’d say the level of waste from filament switching is a disaster. But many people are used to it which I find crazy.

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.

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Waste is waste, if you end up using 2 to 4 times the filament (depending on the number of colour change) it's still something to account for.

This might seems like a lot but this is the reality of the system.

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Well depends on what a problem for you is. But the purging on complex models can be more plastic then the model itself needs.

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.

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