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.