3D Printers - Multi-Colored - Multi-Nozzle - choices

[charles meyer]

My talented and helpful listmates,

I hope you were able to enjoy your weekend.

Maybe nit together? :)

I'm in the enviable or is it unenviable :) position that we can order a "big boy" 3D printer for the library but the decision of which one must be made in the next weeksor so (I just was informed but better late than never! :)

We've found our public library ptrons' needs/wants growing.

For years, I could just print on a Prusa Mini or MK4 and that was fine.

Now, they have needs for flexible prints, multi-colors and gettings pints sooner.

I've been primarily focused on the new Prusa Core ONE+ (with or maybe not with INDX system) -vs- Bambu Lab H2S or H2D  -vs- Snapmaker U1 

Having at least 2 if not 4 nozzles would help in separating a PLA print -vs- TPU print -vs- PETG print so 1 nozzle isn't getting clogs by different filament materials.

Dual or 4 nozzles would also make oritns go faster and makes milti-coorec prints easier as I've been just using the slicer to change colors and manually swapping our each PLA color. That's labor intensive, time consuming and requires I baby-sit each print. 

I'm surprised Prusa did not include a built-in camera with their new  Core ONE+as that's a nice feature to have with the Snapmaker U as you can stop a print when you see it's going all "spaghetti" or make videos easily for sharing or set the printer to start a print remotely. Maybe these aren't needs for everyone?! :)

Anyway... if you had the budget which multi-colored FDM 3D printer would you get?

I've done some deep dives on reddit with Kilnger -vs- Marlin ... it's like talking with gamers re: overclocking their laptops - is that a need for those just doing word processing or slicing a 3D model?

Thank you for your thoughts and experiences,

Best,

Charles.

[Bob Baddeley]

Bambu. I've been so impressed with the quality and ease of the printers. Sector has pretty much switched over to solely Bambu printers, and the one I have at home just did nearly three months of continuous printing with no issues. With the AMS you can do multiple filaments easily, and Bambu studio is really flexible and easy to use. They are essentially maintenance free and rarely have issues. For a library I would think that ease of access for the non-technically minded is important, and Bambu nails it.

Bambu is about 3D prints, other printers are about 3D printing. Not having to fiddle with settings endlessly and just reliably getting my parts out is the nicest thing. If you want greater throughput, get more printers. Don't bother with full color printers or ones from a flash in the pan company or with special crazy features, just get some Bambu workhorses.

bob

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[Jeff budrys]

I am very happy with my Bambu P2S with the AMS pro, so I think going with the one of the H2s would be my choice. I print lots of multicolor, and use a variety of filaments with good success 

Jeff

On Aug 31, 2026, at 13:10, charles meyer <reachm...@gmail.com> wrote:



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[Bernd Kreimeier]

We have two - P1P and P1S voth with 1 AMS - and I can largely agree with Bob's summary except for some caveats:

- AMS is reportedly much better than Prusa's MM but it does fail on occasion. Better know how to extract any filament.

- I like my printer hardware air-gapped (library might want this too) esp. with Bambu automatic updates (and at least one mishap)

you need to set up a wireless LAN for that and have PCs with Bambu software installed, and let users use USB to bring their own files. to use the Phone App - we do not - you'd have to sign up to the wireless.

last time I looked there was no mod out there to extend or change the SD card in the front panel, and using microSD repeatedly to cycle through gcode files is not a sustainable approach.

so for a library daily flow there might be some choices/overhead. 

users can probably be expected to connect to a Library Print WiFI by laptop or phone

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[Bernd Kreimeier]

Looks like Bambu App still does *not* work if printer LAN Only mode, so either printers are on the Internet or phones cannot be used.

[Dithermaster]

I have Bambu Labs H2D and H2S. Especially if you stick with the Bambu Labs filament (which self-identifies using RFID), it's a bulletproof setup. While the larger print volume of the H2S has come in clutch more than once, the easy dual material use caes in the H2D is quite nice, and it's capable of multicolor too with the AMS if you're willing to deal with the purge waste. If you anticipate that multicolor will be a big use case, I'd recommend the H2C instead. It can do everything the H2D does, with much less purge waste. I'd have gotten it instead of the H2D if it existed back then.

///d@

Dennis

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[Sector67 Team]

Echoing what's already been said.  We shifted to P1S printers with the first generation AMS and with over 5000 hours of printing I've had to change a nozzle once and have pulled the AMS apart to pull out broken filament a handful of times.  These issues would have both been solved by the newer AMS and only using Bambu filament (old filament gets prone to breaking, the new designs are substantially easier to remove broken filament from the AMS).

The newer generation of printers they moved to a single operation nozzle swap, the P1S printers didn't have a great switch over unless you bought their pre-built nozzles with heaters.

I'm on quite a few other hackerspace/makerspace groups and those with Prusa printers seem to have poor print quality and lots of in-consistency compared to what I'm seeing with our printers for what that's worth.  I have no experience with Snapmaker printers.

It's possible to run Bambu printers on open source slicers and from SD cards so you aren't dependent on their network/servers to pass your files along but I wouldn't recommend worrying about that in a library/general user environment.  That's a concern for the nerds w/independence but you're going to have 100 million more pressing issues than making sure the ecosystem isn't dependent on their servers.  There's so many of these printers in the world if Bambu pulls support/closes up shop/etc somebody will sort out how to make them work again.

Chris

Chris Meyer
Director
Sector67

608-241-4605
http://sector67.org

56 Corry St
Madison, WI  53704

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