First out of the gate was the ever-present Benchy. (Part of me wonders if I’ll get to heaven someday, wander into God’s creation shack, and see a Benchy in the corner.) I loaded the file directly from the preloaded file section of the H2C’s internal memory, installed the blue translucent PLA, and came back about 20 minutes later. The Benchy finish was flawless, and every calibration dimension was within 1% of the design value.
(Credit: Michael Lydick)
I ran my tolerance rings next and found no resistance to any of the pieces, all the way down to the 0.2mm cylinders. These tests really tell me how well set up and calibrated the machines are, and especially how well tuned the filaments are in the slicer. I couldn’t fault the outputs here and proceeded to an even harder test.
(Credit: Michael Lydick)
Or, rather, what’s usually an even harder test: a cylinder and square peg that move to progressively smaller tolerances. Almost every top-tier printer I’ve tested stops at plus 0.05mm. The H2C fit into the 0.00mm tolerance and wouldn’t fit in the negative 0.05mm slot, a perfect result.
(Credit: Michael Lydick)
I had the same result with both the circle and the square, which was a first for me and even better than the H2S; that unit only got as far as the plus 0.05mm bracket. I decided to print a slider toy as an example of a “print in place” part, and I could easily slide the board pieces around with nearly no resistance.
(Credit: Michael Lydick)
I next ran my retraction test with a 2-by-2-inch storage box (made of hexagonal mesh), to look for under- or over-extrusion or stringing. The end product was so precise and spectacular that it put the H2C in the top tier of all the printers I’ve tested to date. I thought the translucent blue PLA looked especially cool when this part was finished.
(Credit: Michael Lydick)
I resisted the urge to go to multicolor printing right away and ran the toughest tests without any disappointments. The fine-detail test revealed smooth surfaces, and the tiniest letters were easily readable. The Autodesk Kickstarter benchmark (pictured below) returned zero stringing and perfect scores across all measurements. The only machine that came close was the H2S, and I suspect the slightly lower speeds aided the H2C, which is slower due to its dual print heads.
(Credit: Michael Lydick)
(Credit: Michael Lydick)
Then I went down the multicolor road: I downloaded the “Galactus” file from Makerworld.com, set it for 0.2mm layers, and walked away for 22 hours. When I returned, I was met with a small number of print waste balls, and a file so impressive that it was sheer black magic…
(Credit: Michael Lydick)
On a comic-book tear, I figured I had close enough colors to attempt a Spider-Man. This print, with 0.2mm layers, took 12 hours and delivered similarly striking results. The color edges and transitions were crisp and detailed, and the Vortek system performed brilliantly, with no issues transitioning from one color to another. I was transfixed several times watching the pieces moving, and the nozzles being changed. It was obvious that the weak link here was the speed of the AMS, pulling the filament back and then loading the next filament up to the extruder.
(Credit: Michael Lydick)
It feels like there’s a design opportunity to upgrade these AMS units with a filament valve or gate that brings the next color close to the extruder as the prior color is pulled back. There would have to be two tubes coming out of each AMS and a switch gate just shy of the extruder for that to work (the Anycubic Kobra has something like this now), but we’ll see if that’s something Bambu Lab addresses in the future.
I try to get a few hundred hours of print time on these machines and make at least one print for my wife’s houseplant collection. I found a file for a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle planter set and turned the unit loose again with a 0.2mm layer height and an 8-hour print time. The result was equally inspiring, with only four waste balls on my floor and an unexpected, “Oooh, that’s nice!” from my wife. You might also notice the prime tower in the background of some of these prints. The prime tower is there to get the first little bit of filament hot and extruded for consistent layers, and to help clear a nozzle between color changes.
(Credit: Michael Lydick)
Last up in the fun department was the F-16 kit card. I kept rolling with the filament Bambu Lab sent me, and my oldest son called this the “Barbie Jet.” I saw this as an opportunity for the first layers to fail for all four of the different colors, and to my surprise, each of the first layers for all four came out as well as anything I’d ever seen before. The H2C’s ventilation system kept the chamber cool enough, even with the lid on and the door closed.
(Credit: Michael Lydick)
Finally, I wanted to test the Support for PLA filament, which is a special material for printing supports, not the model itself, for easy removal. In doing that, I started to really understand what the Vortek multi-nozzle system was and wasn’t. Bambu Lab wants you to have a library of single-use nozzles, like in this case, where I might dedicate one of the 0.4mm nozzles to PLA support material. As discussed earlier, you might task another nozzle with TPU; another might handle ABS-CF. The printer would know which filament each nozzle was assigned to, and help prevent contamination by other materials. This was especially important for me, as I work mostly with engineering-grade filaments. Once I dial in my settings, I don’t want to chase down cross-filament issues.
I ran a support test, using the Support for PLA filament as the interface layer, which peeled away effortlessly, leaving near-perfect surfaces behind on the test piece.
(Credit: Michael Lydick)
(Credit: Michael Lydick)
I could easily see having dedicated nozzles for PETG and TPU for support situations like this, with zero-gap interface layers like this one.
The Vortek system could be used exclusively for color changes. I could use it, say, just to make articulated multi-colored dragons for craft fairs in town. However, after using it, I believe Vortek was really intended to be a filament library. I kept reminding myself that the H2C could do everything I wanted. PLA? No problem. Polycarbonate—also no problem. Was it the fastest? No. But it could do everything. That’s something no other printer in its class could boast.
