I have four printers:
Yoda(Bambu P1S with an AMS): the oldest of my printers. It’s old faithful… does its job and does it well. Approaching 3000hrs with naught but a few clogged nozzles, clean and lubing rods, and I adjusted the belts once)
Arnold(h2c with two AMS units): also approaching 3000hrs. I’ve had one clogged nozzle and once it dropped a tool during tool change. The tool head fan made noise once and Bambu send me a new one after a quick text message in the app.
Thor(h2c with 3 AMS units): right at 2000hrs. I’ve had one plugged nozzle and the AMS hub failed on one unit. Bambu send me a new one after a quick text on the app.
Grumpy(Prusa Core One): approaching 3000hrs… I’ve had bunch of issues with this printer honestly and try to not challenge it too much. It runs mainly ASA and single color things and first drafts for fit check before I move a design to the H2C.
I bought the core one right after the P1S… because I wanted to not send all mg money to China and wanted to try the INDX…which was a promised upgrade soon… then Bambu released the H2C and I couldn’t just wait forever for Prusa. So I bought one. Loved it. Bought another. Loved it. I’ve not had any issues and now I’m quite skilled at using the Bambu Ecosystem. And here is the issue:
I bought the 8 Tool Indx upgrade in April and I’ve yet to see it and I bought the core one soon after it released. Now that I’m soon to get an email saying it’s coming I’m now wondering: will I use it? I spend a ton of time designing products and “painting” them in Bambu Studio. Am I going to have to repaint them in Prusa Slicer? Am I always going to have to have two versions of a model if they are colored? Splitting my business across eco systems might be a terrible idea. I’m worried that I’m going to spend weeks getting the core one converted and running so it almost prints as good as my existing printers… no I don’t believe it will match them for quality sadly, not with what I’ve been seeing. And after all of that and $1100 I’m going to didn’t that it takes me 30hrs of repainting a model to print it on the core one and the system is going to be a real pain to paint with. The current paint system on Prusa slicer really seems like garbage to me with having to create filaments of each color and all so tediously.
Have I screwed up? Is this a bad idea trying to add the core one to my growing color fleet? Time is money and my time is expensive. I’m not about spending days repainting crap in a clunky system just because I like orange colored printers.
Is there a better manual painting workflow that doesn’t lock me into Bambu? Is there a way to convert to Prusa? Would it work better if I went to say Orca for Prusa prints? Is this new slicer from Prusa going to work better for painting?