Want to know more about the backstory of the Vortek? Here is a blog written by Dr.Tao, the CEO of Bambu Lab: H2C Is on the Way: Here’s How It All Started
The "Vortek" is both an upgrade system specifically designed for the complete H2 series of Bambu Lab 3D printers, as well as equipped on a brand-new flagship printer H2C. The upgrade kit for existing H2D/H2S users will allow them to upgrade their current 3D Printer with the Vortek system. Since the upgrade requires hands-on skill, we suggest purchasing the H2C directly in Q4 to experience the Vortek system. Upgrading an H2S or H2D later will incur additional costs..
We believe that the Vortek System is the best multi-color solution on the market, balancing stability and comprehensive functionality with the following key advantages:
Zero Purge Waste: This innovative design eliminates material purge during different material changes, ensuring cleaner prints and significant material savings.
High Efficiency & Large Volume: The system boosts material-changes efficiency while maintaining a compact footprint, allowing for a larger available build volume.
Reliability: With our self-developed contactless system, the system operates heating and sensing without physical connectors, maximizing reliability and reducing potential failure points.
Induction Heating: Fast nozzle heating by induction, saves you tons of time for nozzle heating.
Seamless Enclosed Printing: The system provides a complete enclosed printing experience, fully supporting high-performance filaments that require a stable, heated chamber.
In total, a H2 series printer with the Vortek system will support up to 7 hotends for multi-color or multi-material prints. Of which, 1 hotend is the left "lifting" hotend and the other 6 hotends are tool-changing inductive hotends. With this, the H2 series printers equipped with the Vortek system support up to 7 materials without the need to initialize during printing (no purge waste).
By implementing a purely contactless solution, we've completely eliminated the risk of poor contact, significantly enhancing the system's reliability. Through extensive preliminary research on various solutions, we found that physical pogo pins methods could not guarantee reliability during thousands of filament changes in printing.
Not at all. You can unclog the Vortek hotend the same way you would with a traditional nozzle. Recommend to print with Bambu Filament and follow the corresponding instruction.
Bambu Lab's contactless connection high-frequency synchronizes the nozzle temperature and the heatsink temperature to the printer's control system. This enables precise control over induction heating.
The answer is a bit more complex:
If you want to print with zero wasted filament caused by purging, the maximum is 7 different colors / materials.
If you have a project that requires more colors in the same print, and don't mind some purging, you can print with up to 24 colors / materials at the same time while Studio is smartly minimizing the amount of purged materials.
The Vorktek system will be a standard feature on our new H2C flagship 3D printer, launching in Q4. It will also be available as an upgrade kit for existing H2 series users, also in Q4.