My INDX journey (so far)
Hey everyone!
So the goal of the post is to show some prints that I have done, some issues that I have run into and also to share my personal experience and opinion of the INDX, so I guess kinda a review that is not in any way an actual review.
Full disclaimer from the start: I'm Prusa staff and I have been testing the INDX system for a decent time now. I work closely with the developers and most of our teams, but most of the printing I have done is just me doing my thing. The unit that I have been using has gone through several revisions including toolhead reassemblies, nozzle changes and other the addition and changes of numerous other parts of the printer. I have not been in the beta testing since the beginning myself (only joined around 1/2 way through), though I have been following along with the process of colleagues. I have also performed several factory resets and partial printer rebuilds in this time. Most of my photos were captured specifically for internal bug reporting in unoptimized profiles, so they intentionally highlight the worst-case scenarios. Keep this context in mind when looking at the flaws. This is a look at the gritty testing phase, not the final polished experience!
Assembly: This part I wont go into too much detail, as I have had various partial re-assemblies and also really early stages of guides that were far from finished. I think the recent experiences of other community members would give a better representation as their experience is more real than mine. Overall it is a bit of a lengthy build and experience with the printer definitely plays a large factor in terms of speed of assembly, so for me it was relatively easy, but some steps were still tedious (my damn X belt slipped out 3 times when tensioning it!). Based on recent feedback, I guess build time is around 5-9 hours depending on skill (with some major outliers both ways).
Calibration: This is something that had drastically improved over time and early firmware versions had way more step-by-step phases and a bit more manual. I've been chatting with our devs about current feedback and experience and we are working on trying to simplify it even further, though I think other than the nozzle wiper, it's in a good space.
First prints: It just worked. I basically dived right into color printing from the start. Sure, there were some smaller quality issues, but these were primarily profile problems as far as I could tell and the toolchanges were flawless.
Fun first print and still on my desk. Lots of memes about this on Discord especially
I also had one of my first (and few) issues here already, a frozen display during printing. The print finished without issue, so I reported it but didn't think too much of it. I ran into this problem several times, but in the last month or so, haven't seen it at all until we started shipping. There was one other person recently with this issue, but he had much worse luck due to a full bucket warning at the time blocking the print. Devs are working on this though and hopefully should be fixed pretty fast.
Stringing is something I see from time to time, but it's generally from a specific filament. Filament quality and moisture control are particularly important with the INDX right now.
Truest test of INDX power, 8 color flexi dragon
I had a failure on this print, where the toolhead fell off during nozzle wiping. This would have been due to a bad pickup of the toolhead. In this case, I could just remound and attempt it again. I had this happen again in a more complex way on a print right after.
While printing this globe from a community member, I had a weird toolhead crash that I came to in the morning that confused me quite a bit. I can't recall the specifics, but it was something like tool 1 being mounted, tool 2 was hanging off the dock, and it was trying to pick up tool 4 😄 I had to get creative here to save the print, and ended up physically swapping the tools around, moving 4 to 1 and purging some extra material, doing a bit of a swap. This was a really isolated and unique case for me, and this was also the last major issue I have run into on the printer. I regret to say I couldn't find this picture as it was quite interesting.
Torture toaster (prepared by a community member, thanks!). Some smaller imperfections, but you can see the stringing on the same brown from the print before. Worked well.
At this point I also tried to do some TPU mixing by porting some profiles myself, but my results were not good with a couple of the spools (2 out of 4 had the filament tangle). Personally I think the retractions were quite rough and that was resulting in the filament coiling and getting pushed out of the tools sometimes. TPU will require some patience and heavy profile tuning to lock in, but I believe the hardware is fully capable once the settings match the elasticity.
PETG with PLA supports. I got the model from a colleague but personally I think it isn't set up well at all. It printed extremely well other than the one small edge here. I would do some more printing in this line, just didn't have any good inspiration on what to do.
I have otherwise done some PETG printing as well as PC and PCCF with no issue, but for that exact same reason I didn't think to take any pictures as they were single color (PETG I think could use some fine-tuning on the pressure advance).
Fan shroud was printed in PC Jet Black on INDX
At this point I also started skipping the more interesting high end material challenges as I wanted to help out with some prints for our content team, as well as doing some silly projects like adding an edoscope camera to the fan shroud to view the nozzle. I will add the files to Printables once I clean it up as I am very far from an efficient designer, and I would be happy if someone more capable devolped something cooler from that. It's fun to see the tool changes and nozzle cleaning this way!
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So what's my opinion?
I've never been a fan of multi-color printing, even though I have never had any issues with it. My prints have always been functional and to the point. With the INDX however, I would catch myself canceling home office shifts just to go to work to start another silly print, and I have been having an absolute blast with it. I don't think I've enjoyed printing this much since my first days with an MK3. Combining this with interesting tools like ColorMix and and the shading app, there is always a queue of models that I want to print. Heck, I think I might go into the office on Sunday to start something up quick. I did just get a stack of CMYKW filament from polymers... Sorry honey, I'll also have to go in during the public holiday on Monday.
In regards to issues: Other than me directly messing the print up such as doing my own dumb profiles for example, I am probably at around 30 000 tool changes right now since the last problem that I had listed with the globe print, and that was also on older hardware. In total I would say I'm at about 50-70 thousand changes (I wish I tracked it) with just the problems that I had listed here. Maybe I am lucky, but the printer has been great for me.
I need more exposure to multi material printing myself to give proper feedback there, but as long as individual profiles work, I see no reason why the combination would cause a problem.
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4T or 8T?
More is always better, but I would personally be fine with just 4 tools right now, but I believe 3d models will evolve alongside the tech and I would want to upgrade to 8 at some point in the near future anyway. You don't need 8, but it's nice to have.
The bad?
Like many others, I'm not the biggest fan of the waste bucket. I've done prints that are over 7000 tool changes and would have to empty it throughout the print. Good news, we already have a BIG solution in the works, and if all goes to plan, it will be DIY. I'll keep you all updated on that.
Filament profiles, temperatures and humidity are currently very sensitive. You want to have dry material to prevent stringing, and there's still a lot to be done with the profiles, but these should be streaming in and I'm also curious to see what the community does in the meantime.
Right now I would HIGHLY encourage the use of Prusament and keeping the spools relatively fresh, but it will get simpler in the coming weeks.
• If you are in the USA, you can get it from Printed Solid with free shipping from 50 USD. I'm 95% sure Jessie filament should also be fine as they are basically manufactured near the same as Prusament now, but I don't have any personal experience on the INDX itself. Please let me know if you do try it!
If you have other materials that are working extremely well for you right now, also please let us know in the comments so that
Bonus picture: Bird
I would also like to give a small shoutout to any of our developers and members from Bondtech readings this. They have been amazingly receptive to feedback and are clearly fully committed to making the product as great as possible. It's been a blast working with you all.
