I think this kind of sums up everything. “Well, they are actively trying to lock down the ecosystem and make everything worse but shiny ad!”

As for the industry as a whole: Multi-filament setups have always been a marketing tool. They are useful in lab environments where you want users to be able to switch from prototyping to production filament without ever touching the bowden tube. Actual multi-material prints are INCREDIBLY finicky due to temperature needs and multicolor prints are a novelty that people use for social media clout but stop when they realize it can increase print times by an order of magnitude.

But multi-tool? That DOES start to make (some) multi-material prints viable as you can balance ambient temperature between the filaments and keep both strands near enough to temperature that you can still bond the layers. And multi-color is even easier.

That said? Having both filament in the same printhead/tool is going to have a large impact on what kinds of multi-material prints you can do because it is two differently hot things in the same box. Which is why most existing multi-tool setups are closer to a “real” CNC mill where said tools (think “printheads”) are kept on a shelf in the back of the chamber and the arm swaps them. Both (Will Smith’s Tested’s) Adam Savage and Shane from Stuff Made Here have done great videos demonstrating these and why are so awesome.

I dunno. I am pretty certain that the big thing for 2025/2026 (if chips and supply chains hold) will be multi-tool setups. In large part because CNC Kitchen and a few other channels have been doing deep dives on multi-filament versus multi-tool setups and it is pretty known that Stefan has a lot of industry contacts. I assume it will basically be the same as it was for the multi-filament era: Bambu is early/first to product for a consumer friendly version and all of their poor decisions (massive amounts of filament waste) become industry standard as everyone copies them. But they will have a drastically reduced social media presence this time since most of the major FDM influencers either have ethics or realize they can just get a bigger sack of cash from Prusa and Qidi.

So… I assume that means linus media group are going to do a massive collaboration with Bambu, heh.

The price. It’s going to be noticeably more expensive and probably more locked down than the X1C. You will be able to buy a Qidi IDEX system or Prusa Core 1 with their MMU for less money.

I have heard that there will be a laser and vinyl cutter attachments for the H2D also. That won’t end well for Bambu. The added complexity and rather useless power and size constraints for those add ons will make them a nearly useless cost for users and support headaches for Bambu.

Though I do give Bambu large credit for using the A1 series hot ends. They are inexpensive and fast to change out, (provided they don’t stick to the extruder making them a pain to remove).

Unless there is something they aren’t telling yet, I don’t see this as a popular money making product for Bambu.

I have bought an AMS, but not to print multiple colours. It’s to load and unload the filament for me. It’s really great and I would not want to go back.

I have read about cricut like capabilities. It looks interesting but prone to catastrophic failure.

Having multiple extruders is extremely good as u have significantly less material waste. Its especially good for using different support materials.