The Bondtech INDX Founder’s Edition is out in the wild – huge congrats to our friends from Bondtech! 🙂

With that milestone behind us, we’re moving to the next phase: shipping the “standard” INDX Conversion Kit for CORE One/+. Since the Founder’s Edition was delayed, our timeline also had to be adjusted. The first units are scheduled to leave our factory by the end of July, and we remain on track to ship the entire first batch by the end of August.

This is an actual model from the INDX placed at the seabed – don’t worry, we did not leave it there 😉

Since I already started writing this, and INDX has been churning out one print after another in our office for the past few months, I figured it’s the perfect time to talk more about the improvements and upgrades INDX has received since we announced it. After all, we haven’t been sitting on our hands. Of course, there were things like sourcing better components and similar, manufacturing-related things. But that’s probably not what’s very interesting for you.

Instead, let’s take a look at some genuinely cool stuff.

The current state

Our partners from Bondtech started shipping the INDX Founder’s Edition, and the first units are already in the hands of early adopters. Meanwhile, we continue to fine-tune the experience. Our main focus is on print profiles – improving PLA print quality, adding more advanced materials, and offering more nozzle diameters.

As always, you can expect us to provide support for months and years to come. We’re also continuously collecting feedback and redirecting our efforts wherever necessary – special shout-out to our community for being very active on Reddit and Discord!

We’ve been showcasing the INDX on every possible occasion, so you could see it running and amassing thousands of tool changes in real time.

Here are a couple of things you might have missed:

New Docking Panel

This is a small, but pretty convenient upgrade – the front panel is less dense, offering a better look at the parked tools and also into the printer. However, the best options are still either the Buddy camera mounted inside the chamber or placing the printer on an easily accessible desk and opening the hinged cover.

Your favorite community manager, Tommy, recorded a short video describing the changes, so we invite you to take a look – both at the new design and also at the guy who relentlessly responds to your comments on Reddit, day and night. 😉

The nozzle cleaner and the waste bin

We’ve always been looking for ways to minimize plastic waste from multi-material prints. While the XL can achieve completely waste-free printing, it requires properly dried filaments with minimal humidity, so a wipe tower is often present. However, the INDX purges such a small amount of material that a regular wipe tower would be very unstable. We would have to purge much more material – and that was not an option. This is why we decided to implement something that is faster, more efficient, and even keeps your nozzles clean at all times: a waste bin with a silicone nozzle cleaner.

Why is this all necessary at all, you may ask? Before each of the nozzles resumes printing, the pressure inside the nozzle needs to stabilize – we call this “priming”. You need to prime the nozzle to maintain the same surface quality across the entire print.

The bin itself is large enough to hold priming pellets from a couple of smaller or one big print job. And we’re also preparing an alternate, larger option that will fit in the side panel of the printer. The firmware is already prepared for this – there is a menu switch for an “extended” waste bin, should you choose to try a DIY approach before an official model is available.

We stand by our claim that the priming pellets are incredibly tiny and lightweight, far ahead of any other competing solution on the market. The average weight is around 0.013-0.015g.

Waste is what makes the difference

Imagine throwing out almost an entire spool of filament every time you print something with multiple colors. That’s the sad reality of some of the cheapest multi-color solutions.

We took five different 3D printers and put them to a test using a typical model a 3D printer user will probably print at some point – the differences are massive. In the picture above, the final model was 81.7 grams, whereas the total amount of waste produced could be as much as 696.4g. Depending on the price of your filament, that’s $10-$21 (roughly 10-25€) thrown into waste every time you print something moderately complex. INDX clearly wins with only 29g of waste.

In the case of the Rocket Engine, the INDX produces nearly 30 times less waste compared to the most wasteful option. 842g of wasted filament in the first case – almost an entire spool.

We want to be fair and also mention that not every object produces the same ratio of waste per printed object, but the differences are still pretty substantial. For our comparison, we used the default print profiles suggested by the manufacturer without additional tweaking.

Automatic Tool Offset Calibration

Another major thing that was implemented since the INDX’s initial reveal is the automatic offset calibration board – the Tool Offset Sensor. It’s essentially a small piece of electronics that can measure the offset of each individual toolhead with absolute precision – for instance, it cannot be thrown off by a dirty nozzle. We believe that INDX users will like to switch nozzles to tackle various projects – offering a fully automated calibration makes a lot of sense.

This is a much faster solution compared to, e.g., a calibration pin. The tool offset calibration runs through several steps – first, is the Tool offset’s Z position calibration using the loadcell. Then comes an X-axis scan directly over the inductive sensor, followed by the same in the Y axis. Each scan is performed four times: forward and back, then again at a slower speed. This lets us eliminate errors caused by measurement lag relative to tool movement. The signal is filtered and processed.

Tool offset calibration runs on every print start (the nozzle is cleaned using the new nozzle cleaner) to ensure we always have fresh values at hand. This means users can change tools (nozzles) in between prints without any further inconvenience.

With this solution, we’re achieving outstanding accuracy and consistent results. The best proof is that INDX is great for ColorMix, which requires a highly precise printer.

A little side note: We considered using a camera, but the inductive sensor is less sensitive to residual filament debris, so it won out. On the other hand, inductive measurement is sensitive to electromagnetic interference, so before each measurement, we disable the ultra-fast inductive heating of the new INDX toolhead and PWM bed regulation.

We also recorded a simple-to-follow video showing how to complete the initial Wizard. Plus, if you’re curious, the entire step-by-step installation guide is already online. According to the users, the usual installation time is around 5-6 hours.

EasyPrint, PrusaSlicer, and ColorMix

In the months that led to the release of the INDX, we’ve spent plenty of time optimizing and improving the user experience with our slicing software. Major updates for EasyPrint and PrusaSlicer completely reworked the way you use colors in your prints, enabling you to use dozens of color tones.

Our implementation is called ColorMix, and it uses a method called Halftoning to produce really awesome prints.

With the 8-tool INDX, you can go all the way to CMYKW+RGB setup, unlocking a truly vast color palette.

If you missed our article and video, do check them out – it’s the perfect example of how much can be achieved with a 3D printer.

And one more thing you can play with: the Color Mix Shading app – it enables you to create some really unique effects using virtual lights and baked-in shading.

Upcoming updates

We’re working hard on resolving any remaining issues and preparing additional sets of printing profiles for PrusaSlicer. We have recently released a new firmware (6.6.1), and we’re bringing four more print profiles very soon.

We will also get back to you regarding the larger waste bin solution, and there are some more interesting technical features we want to talk about – but we’ll keep it for next time.

We’ll bring you more updates soon as we get closer to the shipping date – our full focus is now on getting the first batch of units to you.