I teased it a few weeks ago, and now, I’m incredibly excited to finally put the Bondtech INDX system in the proper spotlight it deserves!

INDX is a revolutionary way of looking at toolchanger systems. It’s not an evolution of a filament-switching unit or a slightly different toolchanger. It’s a new architecture. Imagine your CORE One loaded with eight different spools, swapping tools in seconds with near-zero waste.

This is a huge leap forward, and a wonderful example of two European companies, Prusa Research and the Swedish extrusion leaders at Bondtech, collaborating to push the entire industry forward. Bondtech’s patented design is both simple and totally ingenious. I can’t wait to dig into the details – I’m pretty sure it’s gonna blow your mind. 🙂

Oh, and if you’re in Frankfurt for FormNext, stop by our booth (Hall 12.1, F01). You have to see this running in person!

The Multi-Material Journey

We have long-term experience with multi-filament 3D printing. I introduced our first Multi-Material Upgrade (MMU) in a blog post back in September 2016. Today, the MMU3 is available in its third iteration, and it’s an easy and affordable way to add a full five-filament capability to a single-nozzle machine.

Then we built the Original Prusa XL, with our state-of-the-art toolchanger. The XL is the definitive solution for high-end, high-reliability printing, allowing you to swap entire toolheads. This is what lets you print with flexible and rigid materials in the same print, or even swap to entirely different tools, like the silicone printing toolhead or the pick-and-place toolhead we’re also showcasing at Formnext.

There are various solutions on the market, but each of them has some sort of compromise. Filament-swapping systems like MMU or AMS have to unload and load the filament back and forth, which is slow and wasteful, as the previous color has to be purged out of the nozzle. While the MMU does not have as compact and streamlined form factor as the AMS, we managed to minimize the amount of waste the MMU generates – all filament scrap is purged into a single compact block.

Printers with two switchable nozzles are a special case: they may look efficient and fast on paper (like “8 seconds per nozzle swap”), but only if you limit yourself to two materials. Add more filaments, and you end up with the same downsides and limits of filament switching systems. Plenty of waste, and filament swaps taking over 40 seconds.

This is where we saw a gap. What if you want the virtually zero waste and speed of a true toolchanger, but with the scalability and low cost-per-tool of a filament switcher?

That’s the gap the INDX fills.

A New Architecture: Smart Head, Passive Tools

The INDX, designed by Bondtech, can be described as a lightweight toolchanger. However, instead of swapping the entire, heavy, and expensive print head (extruder motor, gears, heater, thermistor, sensors, and all), the INDX is beautifully minimalistic and streamlined. You can think of it as an electric razor: a body with interchangeable (cheap) passive blades.

The Smart Head is the single active component that moves on the gantry. It contains all the expensive parts: the Induction heating (IN) plus sensing electronics, and the Dynamic eXtruder (DX) drive system with a self-adjusting tension mechanism.

Then there are the passive tools parked in the front: they are mechanically simple, and most importantly, affordable. They contain no wires, no heaters, no thermistors, and no electronics. They are essentially just a filament path and a special nozzle.

This architecture is the key – it’s easily expandable. It means that if you start with four tools, adding a fifth, sixth, or eighth material is incredibly cost-effective.

Revolutionary Induction Heating

The “IN” in INDX stands for Induction – induction heating, to be specific. Thanks to this ingenious design, the INDX is “hotendless”.

Here’s how it works: the Smart Head contains an induction coil. When it picks up a passive tool, it energizes the coil. This generates a high-frequency magnetic field that instantly heats the nozzle. And the nozzles themselves are “near massless”. Pretty much all the heating power is used to melt plastic, not to heat a massive block of aluminum.

This combination of direct heating and low thermal mass is what gives the INDX its speed. The nozzle can heat from cold to printing temperature in just a few seconds. It also cools down really fast, which is the “holy grail” for multi-material: it eliminates oozing from parked tools without a massive, slow heat-up penalty.

And how do you control the temperature of a wireless, passive piece of metal? The Smart Head reads the nozzle’s temperature without any contact or wires – essentially a contactless thermal measurement.

Self-Adjusting Extruder for any material

The “DX” stands for Dynamic eXtruder. Anyone who has printed with both PLA and TPU knows that there is no single universal gear tension that works well with all materials, and you either have to manually change it or compromise on a suboptimal tension.

The “DX” eliminates this compromise. It is a self-adjusting extruder that requires no user intervention.

Here’s the clever bit: It uses a reactive CAM mechanism. It’s not just a spring. When the extruder experiences higher back-pressure (like from a high-volumetric-flow print), the filament’s force acts on the drive gears, and the CAM mechanically translates this into a stronger grip. When printing a soft TPU with low flow, it uses a lighter touch. It dynamically provides the optimal pre-tension required to print any material, at any requested volumetric flow”.

And the mechatronics are brilliant: the same lightweight stepper motor that drives the filament also actuates this CAM mechanism to open the drive gears wide, releasing the filament and unlocking the passive tool during a swap. One motor, three jobs.

The Result: Effortless, Fast, and Flexible Printing

When you put this all together, the experience is seamless. You place eight filament spools on the CORE One and load them into their dedicated passive tools. No buffers, no filament rewinding into an external box, no filament cutting, no filament flushing, no preheating, no complex mechanisms.

The entire process – park the current tool, move, pick the new tool, heat it to working temp, and resume printing – is over in as little as 12 seconds, depending on the filament used.

While we are an exclusive integrator of the INDX, Bondtech will also bring it to Voron 3D printers and make it available for 3D printer modders and hackers, which both of our companies love to support.

Availability and Configurations

The rollout of the INDX is separated into two stages:

• Stage One: The “Founders Edition” will be available through Bondtech’s website as an upgrade kit for the CORE One at an introductory price.
• Stage Two: We’ll start offering the kit in our e-shop as well.

Stage One starts in Q1 2026.

We’ll be bringing you more news, videos, and prints from the INDX in the upcoming weeks.

Stay tuned!

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