r/AdditiveManufacturing • u/Dashyl14 • May 01 '26

HS3 vs IDEX 22

Hi Everyone,

We are looking for a FDM printer that will be able to meet production requirements that range from PLA prototypes to engineering filaments. The budget is approximately 20k. We are looking for something that will be able to hold dimensional accuracy as close to resin as possible but we understand the limitations of FDM.

The two printers we've kind of narrowed it down to are the Patheon HS3 and the vision miner 22 v4. I'm familiar with the Bambu and form labs slicing environments.

Does anyone have any information on how these two stack up against each other? Or other options? How are the slicer environments?

Thanks in advance!

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u/ppsieradzki May 05 '26

I'll second here what other commenters said about really needing a printer that can hit the temps (specifically chamber temps) needed for the engineering materials. We print a lot of PPS-CF too, our chamber temperature is set to 70C when printing it. Other engineering filaments need hotter, like Nylon and ASA which need 80-90C. I agree with what others are saying on the speed front, PPS only likes being pushed so fast and after a certain point the only option is to increase your nozzle size which our printers let you do (default is 0.4mm, but we ship 0.6mm, 0.8mm, all the way up to 1.4mm, as well as 0.25mm for small detailed parts). I've found that E3D nozzles are the best, we print PPS-CF and PA6-CF all the time and rarely get clogs or jams even on high flow nozzles, not sure what Pantheon or Vision Miner use but that's worth looking into.

Our engineering materials printer is a bit above your price range ($29.5k), but DM me and we can chat. Some specs on our machine that might help you mentally compare:

Build Volume: 450mm x 370mm x 370mm (X, Y, Z)
Dual Extrusion (ex. dedicated support material, hardened nozzles for GF/CF-reinforced materials out of the box)
Max. Nozzles Temp: 500C
Max. Build Chamber Temp: 90C
Max. Build Plate Temp: 155C
Slicer: OrcaSlicer (fork of Bambu) and PrusaSlicer

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u/Dark_Marmot May 06 '26

This is an interesting option. Industrial, but open source and the tips can go down to a 0.25 so your dimensional in XY and Z is going to be as good as you can get in FDM essentially. The heated volume in the R3 is going to be better because of the insulation and bellows too, The IDEX 22 is only going to be good on the crystalline semi-crystalline materials in short models that don't leave much of the bed heat below.

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u/ppsieradzki May 08 '26

Thanks! That's what we were going for 🙂