When a customer came to us wanting a Minja in their college’s colors — seven of them — I’ll be honest, my first reaction was challenge accepted. The Bambu Lab H2C with our AMS setup was practically built for exactly this kind of chaos.
Setting the Stage
For those who don’t know, our Minjas are PhantomPrints’ signature custom mini figurines. Send us a photo of yourself, a friend, or any character and we turn them into a detailed multi-color figurine. We’ve done hundreds of them, but a true 7-color run is a different beast entirely.
The colors the customer requested:
- Midnight black (base body)
- Deep navy (gi details)
- Crimson red (sash and belt)
- Gold (trim and weapons)
- Forest green (hood lining)
- Silver (shuriken)
- Bright white (eyes — the most important detail)
Slicing the Beast in Bambu Studio
The real work in a multi-color print isn’t the printing itself — it’s the painting/slicing stage. In Bambu Studio, I used the multi-material painting tools to assign each filament to specific surfaces. The H2C’s AMS Lite handles filament loading automatically, but you still need to be deliberate about:
- Purge volumes — each color swap requires a purge to flush the previous color from the nozzle. With 7 colors, these purge blocks add up fast.
- Layer ordering — certain colors need to print before others to avoid bleeds, especially the white eyes over the black head.
- Wall count — we bumped to 4 walls so surface colors stay true without the base color peeking through.
I spent about 45 minutes in Bambu Studio getting the painting right. It’s almost meditative — you’re literally sculpting with colors.
The Print — Live on Stream
We kicked off the print live at kick.com/phantomprints on a Tuesday evening. The H2C’s speed meant we were looking at roughly 3.5 hours for the full figurine at 0.12mm layer height.
The stream audience went wild watching the AMS cycle through filaments. Every color swap is this satisfying automated ballet — the H2C pauses, the AMS retracts the current filament, loads the next, purges, and resumes. The whole swap takes maybe 8 seconds. With 7 colors and several hundred layer changes, you see that process a lot over 3.5 hours.
Highlights from the stream
- Layer 12: The first glimpse of crimson red appeared on the sash. Chat immediately started posting fire emojis.
- Layer 47: Gold trim started appearing on the weapon hilts. Someone in chat said it looked like a Super Saiyan ninja. They weren’t wrong.
- Layer 83: The white eyes. This is always the moment. There’s something uncanny about a face appearing on what was, seconds ago, just a black shape.
The Result
The finished Minja stands 6 inches tall with crisp, clean color boundaries. Under natural light the gold metallic filament absolutely pops against the matte black body. The white eyes have that slightly eerie glow that all great Minjas should have.
Total print time: 3 hours 47 minutes
Filament used: ~42g total
Purge waste: ~18g (the price of multi-color perfection)
Customer reaction: “I’m literally crying, this is perfect” (direct quote from their DM)
Lessons Learned
If you’re attempting this at home with a multi-color setup, here’s what I’d tell you:
- Assign colors from darkest to lightest where possible to minimize bleed visibility if purge volume isn’t enough.
- Use the auto-painting tools first, then manually clean up edges with the brush tool.
- Add a 5mm brim on a figurine this tall to prevent warping on the base during long prints.
- Watch your first 20 layers live — if a color swap fails silently, you want to catch it early.
The H2C is legitimately a game-changer for figurine printing. The speed, the multi-color capability, the reliability over long print runs — it’s the reason PhantomPrints can offer Minjas at the quality level we do.
Want your own custom Minja? Get a quote here — send us a photo and tell us your colors, your vibe, your vision. We’ll bring it to life live on stream.