REPORT: Bondtech "nozzlegate"
Bondtech marketed INDX nozzles as hardened, but they turned out not hardened enough to deliver what was advertised
Bondtech, the Swedish manufacturer of accessories for FFF 3D printers, has officially confirmed what its customers had been saying on social media.
The nozzles supplied with the INDX system, marketed as hardened and resistant to abrasive materials, are not actually hardened.
The system is a key add-on for the Czech-made Prusa Core One 3D printers. It was first presented at last year’s Formnext and was supposed to be an alternative to both the Bambu Lab H2C and Snapmaker U1, as well as the numerous clones that have been gradually appearing on the market.
One of its features was supposed to be durable, hardened nozzles. Unfortunately, early users quickly discovered the problem, and a wave of dissatisfaction spread across social media.
The issue affects all nozzles from the Founders Edition and the first batches of kits for the Prusa CORE One+. Some boxes still carry the “hardened” label, although the company has already removed that claim from its website.
The company provided its own measurements: hardness of around 30–32 HRC in batch testing, while a genuinely hardened nozzle reaches around 55–60 HRC. For comparison, brass is somewhere between 0 and 10, while ordinary steel is around 20–25.
With carbon-fiber, glass-fiber or glow-in-the-dark filaments, the protective coating wears down quickly. Once it is gone, print quality deteriorates until the nozzle eventually becomes unusable.
INDX cost customers around $1,000 and was supposed to become Bondtech’s main source of revenue. Today, it is primarily a source of controversy.
The company admitted its mistake and apologized for the way it communicated the issue, but it has not presented a concrete compensation plan. It offers either a refund or unspecified discounts on future, improved nozzles, whose mass production the company itself places many months into the future.
The INDX specification itself has changed over time. As recently as mid-July, Bondtech was promising hardened steel and abrasion resistance. A few days later, in conversations with customers, the company cited the 30–32 versus 55–60 HRC comparison and refused free replacements, while assuring customers that genuinely hardened nozzles would come later.
At the end of July came the official admission of the problem, and the product description in the store was changed to “Steel CHT.” Bondtech says that manufacturing these nozzles at scale is extremely difficult, which is slowing deliveries, and that it encountered material-processing problems it was unable to properly resolve.
The system itself works. According to Prusa’s tests, where the most wasteful solutions can burn through almost an entire spool of filament on a single print, INDX gets down to around 29 grams of waste. It also offers a ColorMix mode with dozens of shades and automatic tool calibration every time a print starts.
So the technical core is real, which makes the failure on the nozzles themselves all the more costly.
As for the actual issue, Prusa’s own tests show quite clearly what the problem is. After printing 5 kg of carbon-fiber PETG, the nozzles were still holding their quality and showed almost no wear. But just 100 g of extremely abrasive Ultraglow filament was enough to wear through the coating. After that, quality deteriorated rapidly, extrusion lines became wider, and the nozzle lost its accuracy.
This also explains why the problem escaped earlier testing, where abrasive materials were used only in small quantities and across different nozzles.
In this story, Prusa is the party caught in the middle. The Czech company sells INDX conversion kits for its own CORE One and CORE One+ printers, meaning it is distributing a product whose specifications were provided by Bondtech.
After receiving the warning from its Swedish supplier, Prusa pushed back the start of shipments for the first batch from the end of July to mid-August, deciding that it was better to wait than ship kits while the compensation issue remained unresolved.
It also announced that it would include additional hardware in the first batch at its own expense, regardless of what Bondtech ultimately offers. It has maintained the option of a full refund before shipment, as well as an extended 60-day return period after delivery. As the seller of the kits, Prusa retains the right to seek compensation from Bondtech for claims made by its customers.
Compensation, however, remains unresolved. Bondtech does not want to promise dates or prices it cannot guarantee, and would rather have customers keep their INDX systems and later receive discounts on better nozzles than send the hardware back.
So why all the nervousness around compensation?
The answer lies largely in the numbers Bondtech files with the Swedish company register every year.
Revenue at the Värnamo-based company peaked at SEK 42.3 million in 2021, then declined to SEK 40.9 million in 2022, SEK 30.3 million in 2023 and SEK 27.4 million in 2024 (around $2.6 million).
Over the same period, operating profit fell from SEK 12.3 million in 2021 to SEK 2.0 million in 2023, and turned negative in 2024, at -SEK 1.3 million.
The positive result after financial items in 2024, SEK 1.2 million, was largely the result of foreign-exchange gains of around SEK 2.6 million rather than the company’s core business.
The solvency ratio - the share of equity in total assets, fell from 71% in 2020 to just 20% in 2024.
The picture that emerges is of a company that bet its future on a single flagship product before fully closing the loop on its manufacturing side.
Bondtech itself admits that it ran into problems processing the material and that genuinely hardened, mass-produced nozzles are still many months away from the market.
The company simply wasn’t operationally or technologically ready for a project of this scale.
Last week, British E3D also entered the picture, announcing that it is working with Bondtech to develop a joint version of INDX.
Independent alternatives are already appearing online.
On Discord, someone demonstrated a clone of the mechanism: with a fully enclosed induction coil, components from the Creality K1, and a fully hardened steel kinematic mount replacing the steel balls sitting on anodized aluminum in the original INDX design.
The author said the project would be released as open source.
On top of that, the website nozzlegate.com has appeared online, collecting complaints and claims against Bondtech related to the defective nozzles.
It is not entirely clear who is behind it. The creator is an anonymous GitHub and Reddit user known as Daddie0, apparently from Norway.
What we do know is that this is a very fresh development. The domain was registered just last Wednesday, July 29, 2026.
For now, the reactions from many people - particularly those behind the website mentioned above - while understandable, seem somewhat exaggerated.
The fact remains that what started as a very niche and highly specialized product has turned into quite a substantial media drama.
And it doesn’t look like it’s going to end anytime soon…