3.5 Weeks in and I'm going backwards?!?!

I am new to Bambu. My first few PLA prints were awesome, then I tried different filaments & colors, and I am going backwards literally, I have not taken any steps forward. The black is Duramic, the Brass is DO3DD, the Green is the free spool that came with the printer. The Bambu Green prints pretty decent, the other 2 have been a nightmare. I have made multiple changes, as well as going back to full stock presets, with no luck whatsoever. I am desperate for help from everyone or anyone please! I had to start using a raft and/or brim, slow the 1st layer down to 35 mm/s, and I had to start using hairspray just to get a print to stick to the POS build plate that came with the printer (which I scrub with dawn liquid between every attempt). I bought a G10 and the ultra flex magnetic plate from Creality, which have helped some. The stock plate is by far the worst plate I have ever used for PLA. I see that most seem to have good luck with it, so my issues are either operator failure, or trash filament.

I am using the P1S, every plate and filament mentioned, and preset profiles with a few changes as seen in the photos. The speeds shown in the photos, are what I set before I went to work. I didn’t start a print with them, but I have tried them with no luck. Most of the speeds I’ve tried were Top Surface 35, Initial Layer 35, Initial Solid Infill 35. I am desperate for a consistant print profile, and a better top surface is crucial. The biggest 2 issues are not sticking to the build plate and poor quality top surface. In the pictures, you can see very dull surfaces, mostly on the ends and corners, they look like they are burnt or charred. I am posting several photos, of prints, settings, and a 3mf of the base model. Thank you anyone! Who doesn’t mind helping me out!!!
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Both Bambu Studio and Orca Slicer have a Calibration function, so you can calibrate your printer to suit a certain filament. Have you tried doing this?

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Please dry the filament before calibration. You can use an oven for this if you do not yet have a dryer, but please also use an oven thermometer! The temperature can rise about 10°C above the preset temperature while the oven reaches the target temperature, so you should avoid this. But even if you don’t have a thermometer just to try it out, set the oven to fan and 50°C (PLA and PETG). Preheat the oven until it stops heating up and then place the filament in the oven. You can find drying times in the Bambu Wiki, I think. Drying times for PLA at 50°C are around 5h to 8h.

Incidentally, I always use Glue Stick on Bambulabs Cool PLate for PLA. Firstly to protect the plate with the adhesive layer and secondly so that the print holds securely. Perhaps you should try glue stick if the print plate allows it. If you apply a good coat of glue stick, you will probably also save yourself the brims on your objects that can be seen in the pictures. You won’t have to remove them, which sometimes leaves unsightly edges on the first layer.

And one more thing. I now only use glue stick. If I have to clean the panel afterwards, tap water is enough to wash off the glue and a fluffy, dry towel to dry it off. This is completely sufficient and works really well, at least on non-structured or less structured print plates.

With some Silk filaments (like Gold, which I used) you have to reduce the speed, or you can adjust this via the maximum flow rate in the filament settings by going from the usual 12 to 21mmÂł/s down to 1mmÂł/s for example (Generic Silk should be preset at around 5mmÂł/s). You will have to try this out to see what works best for the Silk PLA you have selected.

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First off, thank you very much for replying…

Yes, I have done only the 2 flow calibration tests in Bambu Suite, with each and every filament that I have run through the P1S, since I buying it 3+ weeks ago.

Flow 0,7997 is way too low, maybe a typo?

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First, thank you very much for the detailed reply…

I have tried 11 different colors to this point, and although the 3 different colors used in the pics were new, vacuum-sealed, purchased within the last 4 weeks. Of course, I know that new to me, usually means just that, but not necessarily new to the world. But yes, I printed many models both before, and after various 50C - 8 hour dries (in my Comgrow Dryer from Amazon) on both the Black and the Brass filaments shown, as well as several others not pictured. The Bambu Green was not dried, and I printed 5 different models with it, there were zero issues in any.

I am currently testing Overture Turbo Black PLA (60-600 mm/s), which I ordered to test a theory that HS PLA (60-600 mm/s) may/might and/or possibly will work better than regular speed (30-80 mm/s) PLA on these upgraded/upscaled Bambu printers. I didn’t choose Overture Turbo due to preference, but I have had good luck with Overture in general (much better luck with Duramic PLA+), on my SLOW SPEED Creality Bed Slingers. Admittedly, I have had no personal ideas or experiences with printing above 70 mm/s, with my normal being 60 mm/s (with my Ender 3 v2 Neo, upgraded with a Micro Swiss NG), so whether the TURBO, HS, or any other “Titled” filaments, are different, or make a difference, is beyond my knowledge, but I thought it important to mention.

I have done only the 2 calibrations in Bambu Suite, on every filament. I am currently running the additional calibrations within Orca, starting with the Max Volumetric Speed test. As with each/every previous filament calibrated and tested, both during and after the calibrations, as well as the 40x60x4mm test piece (plus with all but 2 other filaments, I have additionally printed the boat benchy), so far this one also looks great. The failures have always started when I print the first model.

It’s important to note, to eliminate thoughts that an issue may lurk within the design, the model prints well on my 2 Creality printers. The detail and quality standard I need them printed to, are beyond MY Creality’s abilities. I use them for structural, and/or functional pieces when detail is not critical.

As to the prints not sticking to the build plates…From my personal experience (with my Crealitys), I have used Borosilicate Glass 60%, G10 30%, and Textured Flexible Magnetic 10%. I have only used adhesives for Glass, hairspray has always worked best for PLA, and purple glue stick for PETG. If/when I have used in reverse (hairspray for PETG, glue for PLA), I have had disastrous results when removing. For cleaning Glass (whether hairspray or glue is used), I just run water over it and rub the residue off with nitrile-gloved hands, then dawn liquid, on a microfiber rag, to remove anything left. For G10, the same, both are then dried with a separate microfiber rag. For Textured Magnetic, IPA on a microfiber rag between every print up to 4, then washed and dried the same as the others. All that said, that is just my experience with my Crealitys. I am not married this approach however, and I will certainly try the glue stick on this as well. The Brim was only tried a few times, since the first few attempts warped on the corners initially, but otherwise well stuck to the plate. Once the prints stopped sticking, I first tried Brims, with no luck, I began using hairspray, which worked for 2-3 prints. Eventually nothing worked, even when tried cleaning after every single attempt. I tried IPA, hairspray, Brims, hairspray plus Brims, no dice on anything. Eventually I had to stoop all the way down to using a Raft, and FINALLY got it to anchor. The Brim itself didn’t look bad after cleaning it, but the Raft is a nightmare to get off. The Raft makes it extremely hard to even get it close to decent looking, even after sanding and light torching. The only solace to that, is that the back (build plate side) of the print is not seen. It only has to been flat and semi-smooth, looks don’t matter as much, although I would far rather the back look good as well, since I do plan on selling them if I can get them looking good enough.

Thank you for replying… No, not a typo unfortunately, that is the result I came up with, for the calibration directions as I interpreted them, when calibrating the Duramic PLA+ Black.

I ran them 3 times, because I thought I had missed a step, since it looked like a crazy number. I no doubt thought it looked extremely skewed, but since I have no experience with Bambu, or CORE XY either, I am not one to argue with it. Each of the 3 times, I reloaded the same preset, as well as on the 3rd I tried to re-cal the saved number, each time was the same result. It could be a bad roll? Or maybe Duramic PLA+ and my P1S are not sympatico?

I am currently calibrating Overture Turbo PLA, so far the numbers appear that they will be higher.

That 0.79 number seems insane and your prints do appear to reflect that. I’m not sure how your calibration prints looked but I’d be interested to see given the other results you’ve shown.

I will say for my part, Duramic PLA+ is one of the worst filaments I have had the displeasure of printing. It was awful on my old Ender.

I have never used the smooth PEI bed so I can’t speak to the adhesion on it. I have only needed to use something for bed adhesion on the textured sheet for Polycarbonate and Nylon.

If you still have your old printer maybe try running them through that because I’d hate to just tell you you’re having really bad luck with the filament but things don’t really add up that I can see.

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You can’t edit posts on Bambu forums? Weird.

I did want to add that I have until very recently after getting an AMS I exclusively have used non-Bambu filaments. I don’t print much PLA but I had nothing but beautiful results from eSun PLA+. Mono price resold then white label and at one point was selling them for $8 a roll and I stocked up hard.

I did use a complete no name silk filament (CC3D?) and it worked fine with the generic silk profile.

I do recommend using Orcaslicer in lieu of Bambu studio since it is just that with more features. Orcaslicer offers more calibration prints. Also not 100% sure of the order of operations here so did you have good results still with the included Bambu filament after having the bad prints with the others?

You can once your trust level advances. Welcome to the forum.

This sounds like user error with the calibration. Your end values are too low to be rational. Why don’t you run them again and post pictures.

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There’s a lot of info here so this might have been mentioned already, but it looks like you’re printing with your bed type set as the smooth plate while using the textured plate which will screw up your z offset for your first layer and cause adhesion problems

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You keep mentioning P1S in your text, but your screenshots show you are using a profile for an X1C machine. Might be relevant. If you are using other people’s 3MF files you need to take care to set your profiles and machines appropriately, as their settings will infiltrate into your slicer’s installation.

A P1S uses X1C profiles - they are equivalent printers as far as process settings are concerned. There are no P1S-specific profiles.

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Also, once you complete your tuning and troubleshooting for basic printing, you should do some ironing tests. This will give you the better top surface finish you are after. I find most filaments behave “well” with the defaults, but some models/filaments you need to tweak the flow up/down a little.

The settings that really impact top surface ironing:

  • The various Ironing patterns/flows/speeds/spacings.
  • Only one wall on top surface (enabled IMO - can help borders of ironing looks better, but worth testing per-model, slicer preview actually does well in visualizing this)
  • Precise Z Height (off - IMO)
  • General hot end nozzle temperature (General printing is pretty forgiving but Ironing suffers if you are too far out of optimal)
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Hi there,

From the screen shots you have shown you seem to be using a modified Stock Bambu PLA filament profile, and you seem to be using the smooth PEI printbed profile whilest using a textured PEI print bed sheet and none Bambu PLA.

From my experience when using the printer using the correct profiles for the plastic your using and the bed you are using is key. The Textured PEI plate profile apparently squishes the nosal down more for the first layer when using this profile as well as other things. I would also try using a modified ESUN pla + or probably better again the generic pla profile as this may print better for your other pla you are using. And for silks you should use a generic pla silk profile.

Going back to the textured print plate for cleaning i rarely use IPA but i have at times. But this leaves residue and you need to wash it with warm soapy water afterwards. You will know this so sorry for telling you how to suck eggs but after cleaning never ever touch the bed main plate. You don’t want any oils getting on it including when taking the prints off the bed. Front lip rear lip and sides are only places you should touch it. You can also bump the temp for the textured PEI sheet to 65 if needed. I quite often just use 60 for my prints.

As for the top layer quality have you tryed ironing? I dont use any other top layer pattern other than monotonic so am unshore if it might have something to do with that. I do know if you want your material to shine rather than be dull i have to slow down the outer wall speed as i have found on some of my prints. but for the top layer that might not be what you want to do as the heat of 220 and the head going slow could heat up the lower layers and that could maybe also explain the kind of burning you are seeing?

Also notied you dont have the cooling fan on for the first 4 layers. Unless your printing something like ABS/ASA/CF or exotic i would put the setting back to stock. After the first layer the printer really speeds up and needs that fan or the plastic can stick up and the head can hit it.

The only other issues i’ve had with print quality has been some of my PLA’s and other materials needed to be dryed. But you have already said you have done this. I know that i had to do mine at a higher temp and for longer but im in quite a humid environment.

I hope this might have helped a little bit and you are able to sort your printing problems. Good luck. Cheers.

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I had similar issues after getting my A1 (with the default textured plate). I tried all sorts of settings by ultimately it was because of skin oils. Do not ever touch your plate.

If I ever touch the plate I put on my reusable gloves and wash the plate in Dawn Platinum Plus Free & Clear dish soap. I dry my gloves and the plate off with paper towels and mount the plate again. Then I carefully take the gloves off being careful not to touch the outsides since I use them when I need to pop things off the plate.

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I use Duramic PLA+ all the time–have a cabinet full of it… Works great. Make sure your PEI smooth or textured is clean first. Start with a ‘PLA Basic’ profile and modify from there. Set nozzle to 220C, [important] bump the bed temperature to 65C–I find the defaults are too low for ‘most’ PLA+ for reliable adhesion. Flow ratio is generally between 0.98 and 0.99. Pressure advance is around 0.02. Cap maximum flow at about 17mm^3/s. Figures varies with color/spool a bit, but thats what I use in my Orca profile. 50mm/s is fine for the first layer for most prints. For the most part you can use the canned PLA profile, except bump the bed temps. If that doesn’t help, maybe you have trouble elsewhere?

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Thanks for the reply…Yes, I included the green because I printed it out of frustration, to see if it could be the filament. Since recalibrating for each filament, I am getting better results, but I’m still not where I want to be. The other filaments print fine in my E3, just not good enough to sell.

Yep, just as suspected, each filament is in the .98+ range now and printing at least acceptable now. I still have no idea how to get a smoother top surface, so I am still researching.