It sounds as though you are printing from .stl files. So, yes, then you’re injecting resolution issues and other artifacts into the print model. If you instead export to .stp files, from what I’ve read you keep the mathematical purity of the original CAD model and you avoid those needless issues. Have you tried it? I think you’ll like it better. Then the onus is on the printer’s firmware to do great motion planning. On most other machines that would be Klipper or Marlin. On a Bambu machine, it’s black box, but the same concept applies.
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I am using AutoDesk Fusion 360 and it’s easiest way to get things into BambuLab. I use the save as mesh option. It doesn’t not seem to matter if I use 3MF or STL or OBJ. One annoying thing is if I don’t use STL, Autodesk opens another instance of Bambu lab. STL files also seem to work better if I have multi color parts.
I’ll try exporting at .STP, only annoying thing is that’s cloud based and doesn’t use the Bambu plugin that is used when saving directly as Mesh.
Once you have a workflow down it’s also hard to switch. I have my mesh settings in Fusion 360 and what I have setup works and I’ve I can do multi colored parts with it and don’t have to save files anywhere. It opens up the STL data directly from Fusion 360 to Bambulab.
@StarPlayrX Well, your prints look fantastic, so I can’t see any reason for you to change. “If it ain’t broke…” The glossy reflection in the Hilbert Curves is a nice touch:
What layer height is on display in this print?
Even if a heated chamber isn’t by itself a total panacea in all cases, it can still be worthwhile without needing to be. As reported by others who have done a heated chamber DIY upgrade, it helps in many instances. And that’s not nothing. I lost track of your print details: did you say it’s printed in Kingroon PLA+? As I’m sure you know, but for the benefit of anyone else reading this: PLA is probably the one filament where you’d be worse off with a heated chamber, mainly from jamming risk if it were turned on. But that’s neither here nor there. All in all, it’s obviously better to have a chamber heater so you can use it whenever you need it.
Actually, even this is wrong. If you’re printing PLA in an a cold, unheated garage in winter and ambient is <40F, as I attempted this last winter, a chamber heater could make the difference between either printing then-and-there at the drop-of-a-hat or else waiting for spring and warmer weather. So, yeah, it’s good to have installed and ready-to-go for all kinds of reasons.
I toyed with the idea of getting a qidi printer because it comes with a heated chamber right out of the box, but I don’t know that it would be any better than a DIY upgrade to a bambu printrt: a DIY upgrade x1C or P1S is plainly cheaper than buying another printer just to have that access to that one feature.
Printing edge to edge on glass is not the easiest. The surface tension has to be just right. Any variance will cause warping on one curved corner. I Laos print on PETG Basic and that used to be my go to but for awhile my cabin on the AMs was at 4 or 5 and I was getting stringing on one side and I am not yet good enough with a heat gun to fix it. This is why I switched to PLA+ even though Kingroon is a very cheap Chinese material. On bad thing about Kingroon is any flex tends to white areas but you have to really beat it up to do this.
PETG can handle a large amount of flex and it usuallly keeps its shape and is a richer black, but it can have more reflective corners than PLA+.
My ideal use for Kingroon was for my bottom only but it does not lay down as nice as any BambiLab PLA. So I may use PLA basic black for the first layer and switch to Kingroon there after, or reserve Bambi pla basic for the lods only, but the prior idea would cost less.
I have tons of colors that. Bought from BambuLab so I am now making different color ways for my box.
I might give the heated chamber a go, but I’ll have to research it more and see, I may try the garbage bag idea I saw first and may try keeping the fans lower.
It would actually be cool to find a curved heating element that could go around the bottom edges of the bed. That really would be ideal and then use a thermal camera to see if the heat is even when printing. I guess the plan would be to distribute the heat as evenly as possible. I guess a heated cabin would in a sense do the same thing. It would just require to heat the whole cabin,
I use “Carbon Crystal Glass Printing Platform, 250 X 250 X 4 mm”. I glue this plate onto a flexible metal plate (build plate where I removed the stickers), using 3M double-sided paper tape (because it can withstand the temperatures). For ABS and PAHT-CF (@StarPlayrX : brimless on X1C with closed print chamber) I use glue stick (last bought 1,49€ per stick with 20g). I apply the glue stick over a large area and then dissolve it with water so that I can spread it evenly over the plate by hand (better for the underside of the prints). The glue stick holds the objects firmly to the plate even at temperatures of around 100°C. I printed ABS yesterday, which only warps when it cools down too quickly, but not during printing.
I also use 3D-lac on the CR-20 with glass plate. I am not yet familiar with 3D-lac Plus.
3DLACPlus I think is a stronger formula. But that’s i’ve used. For glass I use it sparingly. Basically coat it and clean the plate otherwise on pla+ I get a satin or cloudy finish. Not the.glossy expensive look. I may try 3DLACgluestick and use your method.
On PEI textured plates I use a liberal amount of 3DLacPlus especially on a full bed or any large print that is gonna be on the bed for 4-5 hours.
When I was printing my filament boxes some took 12-14 hours and that’s when I first learned about warping and 3dlacplus.
I’ll see if I have any picks of my filament shelves.
@KanneKaffe Did you pick that over float glass because of the texture? Unless it’s defective, I would think that ordinary float glass would be plenty flat. Is it not?
When I first started to experiment with a g10 garolite build plate, I didn’t use spring clips to hold it down against the build plate because I was worried about the print head crashing into one or more of the clips. Since then, however, I found the slicer section for where printable area gets defined:
and I’m guessing that correctly configuring that would allow the use of clips without risking collisions.
Interestingly, if you look at the bottom of that image, it refers to “adaptive bed mesh.” I don’t know what the current development status with respect to that is, but I’m definitely looking forward to it, especially in increasing the bed leveling resolution, which I expect will help improve the effective flatness even further.
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I don’t know if this model/kit has been mentioned but I’m going to give it a try in a few weeks (all coming from AliExpress)
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Thanks for linking this. I just ordered the parts too.
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I have always bought Borosilikat for Creality printers. Sometimes I had the impression that they were not quite straight or warped, even when I fastened them with clamps. I do not use brackets on the X1C.
However, these 4mm sheets that I found for the Voron seem to me to be excellent. I am still using the smooth glass side, without coating. However, the coating has already been good on the other glass plates because it ensures that the first layer is easier to print and the object is somewhat easier to remove later. There is also this structure that you don’t get on a smooth glass plate. The reflective prints on glass are not always so desirable, especially when they later face outwards on housings, where you can see the surfaces, it is not always so nice when they reflect.
Thanks for the tip with the printable space, I hadn’t thought of that yet, I haven’t changed anything yet. Perhaps it could be useful.
With normal bed heating, which is already very high with ABS and PAHT-CF (around 100°C), you get a chamber temperature of around 60°C to 70°C (estimated because my PLA add-on parts have deformed in the chamber).
I haven’t made it to 60 yet. Approx 53. Still haven’t had issues with ABS or ASA yet. I’m thinking of the heater for the winter months. We rent a basement apartment. Humidity and temp are my enemies for nearly everything. I can control humidity fairly easy. What’s comfortable for us affects the print sometimes. Rather just have it and not need it than the opposite. Parts only cost me $30 from AliExpress, the ones I needed.
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Exactly the same here.
A downside to purely passive heating from the heated bed is that in some sense it makes you a prisoner of the very resources that are supporting you.
Also, you plainly want a uniform temperature field to avoid warping. But how do you do that? If you do it with fans, you risk introducing one or more drafts within the print chamber, any of which might cause the print to warp. There is maybe a delicate balance of competing objectives. Maybe it will turn out to be easy, but I don’t think one can know 100% for sure in advance as to whether or not it will be.
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We have a chamber fan to ensure an even temperature. The air is set in motion by various fans, such as AUX and component fans. However, I have also installed additional fans that generate a circulating air flow. And the airflow bypass the pressure plate. The purpose of the fans is actually to filter in order to capture some pollutants, but they only produce a weak air flow, unlike the AUX fan or the component fan.
Has anyone tried draft shields? I personally have not, but it’s a feature I have been curious about. This is an ancient technique by 3D printing standards, where one places a tall skirt around the model to eliminate unwanted air currents across it. Supposedly, this approach can mitigate the need for an enclosure for ABS prints because the heat from the print bed is trapped inside the chimney.
In Bambu Studio one can fake it by making a skirt the same height as your model.
And of course, our friends at Orca Slicer have it baked-in to their slicer as a quality of life enhancement.
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Installed my own Chamber heater. Drilled one hole on the bottom of the case for power and later sealed with with a hot glue gun. I use Gorilla hot glue. For mounting, I use 3M Black Foam tape that is 0.7mm thick, double sided, holds anything in place. This heater fit perfectly.
I can get it up to 47°C on the X1C as is. Or I can get it up to 50°C with a Lawn & Leaf trash bag covering the AMS and X1C at once.
Had this up in running in minutes.
I mounted it directly below the fan on the left side. This keeps it tucked away from the bed. No collisions will occur.
Heat comes out the top (orientation, right side), middle has a carbon filter. Which the X1C already has one, but that feature is a bonus.
The most heat this can put out is 50°C but it is limited to space or if any heat is escaping, it will hover in the mid to upper 40’s.
This is market towards a resin printer, but I fits awfully well inside the X1C.
The power cables are long and the power supply is external. You have about 10 feet of cord, three cables in one line total are used. The way they broke the cabling down, make it easier to install. I chose to drill a hole from the bottom in the middle left. The molded plastic made it easy to spot a nice place to drill.
Running prints tonight and this weekend to see if there is any noticeable improvements with warping, print quality and stringing on edges.
Since making this change my room is noticeably cooler after putting on the Black trash bag hood and installing a chamber heater. The printer all around feels toasty. PLA seems to print faster but it could just be that feeling when you get an oil change that you car runs better.
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@StarPlayrX Nice write-up! Although it’s true you can get a similar chamber temperature just by setting your heated bed to 120C and letting your printer heat soak, for large prints that would result in a greater temperature gradient, and hence a greater propensity to warp. So, I do now finally understand the benefit of adding a small chamber heater, as you did. Also, it can compensate for cold winter weather if your printer happens to be in a cold garage. As a practical matter, you shouldn’t print if your printer is <50F–unless maybe it has a chamber heater to compensate.
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what I found for my large prints with this smaller heater, I can actually turn the heater on when starting a print and by the time the printer finishes its first layer, my heater is already between 47-50°C.
Adding black lawn garbage bag to keep some of the heat from escaping and turning the fans down from 70-100 to 50, allowed the heater to go from 47 to 50. 50 is the max for it, but it also acts as a thermostat, so once it finally hits the target range it will do less work. When I added the trash bag and silly as it may seem, areas that were cold on the sides of the printer felt warm and toasty.
My first print I am very happy with for my retro gaming controller lid at 256x250x75ish, did extremely well on my textured Wham Bam PEI plate. I feel having a chamber heater will lead to more successful prints. Will test my printer glass tonight and run the same test. I still use a tiny amount of 3DLACPlus mixed with IsoPropAlc (9 alc : 1 3dLac+). I may try none after these first two prints.
My wife likes to crank the AC down to 69°F. I try to set the AC at 72°F when I am printing. I don’t like fighting cold room temps, but the heater definitely helps with that, my room feels cooler, cold even I have less heat escaping from the printer from the single garbage bag. I’d try two bags, but I don’t want to risk melting anything. 1 seems to do the trick and it’s easy to lift up. At night, I can still use the touch screen with the garbage bag over it. For anything else, the camera and Bambu slicer UI is good enough while the “hood” is on.
and when opening the door even slightly. the temp will drop down 5°C in a heartbeat, but it will recover quickly when closing the door. So overall the 1XC is fairly air tight but not all the way.
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Yeah, first ran into warp when printing 256 x 256 x 200.
I had no 3DLacPlus, and no chamber heater and didn’t even have any understanding as to why. Luckily a colleague has been into 3D printing for years was able to shed some light on it.
I rarely deal with warp anymore, but I was also dealing with stringing on edges and felt like it’s a form a warping where it should adhere to the lines next to it, but doesn’t and lifts up. My goal is to improve print quality and less having deal with stringing or any possible warping.
When warping occurs it can really mess up the layers above. They are rough and have almost a burnt texture quality to them. And when visible on a top or bottom edge of the plate, it looks very unacceptable to pass off to a customer.
The main thing I am after with the chamber heater is to improve quality and my success rate. There is nothing worse than printing something for 5-8 hours and having a bad area where it’s enough to throw it away.
I don’t do sanding or painting anymore. I try for the best print possible and I try not to doctor anything unless it’s really minor and won’t be seen any the user, like a warp piece that interlocks with an other and you can use a pliers to remove that bad section.
I do have my own grading system now (pretty much just A and B) and I try to reserve my bad throw away prints for a less quality box that I am building where I may allow larger fit tolerances or have a slight warp but doesn’t effect the usual usage. And I may allow more layers that are not all even on the walls.
My overall goal though is a very acceptable print each time and I really do feel the chamber heater will help this area by a lot. Instead of 1-2 out of 3 large prints being exceptional, I think I can get to 3 out of 3.
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