Allow Extruder PID Temp Calibration

Having the ability to calibrate your temps could be useful for hot end swaps and upgrades.

There is no extruder PID on the X1 (last time someone looked, it could be added since).

It would be useful to have slightly longer cables in the AMS.
It would be useful to have less flimsy connectors in the P1 tool head.
It would be useful to have a comprehensive G-Code reference.
It would be useful being able to actual control the printer and own it…
I guess you got where I am going here and that I won’t have to fill the page with examples :wink:

Jokes aside though…
Bambu does what Bambu does and not all of it makes sense to us or is deemed the best possible option.
As valuable as a PID calibration CAN be it can also open a very deep rabbit hole.
Let’s say Bambu would use sort of a Marlin style PID table.
I doubt though they went this route…
Anyway, if they would be really nice they could include the corresponding calibration routine.
But and please correct me if I am wrong, not even the X1 has hardware installed allowing for more than the 60W the P1 is good for.
60W is on the lowest possible limit and already below for printing with a 0.8mm nozzle in anything but PLA…
A good hotend does not always require a powerful heater, especially not those tiny things we use.
But without the sock things already go downhill.

How does the basic PIC tuning actually work ??
Heat up, keep an eye on the temp sensor, establish a curve reflecting time over temp.
Do the same once operation temp gets close and once reached log the overshoot.
Well, then comes a bit of bang bang work to hone in around the set temp to be completed with a check and adjustment of the values during high speed extrusions over the bed.
All automated of course and nothing to worry about.
Thing is that so far all the manufacturers I had, except for fully open source printers had a restricted PID table.
Even those that allowed for a user calibration did not react kindly to very different hotend styles and/or more powerful or just larger size hotends.

Am not even sure any of our modern high speed printers still use firmwares with the traditional PID approach.
Their fast processor can handle this basically on the fly and with just a few lines of code.
It is just much easier to do especially considering multi material prints.
Rather than having to use god knows how many PID tables to cater for low to high temp filaments you fix temps on the fly.
The beauty of our tiny hotends is what makes them so bad - a very low thermal mass…
Try a vintage hotplate with a temp controller that lets you adjust the PID values or one of those cheap dual channel fridge ones that do it with the press of a button.
Good luck getting those plates to play ball and stop overshooting badly all the time.
That why for a high thermal mass we just use fixed temp switches and THEIR cooling down time defines the ‘PID’ values, not any controller or such.
On the other extreme, a SMD soldering iron of just 10 to 20W will react very well to a good temp controller.
But these tiny things are also quite happy with the bang bang approach.
Comes down to how ACCURATE the temp has to be kept.
Never wondered why Studio does not even have a live temp graph that printers 10 years ago already came with ? :slight_smile: