Bad Print Quality

[brandon.nichols]

So I just purchased my X1C last week and I’ve had a lot of issues and hoping someone can help me out. I’m new to 3d printing, fair warning, but I do have a Kobra2 and I’m getting 100% better results. I may be new but I don’t think that should be the case considering all the hype and the cost of this printer. That being said, as you read through the issues I’m having please let me know if you would like me to run another test with a specified parameter or need more info. However, please be detailed in what you want because I don’t know all the lingo yet.

Link to my test speadsheet for everything I have tried

Link to my test images (Sorted in separate folders per test)

I am trying to print the 3DBenchy and I keep getting several defects.

First, the hull of the ship has a problem. When it is printing I have noticed that at the tip of the hull the print is higher than the rest of the ship. This can be seen in test 9 very clearly since I stopped the print at that point and it is still in the same manner that it was during the print. That being said, this same issue can be seen in all the prints since it messes up the hull significantly.

Next, the seams… You can really see this on the later test (7-9) since that is when I switched to the CT3D version of the benchy. Tests 1-6 were done using a remix and I didn’t notice it for quite some time. However, it still shares the same issues except the seams are in different locations.

Also, I noticed a strange diagonal strip from top to bottom and left to right on the sides of the ship. They can be seen elsewhere too but I have no idea what could cause it.

I can see the tops of the doors and windows don’t look quite right. Like bridging is not right or something.

Finally, the smaller details are not clear at all like that of the writing on the back of the benchy. I’m not sure if they should be with this printer using a 0.4mm nozzle and 0.2mm layer height.

Thank you for any advice on how to get this resolved.

[Barracuda72]

Honestly…a Benchy is a bad testobject…it have way to much possible problem zones because it dont cover one possible print problem but all. For example…first testprint…the sagging bow…that could be to hot extruder temp…not enough cooling…heck…it could be even wrong orientation of the benchy as we have only a AUX Fan on left side…

then i miss some basic information…what filament …what print parameter.

[brandon.nichols]

@Barracuda72 thank you for the reply! I have been using the default parameters unless noted on the spreadsheet. The default selections are as follows:

Printer: Bambu Lab X1 Carbon 0.4mm nozzle
Plate Type: Cool Plate / PLA Plate
Filament: Bambu PLA Basic (That’s what I actually have installed too - bambu lab - basic pla - silver)
Process: 0.20mm Standard @BBL X1C

[0x80O0oOverfl0w]

One possibility: Reddit - Dive into anything
tldr: “So as everyone correctly surmised, the issue was cooling”

Another more interesting and possibly likely issue though…Reddit - Dive into anything

My X1C came with Green PLA so I used that for my first benchy test print, seems ok with stock bambu profile… try a different roll of PLA if you have one available.

[s.3]

The first thing I printed was a benchy. It was through the touchscreen on the printer & came out very good. It sounds like youre sending the print to the printer through the slicer. Did you try printing the benchy file that came with the printer?

Its odd that youre having issues using bambu filament with the bambu profile. I looked at some of the photos of the different trials you ran & the defect on the hull doesnt look like it changed a great deal given the changes you made to the profile.

Did you check that the correct filament was selected for the print? In the prepare section of the slicer, if you right click on the part, you can select change filament & select the correct filament.

Id also run the temperature, flow & pressure advance calibrations in Orca slicer. Seams you can dial in with test prints too.

[Barracuda72]

Dont know where you are from…but…PLA in an enclosed Printer is not that easy as it sounds…did you had the Top glass Cover removed? did you made the prints one after another? Do you live in a hot enviroment? First pics looks just like a temp or cooling Prob…and its getting more problematic with PLA if the build chamber gets too hot… BL tried to make a printer for dummies…and it does it quite well…i had filament lying around for years…PC, PC-CF…and my X1C printed them with automatic Calibration…the prints wont win a beauty competition but they are technically working…the rest of it could bedone with some old school Calibration work even for the babu Filaments because BL cant cover all the differnt enviroments we live in.

[brandon.nichols]

@0x80O0oOverfl0w -This seems to be the exact issue I’m having. I have installed some risers for the top glass, opened the door, and have a ceiling fan going while my A/C is set to 68F. That didn’t help but what did help is to print a prime tower which tells me it is very likely a cooling issue. I have a desk fan on the way that I’m going to use to blow air in the front door and try that. It’ll be a couple of days before it’s here though.

Regardless it seems troubling to me that this is required. Am I expecting too much? I’ve almost used a roll of filament trying to get it to print right… Would I be in the wrong to want Bambu to send me a free roll for all this testing? I’ve been testing stuff for a week! I know I’m new and a lot of the problem is because of that but at the same time… I purchased this printer because I’m new. I mean it knows what filament I have installed and has profiles for it, auto calls everything, scene the first layer, etc… I just wanted something that would work without “having” to mess around with all that stuff. Sure to perfect the printer I would love to tweak settings and “tune” the machine. However, to just use it without major defects… I think it should just work.

Regardless, I thank you all for your replies and suggestions, of which, I have used. I will get to the bottom of it that is for sure and honestly I believe I already have… maybe… and thanks to you all. I’m going to have to cool down the system more than it’s designed to do on its own. I just don’t understand why it seems that I’m the only one having this issue.

[0x80O0oOverfl0w]

By chance did you see the other reddit post about the Bambu Labs silver PLA?

[brandon.nichols]

I didn’t… I’m going to look though! My googling skills must be pretty bad! LOL

Thank you!

[0x80O0oOverfl0w]

Seems that a lot of people have issues with Bambu Labs silver PLA.
https://www.reddit.com/r/BambuLab/comments/119bu3s/bbl_silver_pla_spotty_quality_issues_throughout/

Just for a sanity check I just ran a test on my printer. Used the engineering plate, Bambu Labs green PLA, default slice profile, 0.6mm nozzle (cause I didn’t want to switch it), all doors closed, no chamber fan, chamber temp was 35c and it printed fine.

[brandon.nichols]

That’s very helpful info, thank you! I’m actually trying a print with some anycubic basic pla (gray) and its got about 45 minutes left… stay tuned I’ll reply back once its done

[brandon.nichols]

So the print did not finish… came loose from the cold plate. But! What did print looks really good compared to the silver BL pla. I’m printing again with stock settings, bed leveling, and auto flow cal with the door closed. We shall see!

[0x80O0oOverfl0w]

I know there’s a big debate on glue sticks here. My very first benchy print failed on the X1C, cold plate, same reason. Print came off after a few layers. I covered the print area with the supplied glue stick and adhesion issue was fixed.

[brandon.nichols]

Yea that was a whole other issue that I started with… prints were not sticking with the glue stick so I just left it dry. That worked but I could tell be sheet was not going to last long because they really stuck hard. I started using hairspray and that seems perfect so far. Now that was with the BL silver pla… may need something different for this Anycubic pla.

[brandon.nichols]

Finally got some decent results… basically I had to slow down the print to get it to cool down enough. I did that by increasing the part cooling overhang threshold to 0% so the cooling would be 100% on all overhangs, enabled the prime tower and forced it on by using a smooth timelapse, kept the door open, the risers installed on the top glass, and the chamber fan at 100%. I was using the BL generic pla filament setting except for what’s mentioned above. Also, the printer profile was the standard BL 0.4 nozzle, cold plate, and 0.2 standard process profile. The #1 biggest thing that made the difference was the prime tower. Making the printer go do something else while the layer cools is much more important than I expected… especially true for smaller parts. I’m glad to be learning this stuff but I can see I have a very long way to go!

I have been looking at the generic pla profile vs the BM PLA basic profile and I noticed that the max volumetric speed is 21 on the BL vs 12 for the generic. Also, the part cooling time “layer time” is 4 for the BL and 8 for generic. I’m very curious if switching to the generic pla profile would help with all issues since it will print slower (I think at least). I will likely test this out tomorrow.

Thanks for all your help!

[SVDB]

The best printer in the world still isn’t magic. You do need a minimum of knowledge. I recommend Sean Aranda’s book “3D Printing Failures”. It’ll give you a headstart on the most common problems with any printer.

[brandon.nichols]

Yes, that is absolutely true! I appreciate the info, I just bought the book via amazon “kindle version” and I’m going to give it a read.

Thanks!

[brandon.nichols]

Well, I thought my problems were solved… I was wrong. I actually think I’m having the same issue as with the benchy but now with petg-cf (bambu’s filament) After weeks of nothing but troubleshooting and 100’s of dollars in wasted time and filament, I thinking I’m just going to throw this thing in the river. Default profiles do not work on my printer… maybe they will on yours since lots of people say they do but they damn sure don’t for me. Have a look at some pictures. I went Bambu so it would just work. It does not just work!

Here’s my “piles” of junk I’ve generated trying to “learn” and correct “my problems”. My printer does not bridge or do overhangs well at all. Using the Bambu PETG-CF, dried for 24 hours+ at 65C with a dryer not the bambu, and just have a look at the bridging it can do! The thing oozes so much filament it can’t go a second without getting petg-cf all over the place. I’ve pulled the sock to clean the nozzle, left the sock a little lower to prevent sticking to the nozzle, tried all kinds of settings found in various forums, moved the printer on a 16" paver I bought specifically to see if that’s what this printer needed to “just work”, cooling on, cooling off, cooling for overhangs, bridge speeds, overhang speeds, no change for overhangs so it uses bridge speed instead, 0.6mm nozzle, a new roll of filament that was dried for over a day, slowed it down, sped it up, calibrated manually, auto cal, light on, light off, door open, top off, door closed, top on, watched the printer very closely like a complete lunatic as I thought about things no person should ever consider… nothing &#^$%*^ works!

Can someone please help me out? Bambu support takes forever and really doesn’t help a lot from what I have seen. I wish I could say differently because when I made this purchase I spent hours and hours watching reviews and reading about Bambu and I want to be a supporter! I really want to say this thing is great and Bambu is great… but I can’t right now. This printer doesn’t want to work correctly. Could I have a bad part? Look at the max flow tests… I have tuned multiple times using Orca. I ran the max flow tests with the tuned settings, modified tuned settings, normal default settings, auto-calibrated, etc… Always the same, not good at all! I have tried to print the silders for the top glass from thingiverse and it was fail after fail. Mainly where the overhang starts but not always. A lot of the problem is it acts like too much is coming out of the nozzle but I can’t seem to make it stop.

[Barryg41]

Have you checked the hotend connecters? Maybe the hotend thermistor is not fully seated giving bad resistance numbers back to the hotend pcb. This could cause bad or wrong temperatures even if the screen says 220c it could be 250c. $35 buys you a new hotend assembly with fan, thermistor just to make sure that is not the problem.

I use high temp plate for everything, no glue. It just sticks. I only use oem profiles. I’m a hobbyist! I dont need perfect prints but my machine works great. So should yours.

Just looking at different angles.

[brandon.nichols]

Thanks for the reply… I actually did some checking with my fluke and found the temp is always 15 degC cooler than what the Bambu thinks (270 on the Bambu = 255 on the fluke). I tested my meter will 5 other thermometers and it seems to be accurate. Surprisingly, I changed the temp from 255 to 270 and ran some bridge tests. The results are much better, although the part fan and aux fan must be 100% all the time to get a good result. I would have actually thought the opposite was happening (too hot already) but it seems it was too cold. Here’s a couple of examples:

This was printed with a 0.6mm nozzle, Bambu PETG-CF, 0.18mm layer height profile… everything at defaults except the following for the filament profile:

Filament->Nozzle Temp (First Layer): 240
Filament->Nozzle Temp (Other Layers): 240
Cooling->Min Fan: 100
Cooling->Max Fan: 100
Cooling->Cooling OH Threshold: 0%
Cooling->Fan for OH: 100
Cooling->Aux Part Cooling Fax: 100

Then leaving everything the same as the print above except changing the nozzle temps to 280 I get this:

Huge improvements… but… I have had to turn the fans to the max plus my temp is way off. Just so you know I actually have 5 full hotend assemblies and this is a new one. I changed to it thinking something was wrong with my 0.4mm because it was doing the same thing. If you look at the top of this thread you can see I was basically having the same issue but with PLA and 0.4mm on the benchy. It just doesn’t seem to like overhangs and bridges.

Maybe my part cooling fan isn’t working right along with my temp reading wrong? Maybe something is wrong with the board that all that stuff plugs into?