Unfortunately I don’t have a thermal imaging camera, so I can only go with what the printer says, and it does reach the bed temperature according to it. I did decrease the nozzle distance in the starting gcode (went from -0.02 to -0.03mm), and the first layer is visibly more squished, but still no joy. Last test the objects had a less pronounced lifting, but they were lifting nonetheless, and if I hadn’t skipped them from the Bambu app, they would have collided with the nozzle once again and ruined the whole bed.
Did you feel with your hand to see if the set temp matched the feel?
Can you check anything in your nozzle / hotend assembly is loose?
I don’t know man, sorry… This is really weird.
Yeah it does feel hot enough, so much so that 75°C is unbearable with bare hands, just like on my Ender 3 when printing PETG. Nothing seems loose on the hotend assembly, and if it were I believe I would see a failure well before 10 to 12 hours. Yeah this is the weirdest thing ever, and I managed to get an Anet A8 to print successfully in the past…
Last chance… Did you ever have anything silicone close to the print surface?
If you sprayed silicone clost to the printer or the print surface or user corcking material etc around your printer it might migrate to the print surface and prevent good adhesion.
Did you use lubricant containing silicone?
I wish but no. I do not use any spray in the room where the printer is sitting (that is my “clean room”), so there’s no chance of contamination from spray. Plus the generous scrubbing I did before last print would have cleaned it anyway. Thanks for the suggestion though, was worth asking.
I give up. That was about all I had…
Good luck! Hope you get it solved.
Unless I missed it somewhere…have you slowed the print down…??
Just in case, I’ve bought an IR thermometer. Setting the bed to 65°C, the thermometer registers 61°C on every part of the print surface, wether it’s in the middle or in the corners, so it seems that te printer is able to achieve a consistent bed temperature.
Did you ever try a different spool of fillament?
Did you ever try to dry the fillament before printing?
Tried a different brand of spool, still no dice. Tried the Bambu Lab filament on my Ender 3, and printed like a charm. Haven’t dried the filament, the room my printer sits in is at a constant 28% humidity, and this is not because of wet filament.
I’ve got yesterday’s failure on camera, it’s roughly at 3:30. And that’s despite raising the first layer height to 0.14 on a 0.12mm print, lowering the first layer by 0.01mm and a generous amount of PVA glue on the bed.
one silly question comes to mind… have you ever flipped the plate to print on the other side? i assume its the double sided textured plate that came with the printer so it should be the “same” on both sides, but if one has more wear than the other… even if its microscopic things…
when printing on your Ender, did you use the same slicer?
is it possible to swap plates between your Ender/Prusa and your A1, if yes, swap them and do the job on each printer.
can this be caused by a worn nozzle messing with retraction ratios or similar.?
A bit unrelated to your problem but that cable is slightly pressuring the bed (plate). You need a lot more room in the back.That tension, even small, can bend the plate and probably your prints.
Another issue, check manually if the bed is leveled. There is somewhere on the maintenance page for A1 on wiki. TL;DR: you basically unscrew (not all the way) 2 screws on the right side of the bed, take off the textured plate, run the g-code and adjust the 3 screws on the plate. When I had a little time, I tried manual leveling, with a paper (old style) and I was surprised about how far off was the left side compared with the left side, at least 3mm off (I guess from transportation). It’s also on springs, so they might loosen up after a while. I guess the software is compensating that much when we do automatic bed leveling.
Another issue might be a difference of temperature in your room. I don’t know where you live but here is pretty cold, and whenever there is a difference of temp in the room (door, draft, turning on heating), there is a chance of a print adhesion problem, which is kind of normal.
Checked out that wiki page, given that I’m having sudden adhesion issues. Found this gem:
“Flow calibration is not supported
Please be aware that flow calibration is not supported on the Textured PEI Plate. Calibrating on the Textured PEI Plate may result in a bad saved value for that print, leading to issues with adhesion or print quality.”
You mean that the feature you tout from the rooftops and shove in our faces from startup is not compatible with the plate you include with the printer? Am I to understand that automatically calibrating the printer - the big selling point of this Apple-style, it-just-works device - will cause it to perform worse on the default, out-of-the-box configuration? Folks, you don’t bury this exception in a wiki or a troubleshooting page, you put it on a big, red warning sticker in the shape of a stop sign on the plate itself. And then you apologize profusely for misleading your customers about a feature that is clearly not available to users that haven’t yet been upsold.
Also, add the prohibition on IPA cleaning to that sticker. That is the default cleaner for most applications such as this, not [checks notes] soap and water.
I’m off to grind “the surface of the Textured PEI plate with fine sandpaper or steel wool,” because that is a normal, totally-not-weird thing to do, according to the wiki.
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That issue with Flow Calibration relates to the X1C, where it uses the lidar to analyze the bed. The A1 uses a different approach to flow calibration, so isn’t prone to the same issue. The X1C didn’t come with the Textured PEI plate. I never saw Bambu trying to claim flow calibration would work on the bed with the X1C and the textured PEI sheet. It’s always been clear that in that situation, it would have problems, and as far as I’ve seen, they’ve always been transparent about that.
Also, most people would agree that soap and water is the best cleaning solution for PEI plates. Dish soap in particular, because it is formulated to fight greasy stains. It’s debated about IPA. In particular, even if it does break down greases on the plate, it is still prone to leaving residue behind that can still affect the print adhesion. That is why they don’t recommend using IPA after you’ve washed it with soap and water. All of this has been pretty standard for awhile? So, I’m not sure why you act like it’s so out of place. (Edit, to clarify, I’m not saying IPA is useless, just that people don’t realize that it does leave residue, and to use it effectively, you need to make sure you clean your plate off completely after applying something like that.)
Also, the steel wool or sandpaper is a normal thing. When Prusa came out with the Mk2 so many years ago, with that PEI bed, they recommended the same thing.
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So, I did flip the bed (as it is the double sided textured PEI), and it didn’t make any difference whatsoever.
For my Ender 3 Pro I use Ultimaker Cura, as it’s a fairly modded printer for which I tweaked the slicer settings here and there; for as much as I’d love to use Cura for the A1, I don’t think it’s possible, but feel free to correct me.
As for swapping plates, I did actually think of doing that, but the Ender 3 bed is 235*235mm; I am waiting for a 3rd party textured bed for the A1, I’ll see if that makes any difference and I will update this thread around next Tuesday with my findings.
Lastly, nozzle wear while not an unreasonable thing to troubleshoot in this case, I don’t think it’s the cause of my issues: so far I’ve only printed (or wasted) a total of 500g of PLA since I’ve gotten the printer, and I sure hope that the nozzle is capable of printing a lot more than 500g of filament.
[edit] " * Used both high temperature smooth and textured PEI bed" Opps, sorry OP. Missed that. Feel free to call me a dolt. Original message left for prosperity.
I’d recommend picking up a smooth PEI bed too. I’ve had troubles with certain prints on the textured PEI beds. Not sure if it’s just their beds or what, or the filament. Can be frustrating.
I’ve had a better time with the smooth PEI bed for those prints though, as they tend to hold better. Also good for models that have delicate features on the first layer.
In regards to 1st vs 3rd party. Had the same experience with 1st vs 3rd on the textured PEI plates, but found the 1st party smooth pei plate to be better in my experience, than the 3rd party one I got.
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The cable, while not being that close to the wall, could sure use a bit more slack than it currently has. I haven’t noticed it lifting the bed plate while reviewing the footage, but surely it won’t hurt moving it away from the wall, and I will as soon as I’m done with this test.
I did follow the guide and trammed the bed twice, last time this morning before sending the latest test print; let’s see if this time it has made a difference.
Temperature wise it’s not an issue for me; I’m monitoring both temperature and humidity of that room (as I have my home servers sitting there), and it’s 20°C to 25°C, and 28% to 35% (dehumidifier running).
I seem to remember that it fails on the smooth PEI bed too, but I could also be mistaken. As soon as this test print is done I will test it, although I really need the textured bottom on this print, and I don’t think I’m asking too much if I want the default bed that came with the printer to, you know, actually work. Not having a go at you, just incredibly frustrated at Bambu Lab and their total silence on both this thread and my related support ticket that’s been open for a week now.
LOL yeah, thanks for reminding me that I did, in fact, tried it.