Hi !
I’m new at 3D printing with filament, I’ve been watching a lot of videos and reading through bambu’s or other comunities posts lately. After a few first prints I’ve been trying to print bigger models.
Machine:
I own a X1C and an AMS
Here’s my issue
I downloaded this model from Printables, scaled it up a little (167cm heigth), and printed it without supports in about 4h, it came out ok but with some issues located in the overhangged part (The belly and the head).
I went back to Bambu Studio, enabled the supports, and tried to set up the model to use PLA for the model and Support for PLA for all supports, but as I saw the moutain of wasted filament and the 2 days and 4 hours printing time, I did not go through with it.
Goal:
I am trying to reduce the waste of filament as well as the time to print a single file.
Settings i’ve tried modifying:
- Flushing volumes from 1 → 0.5: barely any difference
- Supports default → tree: no differences
- As I saw on another post, only set the Support Filament for ‘Support/raft interface’
With those I am down to “only” 8h of printing and from 577 to 100g of waste but it still feels like a lot.
Any tips are welcome ! Thanks in advance for your help !
Welcome to the forum. Thanks for the link to the model and the good detail of your problem.
The reason for the long print times is because you had the entire support towers printing in support material. This means that you would have to switch materials every layer and that time really adds up.
Ideally you want to use support only if you have to. Have you tried lowering the layer height without using support? This will lengthen the print time a little but it allows much larger overhangs to be printed. Try 1.2mm layer height.
For your testing you can drop the model into the bed so the print starts just below the head where it needed support. This way you can get and see how the layer height reacts without printing the full model.
Another idea would be to orient the model so the overhangs face the AUX fan so it can offer additional cooling.
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Actually, for this model you really don’t need to use Support Material…
You can use PLA to print the model with supports…JMO
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Hi Kaonashi,
Thanks for the thorough description. The times and amounts do sound about right. With filament changes, printing times increase quite a bit due to the length of each changing process. There are some threads here in the forum you may want to have a look at. On colour change speed up and finding something useful for the waste to be used on. In particular minimizing the length of the filament path through the PTFE’s helped. But it still takes time…
I myself have never been able to properly use the “Support for PLA” filament. However, once I finally discovered and tried the usability of PETG for PLA and vice versa, I have never looked back. It works like a dream with concentric interfaces and 0mm z-separation.
Both @JonRaymond and @lion7718 made some very good points. You are already cutting down on print time by using PLA for the support but you do not need to set that separately.
For me personally, an 8h print is a prefect duration (once I am confident it works) due to relativity.
Starting around bed time means that for me, it is a relatively short print 
Best wishes and happy printing,
Eno
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And one more hint if you want to use support: There is no need to print the entire support with support material. You can print most of the support with your regular material and only choose support material for the interface (the last support layer below the model). Of course you then have to enable support interface.
That way you only have a few material changes.
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Ok! I did set the layer height to 0.16 for the one I printed but apparently that wasn’t enough.
Thanks for the tip that’s a smart way to test overhangs on bigger prints ! Also for the other tip facing the fan, I wouldn’t have thought about this one !
Ok thank you for your answer! I just assumed it would be better to use those since Bambulab packed a test spool of those with the printer but after reading more about Support for PLA filament, it doesn’t seem to be the best option.
Thank you for your reply and the links to those posts they’ll be helpful. I am only now realising (and accepting) that the time needed for filament printing might be longer than with my resin printer, but that’s also partially because that printer is so much smaller.
I have seen the PETG for PLA and vice versa on youtube but I started with PLA only, my PETG is coming on Monday I should be able to test that soon enough ! 
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Alright, thank you. I believe this is the option I checked on the list of things I tried (which should be visible in the screenshot) in Filament for Supports > Support/Raft Interface.
Oh sorry, you had that already in your first post. Somehow I missed it.
