What have been your experience with the support tickets? They have been ghosting me so far…
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Have you tried checking your belt tension?
Yeah first thing I tried after setting up the printer
I don’t think anyone is being indecent here. Does this forum breath down its users necks like the discord? I’m getting seriously irritated with the over bearing administrators anywhere that has to do with Bambu lab. People are just trying to get their printers working correctly and a lot of smart people have been banned for no reason. Smh… It’s really not that serious.
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You still have the X banding in all of those prints. Print some metallic silks. I’ve cleaned my CF rods like crazy and it does nothing for that banding in X. The banding has something todo with the stepper motors imho. Its too evenly spaced to be resonance.
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You still have the X banding in all of those prints. Print some metallic silks. I’ve cleaned my CF rods like crazy and it does nothing for that banding in X. The banding has something todo with the stepper motors imho. Its too evenly spaced to be resonance.
My thoughts lean the same way, but installing TL Smothers indicated that there might be some incompatible wiring, as the motors acted like they were fighting themselves. I don’ know enough about those things to start swapping wires around in the plugs to set it right, if that is the case, not the program looking for feedback and the diodes are preventing that causing the issue.
You are either contradicting yourself or have 2 problems that you are trying to correct both with software tweaks.
You state that you tweak settings using BS~v.SF and get very nice looking prints, but also have to clean your CF Rods every print regardless of your tweaks which is the definition of a hardware issue, not software.
You are either a seriously advanced 3DP user or really good at research and doing what others have done to get the results you are getting. Doing the tuning that you are talking about is above the majority of users here.
I have to resort to research and YouTube tutorials (Makers Muse, Teaching Tech, Chep…) to try to tweak things to get changes made for better quality, but I have a job that after 90 hours a week, the last thing I want to do with my remaining 6 hours of not at work is mess around with calibration prints and tweaks for every filament. Thank gods the BL X2C and P1P can spit out these prints in 1/4th the time as my Ender 5, otherwise I would be a week getting one filament tuned.
IMO Manufacturer forums that actually pay attention to the users with issues and trying to solve them will hopefully get them to make the changes in firmware updates to make it easier for the non super end user.
They at least listen to the YouTube free demo testing and opinions and make the changes.
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Dont forget that Softfeaver is a fork bambustudio wich is a fork of Superslicerr wich is a fork of prusa wich is a fork of slickr, so…
They all use the sames libraries, Softfeaver just re-enable feature that bambustudio prefer to hide from their fork from SuperSlicer/PrusaSlicer
EDIT: for example calibration have been introduced by SuperSlicer from PrusaSlicer, but Bambustudio choose to disable it, I guess they targeted a more userfriedly/simple GUI
EDIT2: the linear advance calibration is just a gcode that exist for several years now, when you click on calibrate it is just a shortcut that print this embeded gcode in softfeaver… (Linear Advance Calibration Pattern | Marlin Firmware)
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It is a good start by making PLA prints well, it can already tell you if you have a motion hardware problem or not, once you know your motions are good, you can then go to more technical filaments, anyways even from one PLA to another you will have to do some tweaking, this is how 3d printing works nowadays, it will be better tomorrow ^^
Could be other things related to extruder, like uncentered extruder gear, inconsistent flow caused by a wrong PID, a too high volumetric speed making your filament out with different temperature, even a spool unbalanced, so many variables…
IMHO, and what I think is the easiest way is to start with easy print, then change parameters step by step, reprint, make change, reprint, make change, reprint, etc… not all at once
All problems extrusion related produce skewed banding or woodgrain artifacts when printing tapered test prints, please watch videos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dL6u0UwPJOQ and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32dTLRNIYmw for more visual explanations…
Long story short, vertical banding (that also stays vertical behind angled edges, and also does not change with the total extrusion amount per layer) is almost exclusively produced my problems with the motion system.
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Belt resonance is expected to produce patterns that have the same dimension as the belt teeth spacing, so very regular. Usual resonance also usually produces patterns that correlate to the lowest eigenfrequency of your system, though higher harmonics can also occur but usually are hidden by first order.
Maybe we can all measure the banding gap size on our prints and compare? Measure 10x or 20x phases and divide by 10 respectively 20 to increase accuracy.
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Well, no time to watch 
, long story short, no… 
think of your infill ? isn’t it regular ? and could it be overextruded ?, wont it produce regular vertical lines ?
EDIT: in one case I was able to remove those artifact by reducing infill/wall overlap
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Try a cube in vase mode (one wall, 0 infill;, no top/bottom layer, little brim to stick), if you have wobble then it will show on, if no wobble forget about your axis
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So that we can all compare, my oscillations have a period oddly close to 2mm (20mm and change measured over 10 periods).
Maybe I will try again to retension the belts then…
belt tensioning helps but it doesn’t solve the banding. I have both over tightened and loosened for science and loose belts perform as you would suspect and tighter belts only seemed to make the banding more prominent when positioning the model in the front or back of the buildplate. I know its the stepper motor for the extruder because it is diminished with speed. The only issue with this is that bambu lab sees this as a solution and offers no alternatives for materials that require a slower speed to meet a quality finish. Printing fast also presents durability concern for printed parts and the actual printer itself.
I have pretty much come to terms with the fact that the banding is there and I highly doubt Bambu Lab is working to remedy it in any way. I’ll just be much more cautious in future with walled off firmware. I assume someone will develop an alternative firmware for this printer and I will be one of the first to use it!
For a long time, PETG to me was a cool filament to print and I used to prefer it over PLA.
Get the retraction, nozzle temp, bed temp, cooling, PA, flow right and it is a dream filament.
Yet, after a ton of tweak which I personally didn’t expect to be needed for a print on this range price, I could print a somewhat okay eSun PLA+ after a ton of tweak but can no longer print eSun PETG but can somewhat print Polymaker PETG.
I have been using eSun PLA+, eSun PETG, eSun TPU for ages so I do know them very well.
I don’t consider PETG a more “technical filament” and yet my unit and others cannot print PETG as you would expect.
At this moment, I hate PETG but it is not its fault.
I agree in parts, my previous printer after the needed calibration, I printed for 2y or so with zero issues.
Tweaks to me is:
- pressure advance calibration
- flow calibration
- find the best nozzle temp
- find the best bed temp ( I use PEI sheet without glue so my bed adhesion must be 100% )
All the above, you do once for each filament you have and that is it, never again.
Now, if you are having to constantly tweak this and that and yet the quality print is not really there, it either your profile is broken or the printer as a hardware need a closer look.
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I have not seen a print yet from any of these printers that did not contain banding on straight walls and predominantly on the X axis. Printing a matte material hides most of the issues but if you are using a metallic silk filament and are looking for quality surface on straight walls, speed will not fix it without introducing other problems. Its something inherent with this printer.
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I’m out of my league here but regardless I’ve been following this thread and trying to soak up as much knowledge as possible
I noticed on one of your replies that you’ve experimented with different belt tensions
Did you by chance take note of where the belt rides on the idlers or if the idlers are adequate ?
Even with my limited knowledge and skillset in 3D printing these artifacts seem mechanical in nature due to harmonic vibration and the calibration sequence may not be able to tune out a vibration that is so constant at regular speeds
Just a thought
I’ll go back to listening instead of talking now lol
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No. Change infill type or - even better - the banding is still there in vase mode! So no, it’s not infill. Just because changing a setting helps does not mean it solves the problem. Correlation does not imply causation.
I actually did, I canted the tensioners while tensioning the belt to compensate for belt travel on the pullies but didnt notice any benefit other than the banding increasing in prominence in certain areas of buildplate. I returned everything to “normal” after a couple prints in fear of stretching the belts (they are cheap). I noticed the tensioner springs can become bound up slightly and require reseating. I also noticed that belt tension seemed unevenly distributed between left and right sides of gantry. I slacked belts and moved print head around to attempt to get any skipped teeth back into balance between L and R and made sure the tensioners were moving freely and not seeming tight or unevenly tensioned when un fastened.
I have also noticed on the X1 and P1P that they occasionally mis home causing both the print head and print bed to collide with each other and the rear left stepper motor, causing belts to skip which can cause slight mis-tensioning as well as damage other components. This has happened a handful of times and I cant seem to figure out what is causing it just yet but it has happened on the P1P more than once and the only difference in use is how the filament is swapped. It seems as if the printer forgets where the print head is and homing causes it to crash into things.
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The printer homes by ‘crashing’ into the end stops at reduced motor current and I presume detects the crash from a change in motor current/voltage. There are no X/Y limit switches.
If there is some obstruction or stiffness near the front and right end stops then it might think it crashed early and mis-home after which it may crash, most likely when pooping or cutting.
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