I bought some Sunlu PLA Meta filament specifically for printing miniatures and tried calibrating it with the 0.2mm nozzle to get the best results. I’ve already calibrated this filament with the 0.4mm nozzle and get near-perfect prints. I’ve used Bambu Lab PLA Tough for printing miniatures in the past, and it worked fine, so I never tried to calibrate it.
I had no problems calibrating the flow rate, but one question I have is: Should I expect the flow rate to be the same with the 0.2mm nozzle as it was with the 0.4mm? The BL filament is set the same for both by default, but when calibrating the Sunlu, it is different. One conclusion is that I should have calibrated the BL filament, but it may be unnecessary since it printed so well.
I have had problems calibrating flow dynamics/pressure advance. I’ve used both tests available in Bambu Studio and the tower in OrcaSlicer, and the variation is so slight that I don’t think factor K is changing within the calibration prints. Even so, with what tiny variation I thought I could detect, I ended up with a factor K of 0.086, which is so much different than the 0.022 I had gotten for the 0.4mm nozzle that I don’t believe it’s a valid result.
TL:DR: Should I expect the same flow rate with the 0.2mm nozzle as with the 0.4mm nozzle, and is it possible to calibrate flow dynamics for the 0.2mm nozzle, and is it even worth doing if the difference is so slight?
YES! You should calibrate the flow rate and flow dynamics for a 0.2 nozzle; it will be slightly different than that of a 0.4 nozzle.
If you are on an X1 Carbon, don’t use the auto flow dynamics calibration on the printer. The engineers have limited the maximum (can’t remember the exact number right now EDIT: found it: 0.060 max via auto calibration). The auto flow rate calibration on the X1 Carbon is spot on (I’ve verified via printing an open single walled cube and measuring the wall thickness and done the math).
For determining the flow dynamics/pressure advance: I found the manual “line” method to be more accurate, if you use a magnifying glass to look at each end. I’ve tried the “pattern” method, but for my eyes it was as discernable as the “line” method. But each their own.
P.S. Don’t be afraid of getting into the 0.1 - 0.2 K values for the flow dynamic values on a 0.2 nozzle. I’ve had several filaments that was where the cleanest lines were.
EDIT: corrected K values in P.S., one decimal place off.
Thank you for the helpful reply. I guess I’ll try calibrating flow dynamics again.
I’d like to ask you something unrelated, but you might have the answer. I recently bought the smooth PEI build plate, and I thought that would be better for flow dynamics calibration than the textured plate. Unfortunately I’ve had trouble getting this filament to stick very well with the 0.2mm nozzle, even though I’ve boosted the bed temperature by 10°. Any advice about that? I’m not sure if the smooth plate is the same one you’d be accustomed to with the X1C.
Yea, never calibrate on a textured PEI plate. The texture interferes with your ability to see detail on the calibration patterns.
If you have a Bambu PEI plate, then they are the same on X1, X1C, P1, P1P, P1S.
It’s simply glue stick. One thing, you need to season the sheet when new.
That is put a thin coat of glue stick over the entire sheet. Set the bed to 60C and let it cook for 10-15 minutes, remove from the bed and let it cool down to room temperature. Then just rinse it off with warm water (no soap), towel dry. Add another thin coat of glue stick over the entire plate. Now you can print and it should stick.
This took me awhile to figure this out. Later I found someone on YouTube that pointed out that even Bambu recommends seasoning their smooth plates and it’s documented somewhere in their wiki. I never did find it though.
If you still have issues of things not sticking, then I would recommend 3DLAC Spray Adhesive. Only use it after all else fails as it sometimes really adheres too well. A little light mist on the plate is all you need. And let the plate cool down to room temperature (as per its instructions) before removing your print.
One last thing about calibrations: You need to do both (flow rate/dynamics) on each roll of filament. Even if they are the same mfg./color/type. You might already know this, but I just wanted to put this out for anyone else reading this thread.
I wondered why everything was coming back at 0.060 K with the 0.2 mm nozzle. Would sure be nice if they moved that upper limit high enough to make it useful in cases like this. The calibration routines aren’t without issues. The flow rate routine seems to give different answers depending on what the profile’s original value was. At least, that’s what seems to be happening to me. Definitely some room for improvement in this department.
I’ve conversed with Bambu support about this several times, but they keep coming back to “We are looking into possibly changing this in future firmware updates.” But alas, nothing…
I really like the auto calibration that the X1C is capable of doing. Saves me a lot of time and filament. I just wish they would fix this.
Please take the time to submit a ticket. Hopefully if more people submit tickets, the better chance it might be taken up and corrected in a future update.
You can’t submit a ticket without a photo or logs. How am I supposed to do that for a suggestion/request? Take a picture of myself with a “Please!” sign? Submit random logs? It’s stupid. Like many things this company does.
