I’ve had tremendous luck with Bambu filament using the canned settings - caveat, I’ve only tried PLA to this point. With the shipping issues in Canada I had a bunch of filament from Bambu held up. Decided to try Amazon for your basic black to satisfy a bunch of gridfinity I wanted to get going on. You can see in the picture challenges with quality.
This was printed with ELEGOO PLA using the Bambo PLA settings. I have no issues fine tuning I just don’t know where to start!
Obviously a filament drier would be you best option.
But, I have seen people suggesting other methods. One interesting suggestion (which make total sense) was to place the filament on the hot bed itself and heat the bed to 45C. Leave the filament on there for about 6 hours. Ensure there is some sort of vent so the air can get out or you can throw in a few dessicant packs to help pull out some of the moisture.
Other suggestions would be to try the following:
Reduce temp in increments of about 5-10C and see if this reduces stringing.
Increase retraction distance and speed - std is usually around 5-7mm retraction and 30-60mm/s. (Bambu Basic PLA retraction appears to only be set to 0.8mm, so this may be a good place to start). There are a few other retraction features that may help as well, I’d possibly look into checking Retract when change layer, Wipe while retracting (and then the wipe distance if enabled)
There are also a lot of stringing and retraction test models out there that may help you pin point what needs to be dialed in. Search Maker World, Printables and Thingiverse
Increasing retraction is a band-aid. Filament should not string or ooze even with very little retraction. When it does, it’s generally because it needs to be dried, and/or flow, PA and temperature calibrations need to be redone, or the filament is defective.
Unfortunately that isn’t a guarantee that the filament is dry. Ambient humidity can slow or even stop drying. A real-world example is sweating on a humid day vs a dry day. Sweat evaporates faster on a dry day.
The defects look like they could be moisture, though.
Appreciate you jumping in. Apologies for not responding to your DM, apparently I don’t have enough credits to respond?
My next print is your dryer. Although I live in a very dry climate through the winter, I run a whole house humidifier to combat the dryness, I wonder if that’s having an effect. There are a number of calibration tested and maintenance items I’ll run though as well just to make sure there isn’t something obvious going on. Question, how long does it take filament to absorb ambient moisture after drying and exposed to the elements? I see all of these commercial print farms with open air printers with spools exposed.
As much as I enjoy diving into the hobby I can see it becoming very frustrating if full tests and adjustments have to be made with every roll of filament. It’d be great to nail down a routine of activities that get you to a predictable starting point every time.
You don’t have to build the dryer to test, though. I’d suggest just trying a cobbled up system where you use an aquarium pump to push the air through a desiccant container to dry the air first. It would save the effort and expense of building the model until you know you need it.
Actually, first I’d suggest getting a small hygrometer that can see down to 10% (or lower but for this case 10% should be good enough) and putting your filament and the hygrometer in a sealed, air tight container and letting it sit for 10-12 hours and see where the reading settles to first see where you are water-wise.
If it’s semi high (30-40 range or more), depending on how high, it will give you an idea where you are and that moisture could be your issue. I really would do that first.
But a humidifier can definitely moisturize your filament. It should have a target humidity which will give you a good idea of your ambient humidity. It probably has a meter telling you the actual value it is seeing.
You can calibrate out some bad behavior which may also be a solution that may or may not be appropriate depending on ambient humidity, how you store your filament, etc. With a humidifier your humidity should be fairly stable where calibrations may hold. But since you would be calibrating out edge case behaviors, if the humidity isn’t stable and filament moisture is subject to changes, you might find yourself calibrating a lot.
Makes a lot of sense. I have a number of hydrometers on the way, suspect it’s the same shipping challenges that we’re facing in Canada.
As an FYI, my process with any new roll is to dry for 8-12 hours then move to either the AMS stuffed full of desiccant or to a sealed container again with desiccant - I use the cereal containers that are pretty popular.
