So I’ve just hit my first 100 hours on the P2S and I noticed that small pieces of filament get everywhere when the printer is cleaning the nozzle. It’s like a dog shaking water off and then everything besides the dog is wet.
There are a few holes in the back of the printer and chunks of filament are trying to get there, dropping further into the Z-axis and god knows where else.
On Makerworld there are a lot of “dust cover” things that are supposed to cover these holes, but I’m a bit anxious if installing those covers would affect cooling of internal components or anything else and would damage the printer in the long run.
Basically, I’m looking into two things:
cover\plug for the round holes near the rear z-axis
grille for the stepper motors recess
I’ve attached maker world images showing the parts in question (the stepper motor grille is bright green)
What’s the general opinion on those plugs, are they good? Are they bad?
What happens if filament gets in there? It falls onto the bottom of the printer’s housing and stays there forever, without causing any problems.
What happens if you cover the air vents? Heat can build up and affect airflow and the lifespan of the components.
Generally speaking, Bambu knows what they’re doing when they put holes in their printers and these aren’t meant to be covered up. It’s up to you to decide which bothers you more: having filament lying on the bottom of your case forever, or risking heat-related issues with your printer.
In a nutshell: Just because there’s a hole doesn’t mean you have to plug it.
True, however, many holes in P and X series are coming from the unification of the chassis components and assembly They are made at huge volumes as “one size fits all”, as a result you get a lot of openings that are not needed.
Just a word of caution regarding 3rd party “covers”. This forum has seen a good share of threads about “incorrect homing” or “layershifts” that the root cause was “mods” that were added to the printer such as stepper covers and ptfe guides.
Okay, I guess I will be sort of answering my own question to an extent, but maybe it will help someone in future. Despite my nickname, I removed the AMS and top glass to get to that recess near the poop chute.
It all turned out a bit more simple than I expected.
First off, there was quite some filament inside, for just 100 hours of printing. This is what I managed to pull from out there.
Funny how most of the filament that got stuck is the pink PLA and almost nothing else despite that I went through about 600 grams of PLA, but about 1500 grams of PETG (mostly grey, also blue and orange).
At the same time, I was able to peek inside the holes… and to my surprise, inside is a dead end with bolts that seem to be there for the sake of having something mounted from the other side of the panel. So what we have is:
There’s no point in covering the holes as there is nowhere for the filament to go. However, the thin flat gap between the part in question and rear panel allows filament to drop to the Z-axis lead screw.
A cover for that particular spot is unlikely to mess with cooling as there are no holes, and below that horizontal panel is a huge opening for the Z-axis anyway.
Thanks! I assume some of the stepper motors covers touch the belts as the space is pretty tight there on the sides. Definitely don’t want to interfere the with the mechanisms with those “add-ons”.
I have one of those little vacs with a long snout, and just vac everything out now and then. Just part of normal maintenance.
The only problem I’ve ever had was when an errant blob of poop somehow missed the chute, ended up on the bed by one of the leadscrews and wouldn’t let the bed go all the way to the top. No cover would have prevented that anyway.
Actually some are slighly too thick and the problem is that it prevents the head from going all the way back as they interfere with the back of the toolhead.
I second @JonRaymond on aftermarket mods. What I would invest in is a small handheld car vacuum with a small end on it. You can vacuum out all those bit in 30 seconds.
Filament getting in the holes voor the z-axes could get the bearin disengaged and if that happens in the back, you must take of the entire rear panel etc which is not that fun to do.
I’ve looked at many of these aftermarket modifications people have dreamt up for problems that really don’t exist and came to the conclusion most are just trying to reinvent the wheel. Totally unnecessary.
Some might have merit. But major do-dads and periwinkles like you are asking about show no real value to me. So I would say don’t fix a problem you don’t have.
Because as others here have pointed out, fixing an imaginary problem can create worse troubles.
