Do I really need external heating for my P1S?

Bambu Lab P Series General Discussions
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Guys, I would like to know your opinion (please don’t take this post as criticism of the models mentioned below or a reason to start a flame war)… I’m really only interested in the opinions of more experienced users.

I recently started printing more “advanced” materials like (ASA, PA, PC …) that require a closed chamber (OK as I have a P1S) and a higher internal temperature. At first, it seemed to me that it would be absolutely necessary to add external heating to the printer. So I started searching on MW and found models like Bambu Sauna and others… however, after studying the details of the models and reading the discussion about them, I have some doubts:

  1. These solutions are definitely not “hassle-free” and it seems that it takes a lot of work to tune the heating to full satisfaction (if it is even possible). And some mentioned problems can have a pretty serious consequences — like malfunctioning fan, while the heating coil still running, etc.

  2. moreover … the achieved/target temperature with those heating (as it’s mentioned in discussion), is somewhere around 60°C, and even if the heating would be capable, it is not recommended to go much higher (70C ??) due to the printer’s electronics.

Well, so far I am able to reach the mentioned 60°C without external heating… I have been using the preheating method with a build plate set to 100°C and give it about 45 minutes to an hour before print starts + I add some insulation around the printer (until recently I used blankets, sweaters, and towels, now I try to use modified insulation from an old beer fermentation vessel = cordura on the outside, foam + reflective foil on the inside). It’s not ideal, but it works - as I wrote, without any major problems (just with preheating), I can reach a temperature of around 55-58°C in less than an hour, and during print (if it’s a little longer), the temperature inside is a stable 58-62°C. The P1S does not have chamber temperature measurement, but I have two Bluetooth thermometers inside and both show more or less the same.

My question is… do I even need to bother with external heating in this configuration? If I can reach 60°C without it, shouldn’t I just leave it? OK… let’s say there’s still about 8-10°C to go before reaching the mentioned 70°C limit. But, is those 8C worth “complicating” my life with heating? If the resulting effect were really obvious, it wouldn’t be a problem to go (or try to go at least) for it, but I don’t want to “waste time and energy” on something which is obvious I don’t really need and may not even use.

So far, I can see one benefit, which is saving time before printing— I don’t have to wait about an hour for the chamber to heat up. On the other hand, if the printing itself takes several hours and then I use G-code to gradually reduce the temperature after printing (= another extra 1.5-2 hours), it almost doesn’t matter, at least in my case (I’m hobbyist and more time spent with printer doesn’t mean money loss or so)…

Appreciate your thougts and comments in advance
TW

2

ASA (elegoo brand) behaves fine for me with a 1-hour 100C bed preheat, but the parts I was making were only about 80mm in height. As you get farther from the bed it will get worse. (inverse square law of the radiant heat emitted from the plate, above a certain height you’re relying solely on chamber ambient heat)

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As a hobbyist, I don’t see a need to use a heater. Pre-heating with the bed has worked for anything I have used or am likely to try. Like you, a little extra time to heat does not matter to me. I might look at it differently if I were printing high-temp filaments all the time.

I would point out that even with chamber heaters, the X1E is limited to 60°C and the H2D maximum is 65°C. Higher temperatures can be detrimental to the electronics, and some users have needed cameras replaced after printing with ABS and PA, without a separate heater.

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Feel like I just answered this somewhere.
Going to spare you and I a lot of reading/typing.

unless you are printing the high end tech filaments…no. No you don’t need a heater and would get very little benefit. It will give you overhead, but that’s about it. ABS and ASA print fine without.

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Whatever you do, go easy, try not to cook your electronics or warp your machine’s plastic bits. Those are real hard to recover from :wink:

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That’s a very good point. Just yesterday (after I wrote this question), I was printing my tallest model yet from ASA (about 15 cm) and noticed that towards the end, as the plate dropped lower, the temperature in the chamber also began to drop (at least the measured temperature). Not by much, but it dropped from about 60°C to 56°C at the end. I don’t think it’s a major problem, but I’m not sure, and I didn’t like it :slight_smile: I have the printer in my garage, which (currently - September) has no heating, and yesterday evening was quite cold, so that may have played a role. It could probably be helped by heating the room a little bit or maybe pointing a heating fan towards the printer… probably at the glass (there’s an “insulation box” around it)… it wouldn’t take much, and it could add/compensate for a few degrees. Will try and see …

@All

In any case, thanks to everyone who wrote their opinion… You have more or less supported me in what I have (so far) come to realize… that I can do without heating inside the printer .. at least for now … and try to solve “problem” (if there is any) “from the outside”… better insulation, increasing the temperature in the room, or possibly a regular hot air fan from the outside…

I’ll keep this thread “open” for now, just in case someone else would like to add his experinece/comment later …

TW

7

Hi,

since you left the thread open for opinions i will give mine :stuck_out_tongue:

I have a p1s with microswiss hotend, led riser for saving the ptfe tubing and the added lighting. The stockcamera is also just bad so i added another one on the left side of the case. i added a thermometer on the left side of the case between the partcoolingfan and the chute.

my p1s is also located in non-enclosed cellar - its open to the stairs and there is no door or anything to close.

i’ve printed limited stuff from abs/asa in the past but had problems sometimes when the chamberfan kicked in and i was slow to disable it again. since i often start prints while at work, i sometimes did not have time to disable it immedeatly and the chambertemp droped.

even if i disabled it the chambertemps where around 37°C and dropped slightly over the time of the print. when preheating i put the bed almost all the way up on 100°C and added the partcoolingfan for circulation. when printing the printer could not hold the temps i reached by preheating that way.

since it was a lot of work to print some large endcaps for rectangular aluminium tubes without the corners lifting and since i was limited to one per printbed to make sure the corners of the part would not get to close to the corners of the printbed where there is colder air i had enough and bought the panda breath. i did not use their cabling and riser since i liked mine as it was and since i already drilled a hole in the right side panel for the other camera i added another one for the cable of the breath and taped it over. I could have drilled a smaller hole and put in a cablegland but my printer is out of warranty and the panda breat was not so the hole is just big enough for the C13 plug.

my printer runs on older firmware and lan only and is integrated into homeassistent. the alternative camera replaces my camera stream from the p1s in homeassistent and the pandabreath is integrated local only in homeassistent. also the printer, my led stripe, the camera and the breath are all on their own smart plugs which are - you guessed it - in the same dashboard in homeassistent. i didn’t use the integration biqu provides since i bouth it before that one became avaiable but some HACS integration i found on github. if anyone is interested in it i can look the name up as well as provide infos about which entities it provides in HA.

The breath is a really nice gamechanger in terms of working with abs/asa. about 20 Minutes Preheat from 20°C to 52°C with the breath on 60°C target and the bed on 100°C. before i start my print i tell homeassistent to preheat the printer and when i’m done filling the plate i can start.

Placement of the parts on the bed is way easier (just fill it, it doesn’t matter where something is for almost all parts, haven’t had any lifted corners so far).

only downside is, that the temperature of the breath differs from the other temperature probe i have in the printer. when the breath tells me its 60°C it is more like 50°C on the other sensor. so the breath keeps the temps stable at around 50°C and for longer prints it goes up to about 53°C as the open back doors locked cabinet the printer lives in heats up a bit.

and if you install the breath while using snappy or clippy for guiding the printbed use the slim profile ones or put a little wedge below the back corner of the breath. my old printbed guides hit the buttons on the breath. the wedge helped but since i printed the guides from pla they deformed after a 9 hour asa print. replaced the with asa ones which hold up great so farm.

So for me the breath is nice upgrade that makes printing with abs/asa way more comfortable but a big part of that comes from being able to integrate it fully into home assistent. also a big part my decission was that i can take it out and put it in other printers since i picked up two used klipper coreXY’s. It should be even easier to integrate there.

also i use the breath on manual mode and wrote an integration to turn the breath of when the p1s changes states from printing to finished. didn’t want to trust the auto heating option.

puhh long wall of text but i hope it helps other folks! if anyone has questions, i’m open for them!