Easy Nylon / PA on A1 mini

Bambu Lab A1 Series Bambu Lab A1 mini
1

Hi all,

I’m thinking of buying an A1 mini. I had an Ender before and ended up throwing it away after the repairing/fiddling to printing time ratio was around 5:1.
I heard good things about the A1 mini here and I like the small form factor of the A1 mini.

PLA and PETG are mostly fine, expect that I’d occasionally like to print Nylon / PA for mechanical engineering parts.

For example, connectors or other parts that broke and I’d like to replace. One is a connector on a home workout equipment. My ballpark estimate shows that a 3d printed version should be fine, but from what I understood, Nylon should be the most robust, reliable and safe (as in doesn’t snap suddenly like PLA) option.

I talk about parts of size say max 10 cm x 10 cm x 5 cm. So I’m wondering if they can be printed without enclosure. And if the 80 degrees bed temperature are enough.

I know that Nylon is not recommended due to the missing enclosure, but has anyone successfully used “non-warp” PA / Nylon filaments like these

  • Polymaker PolyMide CoPa
  • SUNLU Easy PA / Nylon
  • Polymaker PolyMide PA6-​CF

As mentioned, I’d mostly print PLA or PETG, but would love to have an occasional Nylon.
Would love to hear if you managed to print (easy) Nylon / PA successfully and what settings you used.

2

Welcome to the forum.

If you truly want to print nylon I would highly suggest you get a P or X series printer with an enclosure.

Can you print nylon on a A1 mini? Perhaps but it’s going to require you to tackle a lot of issues that are going to prevent it.

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I used PA6-CF successfully on my X1. But I did take care to get 50+°C in the build chamber.
Nowadays, I do Nylon on a Qidi Plus-4.

4

Thanks, actually I’m considering a Qidi Q1 Pro as an alternative.

I like the smaller size of the A1 mini and I’ve heard that it works better “out of the box”, so I’d prefer the A1 mini.
But I only want to have one printer :wink: and an occasional nylon would be awesome…

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5

I find it really difficult to give a clear recommendation. But with the A1 Mini having a large community here, perhaps this can help: Any suggestion for printing PA6-CF on A1

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As I understand it an enclosure is required to maintain the heat required and a greater bed temp than the A series can attain.

7

thanks! These prints actually look quite good…

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I have a mini, and that same filament, I have gotten it to work, but, I do have an enclosure, cloth one from Amazon, it has a zipper front and I set the bed to maintenance mode and let it heat soak for an hour. I have a carbon I am waiting on shipping for, and got impatient… but it did work, make sure your settings are fully dialed in.

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You missed some killer sales on the Q1, as low as $350. I couldn’t not buy one, still haven’t taken it out of the box.

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Thanks, that’s great to hear! That sounds like a good enough solution.

Did you also use Polymaker PA6-CF as filament?
What settings did you use? Would you mind sharing?

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I have some of the new Fiberon version here, I know that all my rigging still won’t get it hot enough.

I set my bed to 80 (max, I just have the mini here currently) nozzzle was at the bottom end of the range, I blasted the filament for 2 days, kind of on accident. it did drop 18g in weight though, I imagine that was a good thing.

I store my filament in a custom system, I ahve a 3 layer dessicant intake into a heatedh chamber kept at over pressure, I then pipe the hot dry air into the distribution storage box, it blows directly into another layer of dessicant. I have lost 2.2g on that box, but it makes no sense, captured fluid should still be there, so that is a mystery.

uhm. .6 HS tip, and I print at like 50-65 mm/s it kind of worked, I got a working moddle that I could do testing on.

It survived a 12ft drop and a blast pressure event energeti c it hit my vice and a chunk was taken out of it, but the whole test rig jumped and it weighs in around 30 pounds all in, I was not expecting THAT energetic a response.

I don’t have much more here, and I don’t think I would be allowed to discuss this further, it is a paying client asking for the fab and testing, so limited in what data I can give out.

Oh, secret squirrel trick.

I have an old creality enclosure that is on it’s last legs, need to build a better box, I have the base of the unit under the enclosure with it’s own little dedicated fan so far it has not blown up.
In the box I have a little radiative heat lamp that points at the bed to bump up the temp and keep things happy, I spent way too much time dorking with that, and then a buddy of mine gave me a controller that will monitor bed temp turn the light off and on.
I had it set about 36 degrees off plan pointing directly in front of the s access line and it did the job well at about 60cm out, too close and it caused the front edge of the plate to get what I called my danger zone, did not want to hit 100c.

I can detail the box more, I need to make that an actual build on here. my filament has been stored in these for over a year without weigh gain, one location is in my office at home which the door opens up to the shower in the en suite.
The other location is my garage, open to the elements and I live like 5 minute drive, 20m walk from the Delta, so humidity here is high for Cali.