So I thought I was ready to print a ‘bigger’ job, a tool box to keep all my spare parts, hotends and all. I just recently bought an Overture PLA filament, before I got the X1C. I had good results with my ancient Tevo tarantula with it. Nice black filament. Maybe my mistake was to spool it over on an just emtied Bambu Lab green PLA Basic spool and I thought I could get away with it by just changing the color to black. It seemed the temps: nozzle 190-220 deg and bed 55 deg were in range. I started to print on smooth PEI plate and it went ok for the initial bottom layer. But then the rectilinear infill started and there was intense rattling noise and I saw the uneveness and ‘lumpiness’ in the traces. It got worse with each layer so I aborted the print. Second try I adjusted the nozzle temp manually before the print to confirmed 190-220 deg. What went wrong with Overture?
Phase two I used Bambulab PLA Tough grey. Nicer smoother traces, no ‘lumpiness’ but I still noticed rattling noise during th infills, rectilinear on the bottom and Grid 15% infill later on. Is this normal? I have not heard it before, this rubbing rattling noise. Should I stop printing this job? Is something the matter with the printer? Is the speed too high in the settings?
Please somebody advice me.
Is that the ECO-PLA?
I don’t think so although it comes on a cardboard spool. Just says PLA on it.
PN:1100200810 so you can stay clear of it (-:
I will try it on some smaller projects with less infill to see if it just a bad batch that won’t print well on anything.
Well, you tried another filament and that didn’t work but did you try drying the Overture filament? Make sure you weigh it before and after just to verify that moisture came out.
I tried the Bambulab PLA Tough and that worked fine and completed the job. I think the print speed was a little too high for the Overture and in general for the model. It was suggested to be 12 mm/s by the author, I found out later. I was printing at 21 mm/s max volumetric speed. The Bambulab PLA could take it , the Overture PLA couldn’t. Both came fresh out of their vacuum sealed bags. So moisture might not have been the problem. Unless the Overture PLA was packaged or re-packaged wet/moist. I bought it on Amazon so who knows. I will mostly go with the Bambu Lab brand in the future.
To print at that volumetric rate, you need the temp to be higher than normal for what the manufacturer recommends. I would say minimum 220.
I’d say the rubbing rattling noise is the nozzle hitting little bits of filament sticking up which is usually caused by grid infill.
In the words of Ronald Reagan “trust but verify”.
I’ve had filaments from reputable sources - especially Bambu - that varied greatly from one shipment to the next. Vacuum packing, while good and expected, doesn’t mean that it wasn’t still humid when they bagged it. The only real test is to weigh it, dry it and then weigh it again.
Now that said, I agree, PLA shouldn’t be moisture prone so it’s probably a safe bet. However, you might try complaining to the seller on Amazon. I’ve gotten more than one refund when I was dissatisfied with a spook of bad filament. Or they might just replace the spool. It’s worth a shot.
I’ll keep that in mind. I checked and the default range for Bambu Lal’s PLA Tough was min 190 and max 240 deg, while the range for Overture was 190 - 220 deg. So that might explain the difference in ‘bumpiness’ with the grid infills. Also the author/designer of the part (‘Bambu Lab tool box without screws’) suggested a lower print speed than I used by default. So it was a combination of things. I just hope the rattling and shacking with these kind of scenarios doesn’t cause excessive wear on the xy gantry bearings.
This is my setting.
try this.
220 degrees
Flow ratio 0.93
gyroid
My guess is nozzle collision.
Do you by chance run a temperature tower on your filaments?
I try to do it as often as I can with each new spool and I actually write down the value along with the arrival weight onto the spool directly. I then weigh the spool afterwards just to make sure I wasn’t cheated and to also note, who’s got a higher quality product as well as notes for the next time I use that filament. With PLA I haven’t found that much variation but from time to time, I come across a filament that is way off the advertised specs. The temp tower and the new PA Pattern test found in the current Orcas Slicer have really allowed me to dial in the right tunings. But again, for PLA, these are only marginal incremental improvements that I usually only resort to when I need to get that print “just right” if you know what I mean.
Thanks I will give it a try. I have one more print to do. Perhaps I will reprint the whole thing again since the original model design doesn’t fit on the X1C plate and needs to be reduced to 92% to fit and be printed as a whole.
That’s a lot of good advice… I am not familiar with a temp tower only the ‘color’ tower that is printed for multi-color prints. I also havn’t used Orca slicer only Bambu Studio when I switched to the X1C. Before I used Cura. Do you think the manufacturers ‘purposely’ add moisture to increase the weight and so they actually need less filament to get to 1kg? That would be a rip off AND would diminish their reputation. Unless they expect everyone to be as meticulous as you and dry their filament before use. I am just a ‘hobby’ guy and don’t want to spend time other than for CAD designing my ideas and the actual printing. you know the fun part of it.
Although I love a conspiracy theory, the answer is no, I don’t think they “add” moisture. However, I saw several Youtube videos of filament production and surprisingly enough, their process at least requires that when the plastic pellets are melted and then extruded into filament, they have to go through a long water bath to cool off in order to maintain dimensional integrity. That was a shocker to say the least because if that’s the case, then how is it that all filament doesn’t come with moisture in it? Grant you, this video was only producing PLA so there may be a secondary drying process for other filaments or they may use something other than water to cool the filament down.
On the subject of a temperature tower. Orca Slicer is worth a look. It is a fork of Bambu Slicer and can reside side by side with Bambu Slicer. The files are interchangeable and the interface is identical. The exception is that Orca does not have the interface to Makerworld yet but what it does have are all the cool calibration tools that Bambu took out of Prusa slicer when the ported it to their version. The temp tower is just one of them.
Here’s a quick calibration video how to.
This is a getting started but if you’re using Bambu Already you can probably skip the first two minutes.
That is great info and good pointers, Olias. Looks like you got my engineering/scientist mind going now. I will definitely check out the Orca slicer and probably get totally sucked into it. I like testing and calibrating things. In a way that’s ironically what I thought was unnecessary with the X1C and Bambu Lab has done all the work for me. But it becomes clearer now that nothing is cut and dry here (even when all the moisture is removed lol) and that there is always room for improvement. I guess tinkerers will always be tinkerers. Nothing wrong with that. Let’s just have all the fun we can have and want with this hobby.
Thanks again. Great to have ‘partners’ like you in the community to share it with.
Hi ‘Olias’. What temp tower are you using? Did you download one or make one yourself?
Thanks.
Actually, neither one.
That’s part of the allure of Orca. When you hit the calibration button for temperature, you get a script where you dial in the upper and lower limit. Then Orca generates a live test tower with temperature gradients for your filament. There’s no messing around with manually modifying the G-Code.
One has to wonder why would anyone do it any other way.
Step 1
Step 2
Step 3
Ok got it. Question though, will installing Orca and the Bambu Lab network plugin and then connecting the X1C printer in any way interfere or influence the use of Bambu Studio also (not at the same time of course)?
Actually, you can do exactly that, run them side by side “at the same time” on the same machines and/or different machines. I do this all the time. I’ll start a print using Orca but on my laptop in the other room, I’ll monitor that from within Bambu Studio. Likewise the same on the same desktop. All of this is in LAN-only mode. I have not tested it using the cloud because I abandoned the cloud and Handy within five days of getting my P1P once I learned that LAN-only mode existed.
It may help to understanding the Bambu Lab system’s architecture. Then the printer’s behavior becomes a lot less mysterious. The printer is a separate Linux subsystem that gets commands. When you send a print, it uses standard File Transfer Protocol (FTP). The .3MF file is processed by the printer, not the PC, and stored on its local SD card. After the file transfer, the printer works independently while waiting for any further commands from authorized clients on the same network. So, when a message like “stop” or “pause” is sent, the printer doesn’t care about its source, as long as the encryption key, generated when setting up the printer password during BS or ORCA setup, is correct. In the case of video and status information like layer current layer and temperature info, that is transmitted over the LAN using broadcast so that any system listening with the right password can decode that info.