I purchased a H2C just over 3 weeks ago and have been running a P1S for a couple of years. I spent quite some time learning the P1S and 3D printing before moving onto Ironing which is required for some of the products my wife makes, I was able to quite quickly dial in the settings on the P1S and can reliably produce great top layer quality on my ironed prints (face down isn’t an option).
Turn to the H2C, I went through the usual, calibrated the filaments (for both nozzles), made sure to select the calibration in the “Device” tab, went to my standard Ironing calibration prints and ran those to get close to a reasonable ironing result with a view to fine tuning once this was achieved. And this is where my problem lies, I can get a decent enough ironing calibration print but when applying these flow/speed/spacing settings to my models what looked good on the calibration print is absolute trash on my model. I’ve spent hours doing manual side by side comparisons of each process configuration and used the compare preset system to the point that there are no differences between the calibration print and my model, yet the result is still poor.
Has anyone else seen this and if so have you found any approaches to improve your ironing performance, or is the H2 series just bad at this?
Ironing never worked well on my H2D or now H2C after upgrade despites all my testings. When I really need ironing I fire up my P1S which does it perfectly. I don’t think I’ve heard of someone getting good ironing on H2D/C printers
Edit: there is a new feature since bambu studio 2.5.3 that you can set in filament setting but I haven’t tried to play with that yet
Added Ironing Fan Speed Control
The ironing fan speed can now be configured independently. When set to -1, this feature is disabled and the fan speed follows the top surface fan speed; when set to any other value, the specified speed will be used exclusively during the ironing phase. This helps reduce material heat creep at low print speeds, resulting in a smoother ironing surface. Thanks to @Noisyfox for the contribution.
I’ve found the ironing performance on the h2c sub-par, especially when compared to the p1s I have. I’ve tried lots of different flow and speed combinations to no avail.
The consolation I have found is that well dialled in filaments on the h2c have such a smooth surface that in many instances ironing is not really required.
I’ve had some success this morning after running an extended ironing calibration test above the typical range im used to. I typically run 30mm/s @ 12%. Today I’m at 45mm/s and 25%. Surface still isn’t on par with the P1S but the best so far, I will bump this to 28% flow. Once this test finishes I will do some testing on the Ironing fan speed setting and report back!
I thought I would post back latest results with Bambu PLA Matte Dark Green - one of the harder Matte colours to iron in my experience.
The below images show small test sections of one of my models, printed with Green on the left nozzle and Black/yellow on the right, each model fragment is around 5cm2. Ironing only applied to the Green background, top black/yellow layer is not ironed just for speed of the test. I’m using Interface Shells to ensure a constant ironing beneath the final top layer. Ironing direction was set to 0 degrees giving a 90 degree difference ot the layer beneath. 10 top shell layers to remove issues associated with infill, I will try to reduce this to 5.
Yellow image shows suggested % and Flow from my first calibration print - 25mm/s @ 18%. As can be seen the surface is terrible. I then ran this calibration print (actually the one I used 2 years ago on my P1S) which has a higher range than the other I had been using. Leading me to look at 45mm/s starting at 25%.
25% looked much better, so i incremented flow rates by 1% and achieved the best surface quality was at 45mm/s with 29% flow (bottom sample).
Then considering @philch’s suggestion (thanks again!) I took the 45mm/s at 29% with different fan speeds on the Filament → Cooling → ironing fan speed. 0% fan giving the best result.
So after two weeks of playing with this I’m now quite happy with the ironing performance. The images probably dont show it so well but the “feel test” tells me it’s as smooth as needed for these prints . My takeaway is that the flow rate here needs to be quite a bit higher than I was using on the P1S and the experience there sent me down a rabbit hole where I didn’t try a fast enough flow rate to start with!
To be expected this quicker ironing speed has also knocked 25% of my print time for the full model! I’m now running a test print on a larger section before trying the full model but i’m hopeful these settings will work out ok. I will then try other matte colours at the same settings with the small portion and where needed run the longer ironing calibration.
I’ve just tried it, flat surfaces is OK but everytime there is a change on the surface, a hole or anything else the ironing fails past that change. I’m sure I can tweak it as the starting point using your presets is already a lot more satisfying than anything I had before but I think for now for that particular model I will stick to my P1S
. My takeaway is that the flow rate here needs to be quite a bit higher than I was using on the P1S and the experience there sent me down a rabbit hole where I didn’t try a fast enough flow rate to start with!