I have a question regarding this that I haven’t seen answered anywhere else, including the Bambu Lab wikis… which PTFE tubes go into which slots of the filament hub? I’m kind of amazed that they aren’t labeled, and if you replace them wrong, won’t the entire system be confused about which filaments are actually loading? This seems like a huge oversight. Or does it not matter and somehow the A1 just “figures it out”?
Ok… answering my own question here in case it helps someone else, but I still was looking for a more detailed diagram of the FILAMENT HUB to see which PTFE tubes go where. The only diagram provided is primarily tailored to which tube goes into which slot on the AMS Lite side:
“Insert shorter 580mm PTFE tubes into slots 1 and 2, and longer 700mm PTFE tubes into slots 3 and 4. Simultaneously, insert the other ends of the PTFE tubes in slots 1 and 2 into the two slots on the left side of the filament hub, while slots 3 and 4 should be inserted into the two slots on the right side of the filament hub (when viewing the printer from the front to the back).”
They should be more specific instead of “the two slots on the left side of the filament hub” - as in WHICH would be #1 and WHICH would be #2? I’m just going to assume 1 is in back and 2 is in front?
The visual diagram on this page isn’t much help here:
https://wiki.bambulab.com/en/a1-mini/manual/faq
The length of the tubes is primarily to balance the distance from the AMS Spools 1 & 2 and 3 & 4, which you noted with the instructions clip. Shorter to the AMS 1 & 2, longer to 3 & 4. I suspect many users just installed the tubes after connecting to the AMS into the Filament Hub potentially in some random order…
This is probably obvious, when there is a filament change, the AMS retracts the filament back far enough after being cut to allow the next selected filament to enter the hub and begin the cleanup extrusion before resuming printing. it really doesn’t make any difference which Hub slot the filament came from that I can see.
The main issue for me in this thread was to determine if there is a method to extract the tubes from the Filament hub. The tubes remove from the AMS easily. Whatever they did there should have been replicated in the Hub… but its not… After using several tools, there is no way I can remove them from the hub. I am guessing I’ll have to replace the hub should I ever need to replace the tubes to the AMS and if I want to use the single spool feeder, I’ll have to order the tube connectors noted earlier in the thread to allow easy extraction of an AMS tube to replace it with the single feeder spool tube. Have not had the need to do that yet…
I am not expecting Bambu to redesign the Filament Hub to make tube removal easier, though it would be great if they did and offered it as a replacement in the store.
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With all the head movement & retraction, it should be harder to remove from the Hub.
Depending on what type of filament your using, tubes should last close to a year…JMO
That does make sense… Though I think there could be a means of securing the tubes that could handle the head movements without making them near impossible to remove without potentially damaging something… but it could be far easier said, than done… thanks for the feedback…
The only issue I have found so far is with Bambu TPU AMS, it gets stuck in the connector.
So for TPU AMS I just use a different slot in the AMS (2,3,4)
