Im new to 3d printing and have just gotten my printer on Monday. My first prints seemed to be fine, but i started experiencing some clumps on my prints. It escalated to rough patches where filament would not extrude properly on those spots. I am using a white bambu lab PLA filament brand new. I have yet to dry it.
This started after i used TPU 95A HF with my seperate filament holder, however I used the PTFE tube for the 1st AMS lite slot and connected it to my external spool holder and hit print. The affected rough filament is on the 3rd AMS lite slot.
Some quick tips before others chime in with more specific advice:
Clean your build plate very well and dry it thoroughly
Once the plate is clean and dry, run some filament calibration tests from the calibration tab in Studio and see if your extrusion value and pressure advance profile are well tuned
Try drying the filament after these steps if nobody else has indicated other steps for you to take
I realize its a new printer but check these 7 screws as they are known to come loose on the A1 series, are you sure you arent printing with PLA Support filament? Check label to make sure its not. My only other guess is you have a partial clog and will have to do a cold pull(see wiki for how to)
Air tight is not easy. If you look close at edges and seams where fill meets border and the print head reverses, there’s tiny holes. You can minimize them but air tight isn’t easy.
In another topic where this was discussed, using a little higher extruder temperature and a bit higher flow were both mentioned as ways to get closer to air tight. You can also use more floor/ceiling layers and more walls to help seal but that uses more filament and can also cause models to curl as larger masses of plastic shrink on cooling.
Infill also matters. Gyroid is totally open and may be handy for cooling a model since air moves so easy through it. For air tight, honeycomb with higher infill percentage helps to slow air down but only in 2 directions. In the third it’s totally open and essentially a straw.
Models look solid and impermeable but they usually aren’t air tight especially at edges, corners, seams, etc. You can test just by grabbing something you’ve printed and try to blow air through it. It might surprise you.
May or may not be an option, but for a project where I needed air tight, I painted the inside that I could get to and the outside of my models with medium thickness cyanoacrylate. Sealed them right up. Paint could also help.
