I’ve been noticing a decline in print quality on my X1C. Not enough to cause failed prints, but enough to have a visible impact on the surface quality. I’ve attached a couple pictures of the problem.
I’m using the stock printer profiles for 0.2 mm Standard and 0.08 mm High Quality respectively and a 0.4 mm hardened steel nozzle for these prints. My prints now have noticeable banding on them when they used to come out almost perfect regardless of what layer height or speed I print at. I’ve noticed that the pock marks and banding started appearing at the same time so I suspect they’re related.
So far I’ve tried these steps but they haven’t changed the print quality:
Performing a cold pull to see if the extruder was clogged.
Adjusting belt tension for Z and XY belts.
Cleaning and relubricating every axis according to Bambu instructions.
Performing printer self diagnostics and calibration.
Brand new, dry fillament. Multiple different kinds.
I haven’t tried tearing down or replacing the extruder, but I suppose that’s the next step. I’m very frustrated with this since none of my troubleshooting seems to have any effect and I can’t get the same quality prints as what I was getting out of the box.
Has anyone else encountered this issue or found a fix?
If I can offer one piece of advice to anyone taking this approach: drop the screwdriver and step away!!! LOL
But seriously, way too many folks - especially those with prior 3D printing experience - go after the hardware before ruling out the simplest issues first. Since you didn’t state it, let me start with a few obvious questions:
You didn’t mention what kind of filament you’re using. Did you ensure it had no moisture?
There’s only one way to rule out moisture: weigh it, dry it, weigh it again. If it lost weight, then moisture was part of the problem (though not necessarily all of it). Repeat the drying cycle until the filament stops losing weight. Note that cardboard spools can throw off this measurement, but even if the spool was the source, thorough drying will still rule out moisture.
Once you’ve done that, print an overhang test. The simplest method is an inverted cone primitive with the top and sides cut off so you have an inverted wedge. You could download a fancier test, but that usually wastes more filament.
I’d also suggest checking out this newly posted wiki - it has some great tips, even a few I didn’t know:
Hey Olias, I appreciate the reply! I’ve gone ahead and purchased a filament drier to 100% rule out a moisture issue though I suspect that’s not it (but I can’t be sure yet!) I’m printing in Bambu PLA basic.
The reason I don’t think it’s a moisture issue is that for the first 200-300 hours of printing I never saw this issue, and now I’m consistently seeing this issue in every print even with brand new roles of filament. It seems unlikely to me that I only ever managed to get dry filament at first and now I’m only getting wet filament.
I’m not super concerned with the overhangs. They look a little gnarly on that part because I was experimenting with support structures. Most of what you see there are support contact points that I was planning on sanding and filling anyway.
You didn’t mention it, but if you left the PLA out in the open over time, it can pick up moisture. With PLA that’s unlikely, but let’s say there was just enough to cause subtle issues. Left out at around 50% humidity, the spool will absorb ambient moisture over time, which could be enough to tip the balance.
Here’s one of my favorite “Factory Sealed” Bambu filament photos. Guess which one was fresh out of the box and which one was out of the dryer?
The bottom line: trust nothing you read, even from me. Verify everything for yourself, because what happens in one printer may not happen in yours. This is why it’s important to use scientific method and basic troubleshooting. Start with the first rule: change one, and only one, variable at a time.
What makes me shake my head is when people change three things at once. That breaks the core principle of troubleshooting, because you never know which change was responsible and therefore you can’t know what actually fixed it. In your case, you have two things to check.
While you’re waiting for your dryer to arrive, try printing a temp tower to compare your settings against the test itself. Also, if you don’t mind tying up your X1 for 8 hours, you could test its built-in dryer mode:
Before I bought my first dryer, I used the cardboard box method described there. Honestly, I thought all the dryer talk was nonsense - until I tested it myself using the cardboard box method. Moisture really does affect prints, and since I usually buy budget spools on Amazon ($10–$13), I don’t cycle through them quickly. The one thing you can count on is that you can’t count on filament arriving dry. That includes premium brands: even Bambu filament has let me down. At times I’ve wondered whether people are paying more for the RFID tag and packaging than for the filament quality.
I’m back with more data. I’ve dried my PLA thoroughly and left it overnight in a sealed tub with a hygrometer to measure how wet it is. It took a few tries to get the time and temperature dialed in but I’ve got it down to 16% humidity which seems plenty dry. I put it in my AMS unit by itself with fresh desiccant and it’s reading 13% in there, dry as a bone.
While it did improve the bubbling issue, I’m still seeing the same amount of horizontal streaks in the print. The lighting here is exaggerating the streaks but it is still a very noticeable difference when I go to sand the prints.
You can see the difference between an old print and a new print. These two cylindrical surfaces were printed at a higher layer height but you can still see the difference in the surface quality.
If anyone has further ideas on what I could do to fix this it would be most appreciated! To me this is the difference between sanding for a few hours and sanding for 20+ hours on large prints to get a smooth surface. It makes this expensive printer a drag to use when I can’t make it print as well as it used to, and it slows all of my project to a crawl.
I’m not tryin to be that guy but I encourage you to measure the spool, dry, then remeasure, and don’t stop until it stops (within like 0.1g or whatever). I see earlier you said this is Bambu pla basic. I have a lot of faith in bambus spools to be dimensionally accurate, but y’know it is always possible to have a bad spool. The banding can happen if your filament diameter flutters between 1.75 and egrigiously not 1.75, but generally bambus stuff is better than that.
I would also add that gray highlights imperfections as shadows way more harshly, so treat this run as “hard mode”
Unfortunately it happens with any spool, any color, any brand. I’ve tried fresh spools from the package and it’s the same result. I get a constant diameter when I measure the spool with calipers so I don’t think it’s that. Gray definitely shows the imperfections more than other colors, but I’m certain there’s a difference because I have to sand them down significantly more than I used to to get a smooth finish. I really think there’s a mechanical issue here but I don’t know what else to do besides the regular maintenance and calibrations Bambu recommends.
