As stated, I have made a faux pas. After 2 weeks of nearly flawless printing (not including operator errors), last night I started having 1st layer adhesion problems with PLA Basic filament. I have experienced those in the past 2 weeks, so I used the usual techniques to resolve the issue. I still had problems printing simple jobs that have successfully printed in the past with the same profile.
After research on the issue, I got down to changing the z-axis offset in the g-code for the printer. Yeah….as a newbie that’s something I will attempt as an absolute last resort. So, I decided to just go ahead and rerun the printer calibration.
Now for the faux pas. After completing the calibration, instead of using the same PLA Basic profile (user defined), I changed the printer up to use the Bambu PLA Basic profile. Everything worked perfectly. So, I don’t know it the recal or the Bambu profile resolved the problem. I will just press on with my current printer setup.
But this brought up a question in my head.
What do other 3D printers do if you do not have a Manufacture’s filament profile?
Do you create your own, but use either the Generic or Bambu profile as the base profile?
I used to just create a profile per filament recommendations and tweak it til I was happy with the results.Most profiles Ive found on the packaging are pretty close. Sunlu, BL, Kingroon are all really close.
TL;DR: Experienced users have mastered the practice of filament calibration. Once you do this, a $10 spool performs the same as $30 spool, there isn’t much difference between brands.
This is a good question because it highlights a fundamental issue with users new to 3D printing. What is that issue you might ask? Placing blind trust in default or manufactures profiles or worse yet… the dreaded autocalibration. I’ve seen way too many posts here where the user has the expectation that printers should be as easy to use as your desktop laser printer. Sure, Bambu may have come the closest to that experience but if that were true, this forum and others would be a ghost town because there would be nothing to troubleshoot, would there? You don’t see many active forums on how to troubleshoot laser printers do you?
Just because a profile exists doesn’t mean it’s optimized. If you want to really dial-in perfection, start with any generic profile and master filament calibration. There are more than enough tutorials at this point using Orca Slicer so I won’t go into it here.
Soo true! So many factors as well. You don’t know all the conditions of the testing to make the filmanet profiles as well. Environmental factors play a signifant role. Heck, even the basics like orientation of a simple L bracket (which could be printed several different ways) makes a huge difference on adhesion, quality, and strengh. There’s so much people need to learn.
I’ve also seen so many posts about people that are actively trying to make braces, supports, and solid feet to keep the printer from “shaking” not even realizing the printer is supposed to shake to help take out the detrimental effects of all the back and forth x/y axis changes. So they stop their printer from shaking and next thing they complain about how bad the quality or prints are lol.
I start with a generic profile and calibrate nozzle temperature, flow rate, and PA. I only use Bambu or other manufacturer profiles when I’m in a hurry and can accept less-than-optimal quality. Other settings are calibrated as-needed.
Filament settings are kept in my OrcaSlicer profiles. Unlike calibrations stored on the printer, these are not limited in number and are not destroyed by restoring factory settings. I can also create complete, independent profiles that will not change if an update changes a generic parent.
A few years back, when I first got into 3d printing, I bought PLA filament from every manufacturer and printed them all on my Vyper. Over time I came to see a few brands as superior to all others. The ones I ended up favoring the most were Overture PLA pro, PolyTerra, and SUNLU’s transparent PLA. Just before the release of the A1, on black Friday I bought enough filament that I thought would last me more than a year. Then the A1 was released and I immediately bought one. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that Bambu had included Overture, PolyMaker, and SUNLU filament profiles as included options. I think that Bambu’s included filament profile for Overture PLA works better for PLA pro than the one that Overture offers. The quality and performance of PolyTerra and Bambu Lab matte PLA are indistinguishable.
Depending on where one purchases their filament, Overture PLA professional runs around $25 a spool but I tend to buy it in bulk for around $11 a spool. Which I find as a bargain considering that for functional objects, no other PLA is better. Nonetheless, I have been getting enough points off of MakerWorld that most of my filament is free.
I used to argue that Polylite was the strongest PLA until it wasn’t. Anycubic’s PLA was like that also. That it would be strong until it snapped, which was often catastrophic. The PLA pro bends a lot more and doesn’t snap, even if completely folded in half. I recently tested some Bambu basic PLA and it held up without snapping, which leads me to think, that in the grand scheme of things that Bambu’s basic PLA is a premium PLA. I have been getting it for $12.99 a spool, in bulk, paid for with gift cards.
I once experimented with filament calibration when I came to the conclusion that it doesn’t matter all that much. Close enough is often good enough, even for a perfectionist like myself.
Thanks to all of you for the quick response/advise and for not “flaming” me, saying this was discussed over a year ago. (As has happened in other forums.) I am going to have to learn a lot of acronyms and abbreviations. I’ve modified the nozzle & bed temps. As a matter of fact, my wife’s current job, I had to raise the bed temp by 5 degrees to enhance adhesion. So far so good. I see all of these flow rates (mm/s) and I don’t know who’s who and what’s what. I have a huge learning curve in front of me.
I use Bambu Studio just for the convenience. I have heard that profiles get “lost” after upgrades. I switched a week ago from the latest release to the latest Beta, but I didn’t have any profiles. I do like the Filament Management section in the latest Beta.
I have heard of OrcaSlicer and I guess that I should go ahead and download it. But that now means I will have a parallel learning curve.
(As has happened in other forums.) I am going to have to learn a lot of acronyms and abbreviations. I’ve modified the nozzle & bed temps. As a matter of fact, my wife’s current job, I had to raise the bed temp by 5 degrees to enhance adhesion. So far so good. I see all of these flow rates (mm/s) and I don’t know who’s who and what’s what. I have a huge learning curve in front of me.