Is anyone printing with 0.8mm nozzle?

Bambu Lab P1 Series General Discussions
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All Bambu Studio’s presets are tuned for 0.4mm nozzle, which print beautifully. You’re on your own with any other size nozzles. It took me a while to fine tuned 0.6mm nozzle. 0.8mm nozzle is a struggle, it seems all the calibration tools in Bambu Studio or Orca Slicers were made for 0.4mm. They kinda work with 0.6mm.

While 0.8mm nozzle doesn’t save that much time due to the limitation of the heating block, but thicker wall makes a world of difference in vase mode.

You guys are printing with 0.8mm nozzle, can you share your thoughts and tips? I’m thinking about buy more printers during the sale. Thanks.

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I agree that only the 0.4 presets seem to have been developed. 2 years now, and long overdue for the rest. I retreated back to 0.4mm for that reason.

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I think optimizing the 0.6 and 0.8 nozzles would require hardware improvements to be worth while. The volumetric flow really comes in to question for those nozzles. Like you mention, wide walls can be useful for vase mode but that might be a stretch to dedicate 100’s of hours of time for a printer that is being replaced. The cost analysis just doesn’t make sense, especially when you factor in its largely not an advantage for anything other than vase mode.

Not saying its not possible to chip out a few common profiles in a cost sensitive amount of time, just that it seems wasteful to spend their normal development time on it now. I think that benchy has sailed.

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I respectfully disagree, and the reason boils down to “walled garden.” You see, it cuts both ways. If you’re a company running a walled garden, then by that very assumption alone, you and only you are in a position to fully support the product. Not just that only you can support it, but that you will support it. As a buyer, that’s the promise that you’re being sold. I’d have no issue if X1C was sold purely as a 0.4mm nozzle printer, but that’s not how it’s advertised. For the walled garden concept to work, the vendor has to take seriously the responsibilities that come along with that. So, IMHO, to sell other nozzles but not fully support them is hypocrisy. Besides, I bet one or two summer interns could have banged it out as an independent project without diluting any other development efforts.

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I’ve tried to use the 0.8mm nozzle a bit. I never found it to be all that fruitful. At the time, the advice I found, was to adjust the profile to be like the .4mm profile and use that as a jumping off point. It never really panned out for me. I didn’t do any vase mode stuff though. I was, and still am, rather disappointed in the lack of refinement for those nozzles on the software/code/slicersetting side.

I wish they at least fixed up the .6mm nozzles, as they suggest those for their abrasive filaments. It is a bit like a walled garden, and the .6 and .8mm nozzles are the dying plants they forgot about in the corner.

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I get you, but the hard fact is I don’t see the profiles moving the needles on sales. Having someone or a team spend 150 or so hours on 10-15 different filaments is definitely something they can write off (less than $10,000), however I don’t see it doing anything other than generating goodwill, which will likely be burned off fairly soon after. Additionally, they would need to continue supporting them after their creation. Personally, I wouldn’t worry about this for printers I’m trying to liquidate for newer machines.

However, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the next gen have a wider range of profiles. After all, its one of their goals, being the company which is the “Easy” button of 3D printing.

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Have you tried running a max flow rate test yet?

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I don’t know, that was a minute ago. Frankly though, I just don’t have the interest in going down those paths. I’d just rather do something else then sitting around running test and playing with settings trying to perfect things.

Some might scoff at that. I have a great out of the box experience with the .4mm nozzles though. I don’t calibrate anything, or run test, or whatever. That their .6mm and .8mm profiles are so junky, to me that is a failure on their part and the product, not a task of mine to be fixed. Their aim is to make these printers a consumer level product, so in that light, it’s just an unfinished part of the product.

I guess part of that was the general impression of unimpressed I got from anyone that talked about the .8mm nozzle in particular. It didn’t make me want to invest more time than I already had.

I hope if they come out with a larger size printer they put a little more focus on those larger nozzles. I do enjoy them. I use to run a printer with a 1.2mm nozzle that I’d do large functional prints on and I really enjoyed that thing. If someone put the time into a .8mm nozzle profile on the bambu, I’d give it another go. I don’t want to have to fiddle with it anymore than I do the .4mm nozzle profiles though! Ha.

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I was asking because I have a 0.2, 0.4, 0.6, and a 0.8 nozzle and haven’t tried anything other than the 0.4. And like you, its because I just don’t want to have to deal with it. I may do it, just to see what the flow limits are on a 0.6 or 0.8 nozzle. With max flow updated for the nozzle, the system will automatically scale the speeds to fit the nozzle’s capability. And considering the area of a 0.4 nozzle is about 42% of a 0.6 (meaning 0.6 has more than twice as much area), there should be a significant bump in max flow, which should give a speed bump. Unfortunately, I can’t see that being 1:1, but can easily see and extra 30-40% higher speeds and flow than the slicer is calculating out the box.

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You make me consider I should have tried a little further, haha.

I didn’t push it too much further than the basic setup I had because in my research on it, most people seemed to agree that the heater limited the flow rate, which limited the nozzle from reaching it’s full potential. I took it at face value at the time. I didn’t have a serious need for it, so didn’t feel worth it at the time to push the idea and switched back.

It’s been on my mind again though. I’ve been thinking about the .6 with the abrasive filaments. Been using the .4, with glow and the petg-cf. By extension, have been thinking about the .8 too. I was hoping we would have got some updated profiles by now.

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Just tried it for the first time… the flow rate is not the only bottleneck. With Bambu Matte PLA went from 22mm3/sec (with the 0.4 nozzle) to 40mm3/sec (with the 0.6 nozzle). The flow is pretty stout with a larger nozzle, but the speed is limited from a number of other aspects like minimum layer time. To be honest, that where my max flow rate test ended, and it was still clean at 40mm3/sec. Probably could push on even higher.

That was eye opening. I definitely like the 0.6 nozzle’s line width. Makes for very strong parts. I haven’t figured out all the aspects that need to be adjusted to make use of the extra flow, but there is definitely something to it in the right circumstances.

However, the normal size print I make may not benefit from the larger nozzles, in respect to speed of print. Again, minimum layer time is stepping in and being really heavy handed in regard to freeing up speed. But I’m gonna leave it on for a while and see where it leads.

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Hi there.

I never tried the 0.8mm nozzle, but I use the 0.2 mm for lithophane and the 0.6mm for every filament, which isn’t adequate for the 0.4mm.

Indeed, the print profiles for the largest 0.6mm nozzle aren’t as optimised as the 0.4mm, especially if you want a fast-quality print. However, they were way worse about a year ago. Getting some decent settings with PA-GF took me a while the first time.
Currently, I only do the same as with the 0.4m nozzle, calibrate at least the flow rate and PA, and it works well (not as efficient as the 0.4mm).

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I’ve printing exclusively with 0.6mm for the last five months without any issues, nothing exotic though, just PLA, ASA, ABS, TPU, PETG. It took a while to calibrating 0.6mm with different filament types, which should have been done by BL.

I created 0.6mm profiles from default 0.4mm profiles using different calibration tools from Orca Slicer. That works out pretty good, but 0.8mm is a different beast all together. It’s not working well so far.

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After playing with the 0.6 mm nozzle and sorting out one layer height, for one filament, for one printer, I realized this would take a significant amount of time to do (like the 0.4mm profiles). Additionally, the gains are relatively minor in time, even with significant tweaking to speeds and flows.

There is also significant degradation in smaller features as well. Larger nozzles give up a lot when doing the smaller details.

When working with the larger nozzle I definitely needed to slow various odd sections down more than I would like, to get good top surfaces. Not sure why though. I’m not understanding something that’s going on, however knocking a little speed off really helped with the quality, and oddly, my speeds end up only a little bit faster than the baseline 0.6mm profiles. Even with the ability to push more filament through the larger hole, the hot end still had a hard time keeping up with various movements. I ended up seeing about a 20-minute improvement on a 1-hour print but that was mostly from being able to use a massive layer height (0.28 vs 0.42). It was about 10 mins per hour with a similar layer height (0.28mm vs 0.30mm)

I fully understand why they didn’t spend much time, or don’t seem to have spent much time of the large nozzle profiles. I’m completely spent on this, and that was simply one nozzle, filament, and layer height. All for very meager time gains. Not sure mine will stay in until the weekend at this point.

Also noticed the larger nozzle profiles get very bothersome to manage. Because each nozzle will need a different volumetric flow tune, each nozzle will need a second filament profile as well as a printing profile. Swapping profile after profile, through what seems to be endless number of options will largely turn off all but the most determined people. Maybe if Bambu Studio handled the nozzle, filament, and printing profiles a little better, this could make more sense, but, as it is, I doubt many people would like to use the large nozzle profiles.

There is definitely a value to the larger nozzle in vase mode, but if you don’t print that way, you may not want to use the larger nozzles. They do allow taller layer heights and will cut time off the prints because of that, but the gains are not as big as many would expect. IDK, IMO this is definitely a case of the grass being greener on the other side in all but the case of vase mode.

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Yes, it takes a lot of time to tune everything. It’s BL job to do so, not ours. It’s not like these are 3rd party nozzles. Not providing the profiles for them is like selling laser printers not providing driver for it. BL either should stop selling different nozzle sizes or start providing the proper profiles for them.

Larger nozzles don’t save as much time as the vase mode demo video on BL website which suggests 40-50% gain. But even 10% adds up quick when you’re doing production run.

For example, 0.4 takes 60 minutes print, 06 takes 54 minutes. Difference of 6 minutes x 100 prints = 10 hours/printer. 10 hours x 10 printers = 100 hours.

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The biggest issue I had was, the slicer isn’t setup to make this easy. Each nozzle, will require its own filament profile to really be optimized (to add a second or multiple volumetric flow value). Currently, that would mean you would have two or more nearly identical filament profiles in the list, which don’t change via the RFID, that you would need to choose between. You could use the same filament profile, but it will have a very low volumetric value for the larger nozzles, meaning you will not get some of the speed benefits (even though you can’t use the full benefit of the volume it can flow, more on that later).

Unless they revamp the filament profile set up in the slicer, I don’t think most people will want to deal with the flip flopping the settings. This is not insurmountable, just a significant change to the slicer.

I do understand going from 1 hour 50 mins down to 1 hour 30 mins (the speed difference I was finding) is significant, but that comes at a cost. A cost that I don’t think most people are willing to pay (detail). On a medium size printer, the likelihood of people not wanting to print small things is low. Niche uses will definitely benefit from it, but they can always use the base profiles for the larger nozzles. BTW, those profiles are not bad, they are just slow, but I found not much slower than a slightly tuned profile. I think people are under the impression a profile will unlock the same performance the 0.4mm nozzle has, and that is not the case. The hot end can’t melt plastic well enough for that. I found the flowing line volumetric flow was stratospheric (like from the Orca test), but when complicated movements were added in, that performance disappeared really fast, leaving severely poor finishes.

Personally, I’m thinking the baseline profiles they generated are fairly well tuned for the hardware. Yes… a little more can be squeezed out, but it not much. But that can be said from any profile. That said, they might be able to optimize the baseline profiles for the larger nozzles a little more. For example, instead of using 2 x 0.82mm walls on a 0.8mm nozzle, maybe the default should be 1 wall. However, that could catch people out who are expecting it to be the same as the 0.4 or 0.6. So, I’m not sure that type of nozzle customization is good for the masses.

All and all, not sure the expectations of using larger nozzles are correct, and think people may be expecting way more than the hardware can deliver.

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In theory the Bambu-E3D obsidian nozzles were meant to address this issue, but AFAIK there are zero profiles available for them. You can buy them and install them, but you’re own your own. Is that correct? However, if the market is just a small niche, as some of the posts here seem to be arguing, why did Bambu/E3D even bother developing it in the first place? And then release it without tuned profiles for it? Was it purely strategic to discourage third parties from filling the void? Or did it need Sanjay still alive to make it happen properly?

Sure, maybe the next printer will come out and people will move on to that, but now I have to wonder whether the same sort of thing will happen with the new printer. Based on history, I have to assume it will be the same story, just version 2. That’s why, big or small, what a company does becomes its reputation, and reputations tend to stick for a long time.

I have no issue with a closed source model per se. In a market like 3D printing, it might even be preferable, if properly executed. However, I don’t think it’s something a company can do a la carte. It’s more of an all or nothing kind of thing. If done properly, then the reward is brand loyalty, and that can also stick for a long time. That’s why I happen to think that, whatever the cost, it would make sense for Bambu to close the open loops. The benefits to reputation would be huge.

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I kinda assumed the same thing previously. However, there are six 0.6mm profiles, and five 0.8mm profiles (I didn’t check how many 0.2 profiles there were). I would think these profiles would work well for that hot end. Maybe someone with one can chime in.

Can’t comment on that, but I’m pretty sure the baseline profiles will work for it. Personally, the only inquiry I would have is, what are the issues people dislike about the current profiles.

I’m curious, what items in the baseline profiles do people feel are sub par? Its possible I’m overlooking something, so I’d like to know where the problems are that people see.

After using the 0.6 profiles (very limited use), they are a little slow, but I don’t have a lot of negatives to complain about. They generate relatively good parts. However, I’ve found the parts don’t look as good as the 0.4 nozzle, but that should be expected with the tall layers and less detail. I do find the support settings (same or similar to the 0.4mm) cause supports that are very difficult to work with on larger nozzles, but again that makes sense as they have really good layer adhesion from the wider contact area. But that’s about all I found note worthy.

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BTW, just found my 0.8mm nozzle and will be playing around with it too.

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@just4memike your experience reminds me a lot of how I felt back when I was messing with it.

I didn’t have any print issues I’d complain about with the print profiles. It just overall didn’t feel like I was gaining much for the time and effort I had to put into it.

Back on my machine that had a 1.2mm nozzle, that was in the pre-klipper days, so the speed advantages were much more obvious. Well, especially with a 1.2mm nozzle. That was an E3D Volcano.

I want a Bambu machine that can do that. If they do eventually come out with a larger sized printer, I hope they spend some time refining the experience with larger sized nozzles.

I suspect for abrasive filaments it makes enough sense to use the .6mm nozzle. I don’t think the . 8mm is as useful, especially given the size of the build envelope. For vase mode though, I keep reading it’s good! I’m curious what you’ll find though in your playing around.

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