Hi everyone, I’m the new proud owner of a P1S and previously had an A1 Mini. I’ve never calibrated the Bambu filaments on it because of the automatic flow calibration. It always worked great.
Now I’m wondering, is it necessary to calibrate the Bambu filaments? And for which filaments do you open or close the door and the top lid? Or rather, open the top lid and close the door?
I’m also wondering if I always have to set the K value on the device? I mean, in the “Device” tab, so you don’t misunderstand me.
Regarding the information on my printer: I have a hardened steel nozzle and hardened extruder wheels. If that’s important.
I have never calibrated my P1S beyond sending it through the built in ~20 minute cal andthe cal it does before each print.
That 20 minute calibration is always after I’ve changed the hotend but not always.
I worked in a job that had thousands of instruments of every variety.
Once a year approximately, we would shut the place down for a week and one of the things that got done was that the instrument techs would calibrate those instruments and Then fire the place back up and the first week or so it would run rough for a week or two until we got things dialed in.
Im not exaggerating about the number of instruments and and that week we would spend “adjusting” the calibrations.
Lesson I learned out of doing that for 30 years is If the machine is running to your satisfaction, LEAVE IT ALONE.
The goal is for for your machine to be doing what you want it to do. If it is running great, why tamper with it and possibly make it run lousy.
Routine maintenance, absolutely. That routine maintenance is what keeps it purring.
Calibrations I leave it alone. If the printer goes rogue those calibrations come into play.
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Okay, yes, I know that from my milling machines at work.
Then I’ll start printing. I’m just a little disappointed because I got the printer yesterday and then I got the email that the P2S was coming out. So I want to get it as perfect and mastered as possible. I used to have a CR6-SE, and that was hell with calibrations, etc. What about the question of whether the door should be open or not, with which material?
I recommend the calibration of Bambu filaments “on demand”. If you got bad results, calibrate it. In best case with some calibration cubes and manual measuring to get the best result.
Door open or not depends a lot of the material. For PLA I recommend to open the front door or even better der top cover. Other materials might be better with closed door, that really depends on your material.
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Then I’ll name my typical materials, PLA, PETG HF and why I bought the printer ASA
PLA: Open at least top or front for better cooling. Avoid cold draught.
PETG HF: Closed, for high models maybe open it a little bit to avoid melting PETG.
ASA: Closed.
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Something I did not comment on that I think has a much greater impact is that Bambu Labs filaments have been tuned and tweaked to promote “It prints out of the Box”
BL has set every spec on the printer to run as well as it can with BL filament.
If you buy a third party brand, none of that work is done. You get a temperature RANGE, say 240ºC - 255ºC nozzle temperature along with a range spread for the bed.
That 3rd party filament vendor, they leave it to the printer owner to dial in from a range to an actual setpoint. Up to the buyer to test to go from “Somewhere in this 15ºC range” to a fixed number, say 248ºC
By staying inside BL’s ecosystem the buyer avoids that step. It’s already done.
I’ll be honest, I find that type of work monotonous and I’m fine paying a slight premium to avoid that type of tedium.
Like the above person said, Bambu filaments are already set and calibrated. You don’t need to calibrate them unless you are getting a bad result. 3d party filaments can need calibrated. Generally Sunlu works great with default Bambu settings. Stuff like wood filament you definitely need to calibrate.
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