I am trying to print by object partially because I don’t have an AMS and partially just to save filament. I have an object with a blue square and a red square both stacked on top of a white square. If I merge the 3 pieces, it becomes one object and prints by layer. If I separate into 3 objects, Bambu Studio drops everything to the print plate and I can’t seem to stack the obects - I try to move the red and blue pieces along the Z axis and it drops back down to the print plate. So my question is, is it possible to print this piece one color at a time - white first, then red, then blue, with red and blue both printing on top of the white piece?
There is no way to do that in BS currently. You can always print them separately then glue. You can add alignment pins underneath to make it easier to glue or even snap together without glue. Printing the blue and red face down (to allow for assembly pins) on textured plate will also give them a nice look without visible extrusion lines.
You can work around this by using a little trickery and creating an assembly with a tiny “anchor” block placed slightly below the real geometry. A 1x1x0.1 mm cube works because the slicer sees it as the lowest point, but the nozzle won’t print it since 0.1 mm is below practical extrusion height. This lets each part sit above a shared Z-zero reference.
Set the components you don’t want printed as negative volumes, then slice and print each part in separate passes. Change filament between passes if needed. This method works for independent pieces but not for nested geometry like a circle inside a square.
Thank you for this workaround. If I understand correctly, you’re saying to slice and print the white block. When that print job is complete, slice and print the red block. When that print is complete, slice and print the blue block. (In each step, making the other two blocks negative parts.) Is that correct? If I am not watching it to immediately change the filaments and start the next prints, wont the white block release from the plate when it cools?
With that in mind, I thought I’d try a different approach, which didn’t work - I created the “anchor” and made it part of the Red block. (Ignore the blue block for now, I removed it from the print just to test my approach.) When I split the objects, the red block remained in place above the white block. I thought I had outsmarted it, but when I switched the sequence to print by object I got a “collisions may occur” error even though I don’t believe they will.
So, two questions -
- Did I understand your instructions correctly?
- Am I correct that no collision should occur? Regardless of whether it prints the anchor block or not (which I moved plenty far away), shouldn’t it then move up the z axis to print the red block above the white block?
Thank you. I may end up researching the snap together method…might be the simplest solution. I’m new to printing so I don’t know the best practice for a firm connection, but I’m sure there are plenty of guides/tutorials for that…
1 Like
Let me address the two issues you raised.
-
Printing in Object Sequence mode will not work in this scenario. The slicer blocks it because it cannot guarantee that the print head will avoid previously printed parts. The safety boundary you see is the slicer telling you to move the models far enough apart to prevent a collision.
-
Parts releasing as the bed cools happens because the plate loses adhesion once the temperature drops. You can address this in two ways:
- Use glue so the part stays attached until you remove it.
- Keep the bed heated by editing the printer profile so the heat bed does not turn off at the end of the print.
How to modify the printer profile to keep the bed heater on after print
-
Click the printer preset edit button.
-
Open the Machine G-Code tab and click the edit “Machine end G-Code” button. This is the sequence that is appended to all G-Code files when they are sent to the printer for cleanup functions such as turning everything off. Your use-case is exactly why the edit feature exists.
-
You’ll get a popup editor window and in the end G-code section, look for the line that turns off the bed:
M140 S0 ; turn off bed
Comment it out by adding a semicolon at the start:
;M140 S0 ; turn off bed
-
Save the preset and rename it so you can identify it in the dropdown.
Select that profile whenever you want the bed to stay heated at the end of a print. Remember to turn the bed off manually afterward.
2 Likes