Today I was luckily near my printer when I hear a crash, and the ams lite was hanging down onto the bed with the printer still printing away. Anyone else had this?
The clip is still intact, though I’ve now used some structural cable ties to ensure that clip can’t hinge open even if the clip fails again. Doesn’t seem to be any real damage, print isn’t completely lost but it is damaged and I needed to open and then re-assemble the extruder to clear an error that appeared after about a minute of me putting the AMS back while print was still running.
Is there an unofficial AMS lite top mount that is more reliable?
Thanks.
I’ve never been too enthusiastic about top-mounting the AMS Lite. It’s adding significant momentum to printer movements (though maybe dampening some higher-frequency vibration). The constant movement/vibration over time is eventually going to result in fatigue on the mount, as you found.
You don’t say what you printed the mount with, IMO, this should be done with PETG, or PLA +/tough at an absolute minimum.
In my case, I wall-mounted my AMS-Lite, though my second choice was to put a shelf over my A1 and put the AMS on the shelf. Note that the shelf doesn’t have to be wall mounted, it could be “bridged” over the printer.
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It was printed with Bambulab white PLA basic, no idea on the difference between Bambulab basic PLA and tough PLA (soon to be discontinued), I get the impression that the two are essentially converging? I wonder how the difference in material would affect the strength of the clip, seeing as none of the material failed, it just burst open.
I always assumed that while the clip was designed to hinge way open in a ‘quick release’ fashion, that it would have been designed with a decent margin of safety as it’s use was encouraged by BL themselves. Cable ties do the job to secure it so it’s fine like that now I know.
I can’t tell between prints used with and without the mount, and I don’t have the space to not use it, so I’m gonna have to keep it fitted.
PLA Tough/PLA + has additives that make the plastic a little more flexible. Plain PLA is very hard and tough, but has very little flex, making it more susceptible to shattering. Also can result in things like latches slowly working apart, since the rest of the part won’t give at all.
I highly doubt Bambu’s PLA and PLA Tough are converging. Discontinuing it probably has more to do with business economics.
I used the Grip top mount. It mounts better IMO. It uses brass inserts and M3 screws to secure it. Has been rock solid for me. Here is the link:
The problem is without knowing the ingredients of the specific filament, you can’t tell what’s in it. Just because it says ‘PLA+’ or ‘PLA tough’, it has no real meaning on it’s own, it could just be branding.
Some companies have decided to just make a decent ‘PLA’ which has some of the additives in there, rather than having a decent ‘PLA+’ while also putting their branding on a pretty-poor-in-comparison ‘PLA’ which isn’t much cheaper. I’ve had some ‘PLA’ filaments that turned out better than some labelled as ‘PLA+’.
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These days “PLA+” is a meaningless term. There’s no standard. Compound that with filament sellers who have no accountability but every reason to exaggerate, and mix with consumers who have no way to check the claims being made, and you get a hot house for deception. The only thing holding things in check is Amazon’s A-Z return policy.
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