I am currently looking for a printer to print some design stuff. Therefore I need a printer wich can print with up to at least 1.2mm nozzles. I have already seen that for the X1 and P1 series there is the Revo system which supports a higher range of nozzle diameters. Now I have 2 questions:
Does anyone of you know a possibility to use (third party) larger nozzles on the A1?
Is the Revo System on the X1/P1 still usable after the latetst Bambu Update? I have heard that it limited the usage of certain 3rd Party addons.
I have found a few third party nozzles that will work, but you do need to be careful. Some nozzles have an extended heat break area length that has been known to cause scraping on the beds. The one with interchangable tips has been the most successful for me
Yes, I actually want to use very thick lines and layer heights as a design feature. I did prints on an Ultimaker with a 1.2mm nozzle which turned out super nice. Now I am looking for cheaper printers to increase my production capacity:)
I really like the enthusiasm here.
Don’t want to slow guys down but did anyone try math first ?
Standard is 0.4mm for the nozzle and the entire Bambu stuff is aiming for this size.
Let’s say you extrude filament with a 0.4mm nozzle compared to a 1.2mm nozzle…
And we keep it simple and only want to know the basics.
Can you set a 1.2 or 1mm nozzle in the slicer ??
A 0.4mm nozzle has an opening area of 0.126mm squared.
But for a 1mm it is already a whopping 0.7854, for 1.2mm nozzle it is 1.13mm squared…
Or in other words : To actually extrude a line the extruder has to run 10 times as fast as for a 0.4mm nozzle - depending on the layer height of course.
Printing thick isn’t as easy as just whacking a big hotend on the printer…
And what about the printer? I’m new to this so maybe I’m missing something, but when I used Bambu Studio and I wanted to use a .06 nozzle for a print, I got an error that the printer nozzle did not match and I had to change it on the printer. I don’t recall any choices except .02, .04 and .06 on the printer…
See, that’s another problem…
So even if a 1mm hotend goes in there is not way to get it working as advertised.
0.2 to 0.8mm is supported if I am not mistaken.
Not sure if creating a new printer in Studio would help but am confident that 1.0 or even 1.2mm nozzles will bring some headaches…
Yeah there will be some workarounds and custom filament profiles needed. The printer still allows you to send a file for say 1.2mm nozzle with 0.8 set in the machine, it just makes you confirm you want to send it. Using orcaslicer you can make a printer profile for 1.2 nozzle and whatever layer heights you want I believe but yes it’ll be up to the user to figure out speeds, ect.
The op said he’s used 1.2mm before on other printers so should be able to use some of that stuff for baseline.
Thank you all for your comments and sorry for the late reply. The printer was just delivered so I had no time yet to do any testing but I can share my experience with printing with 1.2mm layer width on an Ultimaker. Neither the printer nor the slicer (Cura) does officially support such large Nozzle diameters. So I’ve set the nozzle did to 0.8 and adapted the parameters manually. Most importantly: print speed, Temperature, flow rate and of course line width and layer height. With some iterative loops and maybe some experience I received very satisfying results. So for sure you will have to set up new printing profiles, but I will give it a try as soon as I find some time!!
The machines have a lot of trouble as they are not tuned to larger past 08. I ruined a build plate as the gcode refused to level properly (nozzle shape changes slightly when you drill it out this is unavoidable)
The aftermarkets i was researching all eventually bricked or damaged the machine itself causing overheating and machine issues with the hotend brackets themselves. If you read up on some amazon reviews this is a common theme as well. 1/2 work fine and the other people needed to buy a new printer it was ruined.
From my experience you’ll never want to change the nozzle again if you ever get it working on yours like I did mine ( I reverted to stock again and threw the nozzle away that I made.) Also the slicer will wipe all presets on your new nozzle and you must manually configure EVERYTHING from size to flow to rates. All of it, all those numbers in every tab, from scratch. Get anything wrong and it executes in the gcode - hurt printer you get it.
It’s rough…don’t suggest…I setup my old CR10 again and it’s printing on a 1.5 drilled right now making dinosaur heads without any problems chugging along. Some printers just work fine and others are a nightmare. The A1 series falls into the hell category for this in my experience, they really are set and forget no tinker machines.
I have drilled one of my stainless nozzles to 1.0mm and am printing flow rate calibration now. Actually did not run into any problems yet, seems to be working well. I did set a couple things in the process settings, layer height 0.5mm, line width 1.0mm. Did not change anything else yet (defaults from 0.30 layer height 0.6 nozzle). Also filament settings are bambu pla default so it is limiting speed by max volumetric flow, I may try to turn that up.
Printed a benchy and boaty in 0.5mm layer height. Pretty happy with the results though there could be some further tuning. And obviously a lot of detail is lost at 0.5mm layer height. These were higher volumetric flow too (30mm3/s), the benchy was 19 minutes and the boaty 26 minutes.
I do think vase prints would be nice with this nozzle, can get a nice thick wall and a faster print at the higher layer height. I did one quick (20 minute) vase and it turned out fine.
I really don’t think I will be trying to drill it to 1.2mm. I broke 2 bits just getting it to 1.0mm.
Said it before >
0.8mm nozzle equals an area of pretty much 2 square mm.
0.6mm nozzle is down to just over 1.1 square mm.
But a 1.0mm nozzles sits at a solid PI for the area, 3.14159 square mm…
From 0.8 to1mm the flow has to increase by over 50% - neither the extruder nor the flimsy heater are designed for the required speeds and volumes…
And a question I asked a few times but no one answered >
How do you define a 1mm nozzle in a slicer that won’t support it and where the firmware has no settings for it either?
Movements are calculated based the nozzle diameter and if that stops at 0.8mm the result will never impress.
Thank you!
