With the A1 and AMS Lite, before every print the printer purges “old filament” which is unnecessary if your using the same colour before the last print ended, it just creates waste for no reason.
A firmware update could easily be implemented to check if your using the same colour from when the print ended, and if you changed filament spools recently to determine whether to flush filament or not.
There is no benefit of purging material if it’s the same one your going to use, lots of other brand printers without AMS print fine without purging old filament. Even the A1 without AMS does not purge old material out.
This is already solved by the purge line, and as I said the A1 without a AMS does not need to purge before starting to print, so it does not cause problems
I’ve had no experience of non-ams, but as the Bambu printers are mainly geared towards multicolour AMS printing that having a no purge option would no doubt not be worth the odd trouble caused when someone ticks it inadvertently. I’ve never noticed the “wastage” or the extra time involved so I can’t see much advantage in having that option.
The printer could easily remember what the last AMS filament used was. It can also remember how long ago it was that the filament was last used. It can definitely be smarter about purging, based on these criteria.
I make a lot of functional parts. 3D printing is great for “rapid prototyping”. But my parts often require a few iterations to get right. I might print 3 or 4 times in the course of a single day as I iterate through a design.
Each time a job completes, the AMS unloads. Each time I run the next job, even though I haven’t turned the printer off and I’m using the exact same single filament, the printer reloads and purges. It’s totally unnecessary.
I have noted that if I cancel a job before it completes, the AMS does not unload and when I start the next job if it uses the same filament the printer doesn’t go through a purge.
I think we’d all agree it’d be annoying as hell if the printer unloaded the filament and then immediately reloaded it when restarting a canceled job. But luckily it doesn’t. The printer remembers that filament was already loaded from the job that was aborted. If it can do it for a canceled job, it can do it for a job that finished successfully.
A simple checkbox labeled “unload AMS at end of job?” would pretty much be all the new functionality they’d have to add. AMS stays loaded, new job starts using that filament, no purge. If you mistakenly chose this option and a week later you want to run a new print with different filament (or you’re worried the excess between the AMS and extruder has absorbed moisture), you can manually unload the AMS using the device control panel. Easy peasy.
I would add that this is also an issue with the regular AMS as well. I came to enter a feature request for exactly this, but found this thread, so now know I’m not alone in thinking this could be handled MUCH better.
There is no reason at all for a purge to happen if the print job that is just starting is using the same filament as the previous print. It is 100% unnecessary waste (both material and time), and could be avoided if the printer remembered the last filament used. If that last filament used is the same as the filament that is going to get used on the current print, then skip the purge. It isn’t needed. Simple as.
I agree, I also love quick prototypes and bought AMS recently for some multicolor prints and it is annoying that before every print it purge a bit. One times its nothing but if I do 10 small prototypes it goes rapidly up
I got an answer from Bambu Tech Support and thought it might be useful to know that it can’t be done with AMS. I asked this:
When using the AMS lite my A1 printer cuts and retracts the filament after each successful print. This just wastes time and filament for no apparent reason because when it starts the new print it will purge the old filament that very often is the same one. Can I somehow make it stop?
Sometimes I need more iterations of small parts and the purged filament and time becomes the same (or more) as the printing filament and time. I see no reason to do this considering that if it’s loaded with external spool it doesn’t unload after each print .
And the answer was this:
This is not possible when AMS Lite is used.
In order to ensure the proper functioning of the various sensors on the extrusion path, it will be necessary to perform a verification phase of these sensors, and they must not be triggered.
To avoid this, the best solution would be to use the rear spool holder as you mentioned.
That’s just a lie, there doesn’t need to be any sensor verification.
The best solution would be creating a checkbox which says “Cut” on the menu which you send the print, so it would be by default auto-enabled, and you can disable it if you don’t want to cut filament. My thermal label printer has this feature, so why can’t a 3d printer?
What I can’t understand is why can’t it do this at the start if the new job uses a different filament. And btw , if you pause and stop the print it doesn’t cut the filament, it stays loaded.
Just replying to this to say “Me too!”. I cant believe how much it purges at the start of these jobs! Seriously causing a ton of plastic waste, not that 3D prints don’t usually become that anyways… But at least I’d like to save on the money and wasted material.