I did my first print with PC filament today and saw the part was starting to warp at the corners and lift a part of the brim. First thought was to increase bed temp but I wasn’t able to go higher than 110! Unfortunately the spec sheet for X1C says 120C for 110V, 110C for 220V. I’m on 110V. Documentation problem or bug in firmware?
Turn off the chamber fan (looks like it’s set to 100%). Pulling up at the corners, at least in my experience with ABS, can be somewhat mitigated with a higher build plate temp but the real fix is the chamber temperature itself. For plastics with larger coefficients of thermal expansion, you want to keep the print as hot as possible until it’s completed.
That 100% is the speed in the photo, not chamber fan. Chamber fan is off using the default Bambu PC profile.
Ah. I’m new to the X1, still learning the UI details…
How about the chamber temp when you start the print? Is it “cold”? Maybe a “preheat” before the print starts… turn on the build plate manually and let the printer sit for 30 minutes before starting the print job.
The lifting is due to too rapid cooling of layers above the first few layers, so a hotter build plate won’t necessarily make enough of a difference - the stress just transfers to a few layers higher up. Hotter chamber is still, IMO, your best bet.
Chamber temp for print was 47C
I think we’re getting a bit off topic. The main concern is the printer is being advertised as 120C capable bed temp on 110V. So it either can’t do that or there’s a bug preventing it from being allowed.
Hey Ant,
On your PC filament drop your fan speed down more and some PC filament will work with it off you will have to run some tests. I do big PC parts on my other printer plus using pc glue to bond it down real good.
A heated chamber helps also but the Bambu is not built for high heat. Maybe that’s why they lowered the bed spec down; they did have some plastic printer parts warping. Maybe that’s why ?
I see you are still making them part bins
Have a good one
Lol I actually feel like my prints turned out great —- this thread isn’t about me having print issues it’s about the published specs vs what is actually allowed.
I also print this part bin in every filament as my first print for testing
Cool I did not know if it was a two part question
I like your spool beads holder
I found it online so I’m going to print one up but going to change it so only holes in centers and and have top and bottom layers this will save me some cad design time
Perfect to add weight to low spools
Have a good one ant
Yeah, there seems to be an issue of the app limiting the max bed temp. My app wont let me go over 110c, but I can set bed temp to 120c from the printer LCD.
Oh whoa didn’t think of that. Guess it’s not firmware but a mobile app limitation! Thanks for the info
I have my X1C coming Monday, but have been reading the forum and wiki. From what I’ve been able to gleam, there are some things with the printer that are stored in BLs cloud and accessible with the app. Unless the printer itself can tell the cloud if you are on 110 or 220, or you somehow indicate so in your account, the app might not allow max bed temps >110. Will have to investigate more once the X1C comes in. Have been 3D printing for over a decade with the original Makerbot, then the Raise3D N2. Once a question rears it’s head and get’s my attention, I need to find the answer.
Add on: The specs also state that the max elec req are 1000W@220, but only 350W@110. Beginning to think that the bed temps might be reversed, 120 for 220 and 110 for 110 and the fixed 110 might be a safety feature to keep 110 folks from overloading their power supply.
Yeah. That’s definitely not correct if the only thing that doesn’t get as hot at 110V is the print bed. If the “baseline” power consumption at 110V is 350W, going to 220V and 1000W would mean all that extra power was going to the print bed exclusively. So that would mean that whatever wattage the bed operates at on 110V, it’s getting an additional 650W at 220V. Given that a large part of the 350W budget has to include the electronics and steppers and hot end, 650W would probably be something around 10x what the bed draws at 110V. You’d be able to use the bed heater to fry bacon.
Not sure it’s “backwards”, though. 220V lets the heater get hotter, it should be dissipating more power. Just not 1000W vs. 350W. One of those numbers is wrong. Probably the 1000W number. It’s too high by maybe 2x or so.
1000W is 285% higher than 350W. There is no logic for the electronics burning that much more input power just because the voltage is higher. It doesn’t print faster or anything. So where’s all that extra Power going?
At 220V, the machine would be running significantly hotter if it was pulling almost 3x the wattage. All the power going in has to eventually be emitted as heat.
I assume the 1000W spike is when you turn the power on? How often are you sampling the Power?
Lots of things draw a lot more power when you first turn them on. I could imagine a power supply that can auto-switch for 110 or 220V might be a little less well behaved at power-on at the higher voltage. But it’s “inrush” current, not steady state. You’d get a transient but that power draw wouldn’t be steady state. That seems to be what your data shows is happening.
My guess now, the BBL spec of 1000W/350W is Max/Nominal and not 220V/110V. The highest wattage it will draw is 1000W and that’s at 220V, and in normal operation it’s 350W regardless of voltage. Meaning, if you put a 110V machine on a watt-logger and turned it on, it probably won’t draw as much current initially, so the turn-on wattage will be lower, but the steady-state wattage while the printer is in operation would be pretty much the same. It has to be. Same speeds, same temps, same Power.
thats not how electricity works buddy. on a 110 system the amperage is double, but i could go on for days about this so i wont.
the short answer is no, because lower voltage needs higher ampere to deliver the same effect (w). there is also a difference in the frequency. in 220 (which in most cases is not 220 but 230 ish) there is a 50hz wave, and in 110v i believe there is a 60hz wave? some correct me here if im wrong surely
glad you are not my electrician
Power can be thought of as a measure of “work done over time” (which is how Watt originally defined it - the amount of work required to move 550LBs one foot in one second). The machine does work, so it consumes Power. Watts, not Volts or Amps but Volts * Amps. The two values cannot be treated independently.
Because the equation is multiplicative, any combination of Volts and Amps that yield the same value is the same Power. 2 Amps at 110V is the same Power as 1A at 220V.
The printer doesn’t perform differently as a function of the rated input Power. It’s no faster or hotter (with the exception of a small difference in bed heater max temp) at the higher voltage, so it’s not doing extra “work”. So it should be using pretty much the same Power at both 110V and 220V.
There can definitely be differences in power supply efficiency (note, though, 50Hz vs. 60Hz is not a meaningful factor) as a function of both the input and output voltages. But not enough of a difference that the machine will consume 350W at one input voltage and 1000W at another. Not unless BBL made some extremely bad choices in power supply design.
Just pause for a moment and consider how hot 1000W is. That’s the power of a typical Microwave oven or Blow Dryer. Drawing that kind of Power, your lights would probably flicker a bit while your printer was printing.
There must be some other explanation for the 1000W vs. 350W numbers.
This is pretty basic stuff, so I’m glad you’re not my electrician.
The bulk of the power consumption is the heat bed, which is a fixed resistance operating on mains voltage. (X1/P1/A1, the A1mini uses 24VDC) I have that resistance recorded somewhere, and could figure it out again, or measure it on my old warped bed, but I’m not going to bother.
The equation of interest here is P=V²/R.
Doubling the voltage applied to a resistance quadruples the power consumption.
Maximum (theoretical) power consumed by the heat bed will be
P=220²/R=48400/R
or
P=110²/R=12100/R
That accounts for the large maximum power consumption difference between 110V vs 220V.
Actual power consumption will be much less after the heat bed reaches operating temperature.
https://wiki.bambulab.com/en/general/power-consumption
Just FYI,
I’ve measured the time for my heatbed to go from 28°C to 90°C.
6minutes 6 seconds on 110, 53 seconds on 220.
Since I’ve found a 90-110°C bed is sufficient for ASA, ABS, PC, and PA, I have no interest in going back to using 110V.