Just bought the ams for my p1s. It will be here tomorrow. Been wanting one for awhile now.
Now that i will have it in hand.
I have a question. What is the good the bad and the ugly. Thank you for your advise in advance.
While I’ve seen many write this and that about their experiences, I will only write what I’ve experienced first-hand with my own AMS, which is also paired to a P1S.
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It’s very easy to connect. Follow the guidelines - and I’ll recommend you place it next to the printer instead of on top, as the added weight this high up will cause more vibrations. However, I had mine sitting on the top of my printer for a few weeks until I received a longer connection cable. Ah yes - buy a longer connection cable and a longer PTFE tube if you wish to have the AMS located next to the printer. The supplied cables and tubes are pretty short.
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It works great. No issues at all with mine. I don’t use cardboard spools, and all my filament is always kept dry, as I have 2 SunLu filament dryers and store my filament in vacuum bags with desiccant bags added as well.
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It looks crazy the first time you see it run the spool to and from the hot end. Try a simple multicolor print to see if it works. My first print was a Pikachu that required no supports. I used yellow, black and red.
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Print desiccant holders for the AMS as one of the first things, and fill them with large red dessicants. Add a humidity reader - they’re very cheap on places like Amazon and the various Chinese sites such as AliExpress. My AMS went from a relative humidity over 50% to exactly 10%.
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Print a Y-splitter to enable the use of an external spool; however - make sure everything is working WITHOUT the Y-splitter first. Because there are a lot of Y-splitter here on Makerworld, which have issues feeding the filament or the PTFE tubes coming loose.
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The good is obviously being able to print in multiple colors in a single print. The bad is printing in multiple colors adds a lot of print time and filament waste. Keeping that to prints that change color at a specific layer instead of multiple colors on every layer reduces that.
It also enables not just different colors, but using support materials that clean up easier and give you cleaner prints.
Another of the good points is if you use BL filaments, it can detect what it is when you load it. Handy for making sure you select the right color when sending to the printer, but it also warns you if selecting a filament that doesn’t match the print profile it was sliced with.
One feature that I just got the chance to use was auto refill. Being able to use a spool right down to the very end and have it load up a spool from another slot is pretty awesome. Save all those random roll ends to use on utility prints where you don’t care how it looks.
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I bought a P1S Combo and I think the AMS is the only way to go. I just bought a second AMS yesterday and the ability to not have to change out filament by hand can’t be beat.
It sometimes can be annoying getting it to read the RFID tag which can be a pain but it is minor.
It will spoil you.
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The good is you can switch filaments with no hassle, just push a button. That’s worth it even if you never do multi-color prints. The other cool thing is you can use the spools that you have laying around with only a little filament on them. I haven’t done a multi-color print yet because I haven’t seen anything worth doing that would throw away 4 times the amount of filament than the part uses. I can see it working for putting raised text on printed parts of a different color that wouldn’t have much waste.
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The Pros:
- Print multiple color in single print, which wasn’t possible before. It changes color automatically without need of operator’s interception. There were attempts to do multi-color before bambu AMS of course, like: dual extruders, IDEX, multi-toolhead or just manual modify the gcode and add pauses to change filament… but none of those solutions were smooth and friendly to average Joes.
- Sealed box to keep filaments fresh much longer other than exposing filament to humid-air
- Auto switch to the same filament w/ same color in the AMS when one roll finishes in mid print. Without AMS, the printer just pauses the print until you change filament and resume the print.
The Cons:
- A bit costly
- Not compatible with stretchy and abrasive filament, also not recommend to use wet PVA filament.
The Annoying:
- Purging filament whenever starting a new print or change filament into “filament poops”. This kind filament waste stackups quite a lot.
- Every time it changes filament, it adds about 5 mins to the print time. Meaning, a single color print could possibly change from 1 hour into 7 hours or 12 hours for multi-color
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Thank you very much for all that information, i will be using all of it. Thank again. 
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That is great information and it is very useful.
Thank you. 
I can’t wait to get into it.
Thank you for helping me out.
Once i get going with this first one i may get another. Thank you. 
This is good stuff ill be getting into it this week end. Thank you so much 
Thank you to all for the very insightful information. 
and thanks again for your help.
Caveat to that is Bambu securing new spools with tape holding the tail to the cardboard hub. Usual scenario now is the tape doesn’t let the tail go so the AMS grinds down the filament until you get a feed error.
Or worse, the tape lets go from the hub and either gets pulled into the mechanism to gum it up or makes it to some other part of the feed path. Some have had the tape tear and there’s a photo here in another thread of some tape that got pulled into an extruder.
It used to work as you describe but Bambu “fixed” that for us with their filaments.
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Lots of really good info posted here already… my one tip, if you start getting errors about getting the filament to the print head, or retracting it, check for weird angles or bends in the ptfe. Sometimes it looks like it shouldn’t be a problem but it’s causing just enough friction to be a problem.
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Another tip.
Don’t load the AMS with (Bambu) filament while the printer is printing/doing stuff.
The AMS will load the filament but often times it will fail to register the RFID tag if the printer is busy.
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I keep one structural filament like PETG at the side for parts that need durability. I use the BL Y splitter. Then I have 4 PLA spools in the AMS for color.
The nice thing about the side spool is that it doesn’t need to load every print and doesn’t purge any filament. It prints faster because of that. If I need to print with PLA then just unload from the P1S controller before you print. If you forgot to unload it tells you that there is an obstruction to be cleared.
I’ll piggyback off this comment about the weird bends and angles in the PTFE tubing.
BIG loops are your friend. I bought the size PTFE that Bambu specs, both ID and OD to get rid of a splice right before the tubing enters the printer housing (primary reason as it is a snag risk) and to create bigger loops (secondary reason)
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Speaking of RFID tags. How useful are they really? I dont use alot of bambu’s filament.
I have been using coex3d filament its made here in the USA in Wisconsin. The recipes are from Dupont they bought the rights from them after dupont stopped making it. I have had no issues using there filament and its priced right.
I think the biggest benefit is that Bambu Lab filaments have been tested, tweaked, tested some more to give the buyer an almost guarantee that the profile doesn’t need to be fine tuned for Bambu printers.
I’ll give you a prime example that happened to me.
I was making Halloween pumpkin containers that were orange with an olive green stem.
Was doing both in Bambu PLA Basic. Ran out of the Orange PLA but had a brand new spool of orange ABS. The pumpkin body was entirely orange so it printed it just fine. When I went to print the lid which would have been Orange ABS and olive green PLA Basic I got a big red flag that said due to the extreme back and forth of the temperature between the region where it was PLA and ABS the print would fail.
I already had the orange pla enroute so rather than chancing a failed print, I waited on the PLA
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For me it makes it easier to assign colors in multicolor prints since RFID communicates colors as well as settings. When using non-RFID, I have to make sure I have the right slot manually assigned the appropriate color and choose the proper filament type. Obvious but extra steps.
You can use RFID with other filaments if they print properly using the Bambu settings. Just tape the proper tags at the appropriate locations on a spool and enjoy automatic color detection and settings, as well as filament remaining displays. There are also reusable holders you can print on MW for various brand spools.
I label and keep all my Bambu tags just for this.
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