New user looking for help/ advice

[WiredDriver]

Hello,
I’m a new user here and completely new to 3D printing. I’m hoping I can share my journey here and get some advice from the experts.

Before I got my printer (P1S) I did some research. I had heard about applying glue to the plate or hairspray, but nothing really said when you need to do it. Do I do this every time? Only if I’m encountering some issues? Never? I don’t know. The quick start guide never said anything about using glue or anything else so I never did. For the first set of prints below in green I’m using the Bambu PLA that came with the printer.

I printed my first Benchy from the SD card provided with the printer. I was pretty happy with it, but it had some imperfections. Namely the box on the deck had 2 distinct layers and there was a faint line up the hull (by the hole, not the hull line). The letters on the bottom seemed faint as well, but maybe they’re not. Finally, all of the dimensions were off as they were too small.

I did some reading on here and found the file provided with the printer was most likely hand modified to achieve the speeds they were advertising. I downloaded the file from Benchy’s website and printed that. At first things were looking good and then it went downhill from there. I ended up getting two Benchy’s that broke loose from the plate at the same time:

This was frustrating. I looked through all of the maintenance steps and everything seemed fine. Everything seemed greased and clean. Huh. I’ll clean the plate with alcohol and try again. This seemed to fix the issue and my 4th Benchy (3rd from the downloaded file) printed. Things were going great until the smokestack though:

The one on the left is the Bambu Benchy. The downloaded file is on the right. Notice the extra ring on the smokestack. Any ideas what would cause that? Also, there’s a more defined line starting just above the bottom of the boat and working forward and ending just above the hull line. This is not present in the Bambu Benchy. The box on the deck now looks like a single layer though:

Also the letters on the bottom are more legible:

So maybe I’m just being too picky. The dimensions on the downloaded Benchy were much closer to being accurate. More accurate than the Bambu Benchy. So, we decided to continue printing.

Things went well. I printed this Luigi and I think it turned out pretty good. No major issues here. Some of what you may see are the supports that I later cleaned off a little more:

I also increased the resolution from .2 to .16 for Luigi. Luigi was printed standing up with regular supports, not trees.

The next day my wife wanted a Piranha Plant. We changed to the white Bambu PLA that arrived and this was the first where there were some glaring issues. This was printed laying down on it’s back:

The part on the outside of the cup on the right side was laying down. I was surprised to see this stringy like this, but maybe because it wasn’t actually laying down on the bed. The inside of the cup on the left side is also very similar. Finally, the back of the plant is stringy as well:

This was a weird model to me because it’s like they were two different components printed together. Instead of printing them as separate objects and combining them, the printer printed them together as one. When finished, my wife broke the plant out of the cup. Maybe that tolerance to be able to separate the two contributed to this?

Then we decided to move on to another figurine for my son. This was also printed laying down on it’s back. Notice the foot and how it’s stringy and there’s actually a hole there:

Should I stop printing things on their back? Do I need to increase the temperature? Is there something else I’m doing wrong? Any help is greatly appreciated. As stated before, I’m a complete noob to all of this and not really sure what I’m doing. Thanks in advance!

[RandomKhaos]

I’m assuming you are using Bambu Studio as your slicer for all these prints you are doing? I did find that I was not super impressed with the quality of the benchy that’s loaded on the printer. I much prefer printing a separate model via the slicer. If you are using Bambu Studio, you didn’t really need to download a benchy from somewhere else; You could have just right clicked the build plate, select Add Primitive, and then selected 3DBenchy to add one to be printed.

Your experience with prints not sticking to the build plate are pretty typical if your textured PEI build plate gets dirty, especially with oils from your fingers being left behind. Rubbing alcohol doesn’t really remove the oils from the build plate. I find the best experience is when I wash the plate with dish soap and occasionally wipe down with rubbing alcohol. If I start seeing adhesion issues or I feel like it’s getting dirty, I just wash it again with dish soap to bring it back to life.

The stringy and poor layer adhesion you are seeing on those later models looks like those sections of the print aren’t properly supported. You have to remember that the filament needs to layer on top of a surface or other layers in order to build up properly. Sections of the model that overhang the rest are places you will want to pay attention to. The more extreme of an angle an overhang becomes, the more the quality will suffer, as there’s less base material for it to properly adhere to. To help understand this, you may want to download some overhang and bridging test prints to see how overhangs and distance between walls will have an effect on your print quality.

If you are still seeing bed adhesion and print quality issues, even after cleaning things properly and properly supporting your model, you may want to run some filament calibrations to dial in settings. You can find that info along with many other troubleshooting, printing basics, and other useful info on the Bambu Labs Wiki: https://wiki.bambulab.com.

[Olias]

First, outstanding use of the forum features and for a first post, you’ve really crafted a clear and concise question.

There’s a lot to unpack in your series of questions. You’re on the right track with your queries.

To answer one of your first questions regarding the use of bed adhesives. Much of what you may read online is based on old concepts dating back for when printers were hand-built high school science projects that used unheated glass plates. Simply put, anything you read on a forum or on YouTube you may want to filter for newer than two years because anything before that may have completely out dated information.

For adhesives. First, the term bed glue is a bad choice. Yes it does provide stiction to the build plate but it also acts as a release liner so that once the print is completed the adhesive layer facilitates the material coming of the plate. You will find this especially the case when using PETG on a smooth plate, good luck prying that off easily if you didn’t use glue. Counter intuitive? Yes. But that why I said the term glue is unfortunate.

When should you use them?

Smooth plate

• (PEI or PEO or “other” doesn’t matter) - Always use adhesive of some kind for easier release and better stiction.

Textured PEI

• PLA - Not really needed. You’re better off using brims
• PETG - Although it’s stated not recommended by manufacturers and listed as supported by others. If you’re using a high bed temp, you will want to use adhesive for release purposes not adhesion. However, you must and I mean must, allow the plate to cool if you’re using it at temps above 70 before you attempt to release a PETG print. I know this because I have damaged too many of my plates this way.
• PC - Not recommended because the bed temp needs to be at 100 but truth be told, I have experimented and you can use it but be prepared to chew up your plate. Glue will help release but not a lot.

@WiredDriver

Should I stop printing things on their back? Do I need to increase the temperature? Is there something else I’m doing wrong?

No, your not doing anything wrong. And no, you shouldn’t stop printing things on their back. Instead, you’ll need to practice to get the “feel” of what works with each angle and filament vs what doesn’t. This as a much an art as it is a science.

If you can keep in mind this one concept, it may help. All an FDM printer is, is a hot-glue gun at the end of an X-Y plotter. As you drop the glue, gravity will take over, if you don’t have anything to hold it up, such as a preceding layer or support, the filament will want to droop. The sharper the angle the more droop.

The only workaround to this issue is to experiment with orientation. I realize that is sometimes not possible to do because rotating an object in one axis to ensure gravity is pulling the filament in the correct direction, will expose another side to gravity.

The remedy for this is to use model cutting and connectors to split your model. This will allow you the option of orienting different axis to achieve less stringing. The downside is that you have to reassemble the model but that too is an artform in that if you do it right and make the dowels fit tight through trial and error, you won’t need glue. I use glue because I’m lazy.

Here’s a recent discussion on that topic that may help.

Don´t know how to setup connectors in Bambu Studio

In order better help, it would help to see a screen grab of the items you are talking about. However, to answer your question in general terms. Any STL can be merged using the union tool and then cut using the cut tool. Note that this is much better done in CAD but it can be done albeit through a lot of trial and error in the slicer. There may be another way to do this but this is the way I would create connectors for two STLs. So let’s say we have two primitive shapes. A cube and a Cone. I’l…

And last but not least, “THE Benchy!!!”

Your models look good. Or as best as one can expect before tuning filaments. Search here on the many topics of filament tuning.

However, if I may suggest. Try out Orca Slicer, It has many features that Bambu Studio has and one of the best features is the calibration feature. It also has a built-in Benchy Primitive. Go through the tutorial page that has loads of suggestions. It’s one that I continue to refer to from time to time because it is always getting better.

[Level23]

@WiredDriver, I didn’t see anything mentioned specifically about the type of support you were using for these prints. Setting aside the build plate questions as I believe they have been addressed already in this thread for the most part, I would suggest you consider using tree support for these more organic shapes. Most of the print defects that I see can be addressed with using and adjusting the tree support parameters. It’s a wonderful tool for your application. Refer to
Bambu wiki for more details on how to use tree support. If you still are unsuccessful, come back to the forum and we’ll try to help out.