Could Bambu Lab add an official prototyping mode for the printer?
The idea would be that, once the machine is powered on, it performs its normal startup routine one time per power cycle. After that, when a print file is sent, the printer could begin printing immediately without the usual 6.5 minute wait, (6.5 minutes it takes on my H2D with Flow dynamic calibration, Auto bed leveling and nozzle offset calibration turned off to get the printer printing)
After the first print finishes, the printer could keep the filament loaded and remain ready for the next print without repeating the full startup process, unless the machine is power cycled. For safety, it could still do something minimal before each new print, such as a single bed touch and one endpoint move.
In a typical workflow, I would power on the printer and then prepare the print file. During that window, the printer could already complete its one-time startup checks, so that when I actually send the file, it can start printing right away. And every print after that is even faster because it does not have to re-load the filament.
How is this different from just setting flow dynamics and bed leveling to “off”?
As I wrote, 6.5 minutes it takes with everything turned “off”
I would like to see this as well. It wastes so much purge filament and time when printing many prototypes one after the other.
This is an absolutely epic idea. @SupportAssistant
In the meantime, you can use the external spool holder when prototyping. It doesnt unload the filament when the printing is done.
Thanks, I know that, but rather than using the rolls in the AMS, I want Bambu Lab to implement this properly so people no longer have to rely on workarounds. Also, this only solves the unloading issue, not the long startup routine that gets repeated over and over again. No user should have to tamper with the machine G-code either.
If bambu could implement this before the next printer or in the next firmware update then I’d be a very happy chap.
Also, I found that if you do several prints back to back and never remove the plate, the printer will always do auto bed levelling. Even when its turned off in the slicer.
And adding some sort of toggle in the slicer to check if the same filament was used before a new print would be really nice. Or an option to stop filament retracting at the end of a print.
absolutely a time saving mode for us.
Are you sure?
I think there’s a distinction to be made between full mesh leveling for the full part footprint, quick 5-point leveling, and then single point height probing. That’s what the documentation seems to point toward for the on/auto/off settings, in that order.
I dug into the H2C machine start G-code, and those three cases are present. I guess the only reason it isn’t happening is if the flag (on/off/auto) isn’t setting properly.
If it’s not following the expected behavior, then we should definitely submit a bug report.
It certainly is possible to leave a filament loaded after a print - the Leckiestein/Steinwipe Gcode mods for the X1 have had this for years.
On that note, there’s a lot of opportunities in the machine start G-code in terms of optimization, be it starting bed warming sooner, not doing certain calibration steps, or hanging onto certain calibration parameters from the previous job.
The sky’s the limit, really, but at least some of these optimizations are going to be very specific to the print jobs being run, so I’m not sure it’s a matter of a single switch so much as several switches to allow startup steps to be skipped based on the need.