Ive been having trouble with first layer adhesion on a textured PEI plate. Ive read through the forum to try and find a solution before posting something but to my knowledge I am doing everything i should be. Cleaning with soap and hot water, be careful not to touch it at all with oily hands, wipe down with isopropyl alcohol, select auto-bed leveling on every print, even using a glue stick, but I still get these ripples on my first layer.
I have been trying to master ironing in orca slicer and i feel like i’ve got some pretty good settings dialed in but i cant see the full result because these ripples mess up the top most layer of even a simple cube like in the photo. Im hoping there are others that have some ideas as to whats happening…. and yes the right bed is set correctly in the slicer, and yes both pressure advance and flow rate are calibrated for this PLA filament.
P.S. these last couple prints i’ve stopped using IPA after reading some more and still nothings changed
Following because I only WISH my first layer was that nice. I’ve been using ender and cura for over a year, so I’m not a total noob to the concepts. But I have a new P1S and the 1st layer won’t stick at all. I’ve gone through two spools of filament just on calibration prints. FML.
and FYI… 99% of my calibration prints fail because they won’t stick to the textured bed either. If I can get past the 1st layer (rarely) then it tends to smooth itself out, so I’m fairly confident it’s first layer issue(s). If I was seeing 1st layers like this on my ender, I’d reduce the z-height until I got a decent 1st layer squish. Seems to be a foreign concept in bambu land.
This issue has only shown up recently ive gotten excellent first layer adhesion in Orca slicer before this. So much so, ive even used it as a design feature for a product.
For anyone else following this thread because you’re having 1st layer adhesion problems… let me start out saying, not all problems have the same solution. I’m going to cover what appears to have corrected it for me.
Under quality settings I changed the “initial layer height” to 0.11 and in the filament settings/Print Temperature/Textured PEI Plate, I changed the “initial layer” to 60 and “other layers” to 55. Then… re-ran all the calibrations.
Now my 1st layer has the proper squish and sticks like it’s glued on there.
I followed the above recommendations but wasn’t getting anything good with my first layer. That was until I combined all that with turning my AUX part fan off. I saw some people recommend that for PLA prints. You can go into the filament setting and set the value to 0 to keep it off during the entire print. After doing both of these my first layers are immaculate once again.
My ironing settings have also bared tremendous fruit. A rule of thumb I picked up from cura was to set the ironing speed to about 25% of the normal printing speed. And the flow to anywhere between 15-25%
my settings rn:
Speed: 100mm/s
Flow: 15%
I am getting near-perfect top surfaces now. I might have to bump my speed down after some further testing. For anyone reading thinking 100mm/s is too much. Think about what “ironing” is, you drag the nozzle across the top surface to smooth it out while MAYBE depositing a small amount of filament. The main idea is that your nozzle is used like a normal shirt iron, just for the top surfaces of your print. The nozzle cruising on the top surface is what is important, if it is too slow the flow will cause too much filament to be extruded out leaving you with a rough surface.
You might think “turn the flow down then and then you can turn the speed down”, 1.if you can do something faster with better results there’s no question you should use that method and 2. if you bump the flow down too much you might experience a clog which is whole other issue. I really want to hear from others who are looking to master ironing with the P1S and want to hear your opinions.
