In my case, yours may be different, I first cleaned the excess thermal grease from the thermistor and reapplied thermal grease used for CPUs in my system builds. For those wondering about the type of grease, while not all thermal grease is identical, they are generally similar enough not to matter.
I theorized that the thermistor was not accurately reporting the temperature to the printer, so I cleaned its contact area with the nozzle and applied the fresh grease, hoping it would help. The results were only marginal. The long-term fix involved compensating in the slicer for the difference between the reported and measured temperatures and recalibrating the filament.
Eventually, I replaced the entire nozzle assembly and extruder since I planned to use CF and other abrasive filaments anyway. This replacement required recalibration of the filament profile but allowed me to go back to using some of the standard Bambu profiles with less tuning.
The whole point here is that after getting into 3D printing directlyāas opposed to using other peopleās printers for so longāit harkens back to the days of my youth when automobiles had carburetors and not digitally controlled fuel injection. Back then, if you wanted more power under the hood, you had to get a screwdriver out and ātweakā the carb and listen to the engine, which was far from scientific. This is where I believe the 3D printing industry still has a lot of room for development. It surprises me that, for instance, Prusa hasnāt developed a nozzle with a digital interface that measures both temperature and volumetric flow, similar to a modern fuel-injected car with digital control. However, such a device would likely cost more than the printer to devise. So, for the moment, we are stuck with analog systems.
I have almost same issue but with PLA. Spend a lot time to repair this but I stuck.
Every print lose adhesion about couple layers. First layer test went fine. Filament doesnāt matter (tried 3, everyone from BambuLab). I even made a factory reset - thatās how Iām desperate
Iāll check this nozzle tip but when I changed to 0.2 failures were the same. I honestly have no idea whatās wrong.
It seems Iāve finally cracked the code, thanks to all your suggestions!
After wandering through mechanical tweaks and firmware adjustments, it turns out that following a BambuStudio software update, my PETG filament profile got a bit scrambled.
I was printing PETG with a fan between 10% and 90% ā¦ not ideal! A flow rate of 90% is way too enthusiastic for PETG and likely the reason why my printer started spewing noodles!
Iāll keep testing and show you a before/after with just a tweak on the fan. The filamentās a different color here, but it doesnāt affect the print quality.
Huge thanks to everyone for your invaluable input. It really warmed my maker heart
Problems always lead to improvement, right?
No hard feelings for Bambulab, though. They deliver fantastic machines with software thatās usually as slick as a well-oiled gear! Letās just call this a hiccup in an otherwise smooth printing journey.
I donāt think anybody above claimed that the printers never have issues. But it is a pretty common occurrence here for people to blame the printer or firmware update for issues that in the end were caused by themselves.
The IT PEBKAC acronym often applies to 3D printing, and even more so because there are many things the user needs to consider and think about to get a good print.
PEBKAC: problem exists between keyboard and chair
Most issues I have personally encountered were PEBKAC, and so many issue people come here to complain about ends up being PEBKAC as well. Even the comment above where people think their bed is clean after using IPA to smear oils around the bed. So many people have come here with that line and then after they actually clean their bed with soap and water, their āprinter from heavenā printed perfectly again. If you quickly wipe the IPA off with a dry cloth before it evaporates, you can reduce the chances of smearing the oils around, but it is never as reliable as soap and water.
Even experienced users have PEBKAC problems because they assume they can print on Bambu printers the same way they did with their old printer that used a stainless steel nozzle instead of hardened, and printed much slower than the Bambu printers. Both of those differences often warrant a different approach to printing.
I just submitted a ticket to Bambu citing this forum topic as well as the others complaining about the same issue. I suggested it might be related to their fan update.
I finally investigated a cooling issue because I was seeing significant defects in the tree supports that seemed to come from small collapses, and this was happening quite regularly.
Small collapse = temperature problem. There are three ways I know to control temp of your printed part in a 3D printer : the nozzle probe, printing speed and fan speed.
A test piece was also always crashing at the same spot, which indicated a problem with the file rather than the mechanics.
I downgraded the firmware and Bambu Studio. No change.
No problem with PLA > material or profile issue.
And I was surprised to discover that the fan is set to a maximum of 90% for bridges in my filament profileā¦
This was quite journey indeed and probably isnāt over eitherā¦
I am old school and prefer to backup things before updating software, drivers or such vital things.
And I donāt like using default profiles, I create my own all the timeā¦
With this I probably encounter far less hickups from updates and such as some users, no clue thoughā¦
A few weeks ago I found a site listing the firmware changes and changes in Studio.
And if I wouldnāt have done that without making a shortcut or such I could find the page nowā¦
Anywayā¦
Some of the changes we get are quite drastic.
Others are what you might call fine tuning.
And as we all know, from time to time we also get additional updates on the fly for our filament profiles and other thingsā¦
Hard to keep track of, even harder to comprehend if all help pages are out of orderā¦
Thankfully we can downgrade the firmware on our machines to some degree and for now.
Same for being able to use an older version of Studio without being blocked and forced to update.
What I would like to see is more from Bambuā¦
Like a comprehensive manual for Studio and the machines to begin with.
But also a complete firmware repository and all Studio version in one place.
And of course all with a full disclosure and how to properly use explanation until the online manual is eventually updatedā¦
Could save so much hassles and would have saved you a ton of time and filament
Maybe one dayā¦
I struggle to find the solution but I actually learned a lot about how things works on my Bambu machine so I wouldnāt blame Bambulab for all theses updates. I actually found that reversing the firmware was amazing. I could even do it with my phone.
I agree a repository with all software versions is always nice to have!
As OP you should have an option to flag an individual response as a solution. Try the three dotās next to a given response. Once selected, that post will be marked as a solution and the title will gain a ā[SOLVED]ā at the start.
Just want to point out that while the advice about dish soap is spot-on - preferably something similar to Dawn which actually does cut grease, oil, wax, etc. - there is also a good chance that heās using 70% IPA which is what is sold for general household and first-aid type uses. For industrial cleaning, electronics, etc, you want IPA of 90% or better. A bit more expensive but worth it.
I use 99% IPA and have news for you: itās only marginally better at best. The big benefit of 99% IPA versus store-bought 70% is that the remaining 30% (supposedly water) is usually not contaminant-free, which becomes evident when cleaning optical glass surfaces. For the best clean, I use an ultrasonic cleaner with 99% IPA for cleaning my circuit boards, something that is prohibitively expensive in the industrial sector.
Just in case the link expires, Hereās a screen grab.
To see this ādirty contaminantā phenomenon for yourself, take any dirty window or glass plate and hold it up to the light. Clean it with IPA, and youāll likely find that youāre just moving dirt around, especially oils. This applies to any cleaning process. As a college window washer, I learned the importance of using a squeegee to push loosened particles aside, avoiding obvious streaks. This lesson was reinforced during my college days when I built optical scopes and again later in the semiconductor industry cleaning wafers. The point is, whatever solvent you use, wiping will only go so far, especially with persistent contaminants like oils from your skin. Flooding away contaminants is essential.
BTW: CSIās rely upon this phenomena when collecting trace elements from a crime scene.
Not sure if it is of any use but still: Pitambari powderā¦
I had some remains from cleaning old copper pots and cups (decoration items).
It is sold in Asian grocery stores, mainly the Indian ones, to clean and āpolishā soft metal things like doing the dishes with not much extra work.
I gave it a shot after I created a bad mess on my bed when trying to print with āstupidā settings and not paying attention to the printā¦
Forgot to change the parameters for the bed and so I literally baked the PLA onto it.
Placed in the freezer to get the print off but the remains of the first layers and some glue did not budge.
Put some of the powder on a sponge, worked into the surface with a bit of water and let it sit for about half an hour.
Everything came off with ease and it seems the stuff has a build in rinse aid of sorts.
I think I will keep using it after a few rolls went through in order to check if it was just coincidence or if the stuff really works better than soap and IPA to get rid of bad stuff on the bed.
As for the IPA hypeā¦
I worked in a company building optical sensors for a few years and our first choice was IPA when it came to cleaning, DRY IPA as they labelled it with the lowest possible water content.
Due to the costs we one day decided to check if plain ethanol work be good enough.
Through that we learned about the differences when a company just states industrial ethanol, methylated spirit or used just a bittering agent.
Letās just say things come out of a still in a similar quality to what you had in the washā¦
In order:
Lab grade ethanol costs a fortune but is literally pure alcohol in drinking quality with no taste or anything.
Usually available in 92 to 95% concentrations.
Leaves no residue whatsoever, not even on optical glass and such.
Methylated spirit, is actual methanol was added is pretty much on par here but it can have bad effects on certain plastics - like acrylic starting to develop fine cracks or going dull if used too often or too long.
In most cases though methanol is just not removed from the distilled product and a bittering agent is added.
Depending on the grade and quality this can be a problem on optical glass, your windows or such as it can leave a slight haze behind - can be polished off though.
So what IS the big difference between Ethanol and Isopropanol?
The first you can drink, the later will kill you if you drink a bit too much.
But IPA is a ābetterā solvent than Ethanol.
That is in terms of itās polarity and ability to bond with other chemicals.
In most cases we encounter in the FDM world we wonāt really need to use IPA, Ethanol will do just fineā¦
For cleaning the mechanical parts though IPA is still best, not just because it can take away more grease than Ethanolā¦
I still have about 2 litres of good quality IPA here that I use for soxhlet extractions, so it doesnāt really get used up much.
But I canāt really remember the last time I used it on my bed intentionallyā¦
