Bambu P1S, Hardened Steel 0.4 nozzle, AMS 2 Pro
Bambu PLA Glow - blue
Bambu Studio is now giving me a scary warning about the wear on my AMS with PLA Glow.
I don’t expect to use Glow very much, but I promised two prints to my daughter. I am doing a few test prints with the PLA Glow as well. The model requires supports. I was planning on using PVA in the support interfaces, requiring the AMS.
I have seen some people, who seem to be printing with Glow all the time, talk about very serious wear on their AMS. But what about a maker like myself who’s barely using Glow at all?
The AMS 2 pro is supposed to be a little more resistant to wear than previous models. Not totally mitigated and there are other wear points besides the funnels but…
Key Details on AMS 2 Pro Funnels
“Ceramic-reinforced antiwear bushings are embedded in each feeder inlet to better protect the inlet from being worn by the filament after prolonged use.”
PLA Glow
Compatibility Details
AMS 2 Pro / AMS / AMS HT: Compatible, but leads to faster component wear.
Expect Warnings: Bambu Studio will display an explicit warning about abrasive wear when slicing glow PLA with an AMS profile enabled.
Inspect Feed Paths: If you do run glow PLA through the AMS 2 Pro, regularly check the inlets, internal tubing, and gears for grinding or grooving
Running 1 or 2 SMALL jobs with PLA Glow should not kill your AMS. But I won’t buy you a new one if it does.
Another “I’ve done it and it’s fine” here. I printed up a few dozen glow in the dark fidgets to give out with candy last Halloween. Hardened nozzle, AMS 2. It might be an issue for a print farm turning out glow prints all the time but for occasional prints, don’t worry about it.
Wow, I’m surprised. I’ve run PLA Glow from Bambu, AnyCubic and Voxelab through my AMS 2 + P1S without issues. Still, glad the side spool worked out for you!
Glad you managed to get the prints completed with the external spool holder.
Abrasive filaments will also grab the PTFE tubes harder than non-abrasive filaments. That will lead to situations where non-abrasive filaments tolerate non-optimized tubing paths that the abrasive filaments won’t. If your PTFE runs are particularly long, for example, the friction generated by the abrasive filaments may be stronger than the gears controlling feeding, and this could be directional.
I have a P1S, an AMS and AMS2. Before the warnings, I regularly ran all my filament until the spools ran out, and in the beginning they were Glow filaments more often than not (I thought they looked neat).
In fact I have a spool of the basic PLA Glow loaded up right now, I just used it to print the eyes in a dragon.
I do like Bambu printers, but the buffers and the hubs that manage the filament flow tend to get misaligned, stall the extruder, break the filament and generally cause problems especially with ‘hard’ filaments. Happily, there are any number of tube alignment/extraction prints that clamp onto or fit into the hub/buffer that fix this. They are available on Makerworld and are pretty easy to find.
I definitely recommend finding, printing and using one in any case, but particularly if you plan on ignoring the abrasive warning and printing using an AMS anyway, which I have successfully done (~3 years since the last fault), but your mileage may vary.
Caveat Emptor; Don’t blame me if you choose to 3D print.
I’ve been thinking about getting a P2S buffer just to make a version for those folks. They seem to be having similar issues to what I remember from 3 years ago.
I can’t say this with 100% certainty, but after I printed around 20-30 dragons eyes and belly in glow in the dark filament I started to have trouble with the AMS primary feeders from where the glow in the dark filament was. So I’m assuming it was the cause. Personally I won’t run glow in the dark through my AMS anymore.
First signs I had was that the feeder would pull back the filament too far and I had to push it back through for the next filament change. It started out periodic, but then became every time.
I decided to take it apart and see what happened. There is a small switch that this little magnetic part on the end of my screw driver is part of and it had a groove warn into it (you might have to open the pic and zoom in but it’s evident!). I’m guessing this is what the warning means by increased wear This is the part that tells the feeder to stop. Once I replaced that part I was back in business!
The question I still haven’t found an answer to is are there other parts that could see this kind of wear with glow in the dark filament? I’m been hesitant to use it since I learned this. The part in the AMS Feeder was only a few dollars and about 10 minutes to fix… but what other parts should I be concerned about (aside from the nozzle of course)?
Hmmm, upon reflection and reading your post, I realize I come from an era where taking your printer apart and reassembling it every few days was just a normal part of the process.
This P1S has been so trouble-free (comparatively) that the idea of potentially, eventually replacing a feeder just doesn’t bother me much. I think I am going to take a look at that part though.
Considering all the 3D printer parts that are available, I think it’s worth taking a look through the Makerworld list of these to see if there are items that can make your printing life more pleasant and trouble-free.
How cool is it that when you have a problem with a device, you can have a choice of revisions to fix that problem, and that you can then print and install it yourself? I think most have their preferred version of poop handling hanging off the back of their printer. What version could Bambu have included that satisfied even a tenth of these?
No worries. I think everyone with an AMS should have some version of this.
The hubs/buffers on every one of the AMS(2) printers cycles every centimeter of filament flow on every print. The smoother this movement, the lower the tension peak from feeder to extruder. In the extreme, before I installed that first device, the filament sometimes pulled so tight it broke inside the AMS. It occasionally also dragged hard enough to stall the extruder. I do wonder how much wear is exacerbated by events short of that.
In short, I got a lot more experience taking my printer/AMS apart that first couple of months than I have ever had in the years following.
This is the part that tells the feeder to stop. Once I replaced that part I was back in business!