Hey all
New here ive built a reprap mendal when it was all new and owned an ender 3. Both great fun. Now im looking forthe printing not the printer to be my hobby.
Now to the point
Has anyone experience of printinv polycarbonate more specifically polycarbonate carbon fiber on the A1 and woth shat success.
The only thing stopping me hitting buy now id the max bed temp of 100c is there an upgrage to get to genuine 120c ?
Thanjs and happy printing
First of all, welcome to the forum!
I think you’re in the right place. The Bambu line of printers are the closest consumer grade printer to a turn key solution. I went the same route after I spent years where my hobby was the printer and now my hobby is CAD design and printing.
I’m not aware of anyone attempting to print with PC on the A1 printers.
While the A1 is a great printer, it’s not recommended for printing PC due to it’s lack of enclosure. PC is very prone to warping and really requires an enclosure to print reliably. Not saying you can’t print PC, as you’ll probably have some success with small models, but you’ll run into problems as the prints get bigger. Using carbon filled filament, or PC blended filaments, will help reduce warping, but I’d still not recommend a printer with an enclosure. I’d hate for you to get frustrated with the printer by trying something that it’s really not meant for.
There is no supported methods for increasing the A1’s (or any Bambu printer) bed temperature. You can print PC filaments with a heat bed at 100c, but that’ll depend on the model you’re trying to print, the filament characteristics, and the printer you’re printing on. People have been printing PC on the P1S printers that has a 100c bed temp and printing fiber reinforced filaments after upgrading to the hardened extruder gears and nozzle.
In my old Prusa days 
I used to print complex geometry in pure PC without enclosure. The trick was to use special over-compression printing profiles for PC, and what was special was the extreme width of the printed material: I used 0,16mm layers height with 0,75mm-0,8mm line width or 0,2mm layers height with 0,9mm-0,95mm line width. Lower printing speed, max hotbed temperature and some good adhesive.
I plan to try the same approach on P1S but it should work on A1 too.
I think at the very end we will see if we can rely on the BL extruders to deploy the double amount of filament - so printing speed 50% would be my first change.
Thanks guys.
I have a particular project in mind for polycarbonate carbon fiber. I was orginally looking at the p1s which at the moment is a stretch for me ÂŁÂŁÂŁÂŁÂŁ in researching ive found several instances where an enclosure doesnt help. Then thought about the A1. But as far as ive found all the pc filaments reccomend higher bed temps usually up around 120c
I can hack it if i need to same for a warmish enclosure thats notgoing to fry electrics.
No matter how hard i look im always back to Bambu Labs though.
Maybe i can find an alternative filament or maybe Bambu will up bed temps in next itterations.
Id hack my ender 3 to do it bt thas gonna cost more than the A1 by some margin
For now i have A1 - hardened nossle and hardened gear set in my basket
Just did a quick search for PC CF filament on Am…
Found one: IEMAI with 20% CF. They recommend a bed temperature of 80°C-100°C. So that theoretically would work on the A1 with the recommended print temperature of 250°C to 280°C.
Yep ive just come across that to also priline
Worth a go im sure
Much closer to clicking buy now
I don’t know how it will do on the A1 but I can vouch for that filament. I’ve been through a couple of rolls of it and it prints beautifully on the X1C.
Hi printer mcgee
Sorry i cant work out how to reply with quote.
On the x1c is it setting an enclosure temperature and what profile do you use? Im guessing yhe same profile will be availabketo the A1 just without enclosure temp!?
Thanks
There is the pure PC that is difficult to print and there are at lot of mixtures with PC.
The Polymaker PC (mixture) is quite easy to print, probably like the rest of the mixtures.
Makes sense to consider pure PC only if you need very high temperature resistance (pure PC goes up to 150C) while the mixture have the softening temperature 105C that is just a bit over the regular ABS (around 100C).
Otherwise PC mixture plus some annealing gives you a very good combination of mechanical proprieties and printing easiness and quality.
That’s ok. To quote here highlight the text with your mouse and a box will pop up above what you highlighted with some options, one of them will be “Quote”. The X1C doesn’t have a heated chamber so Bambu Studio will show you the ambient temp but you can’t set it. I use the “Generic PC” profile. I’m not 100% sure it will show up when you have the printer set to A1 but if it doesn’t you could create a profile and just move the numbers over. I’m at work so I can’t test it but if anyone reading this is near Bambu Studio (and has an A1) maybe they can give it a test to see if it’s there.