New to the Bambu family but have a number of years under my belt with FDM. I got my X1C the other day and so far I am very impressed with this machines capability so far. Threw a 17hr (on my previous printer) print job, done in 6hr 38 mins! Now that’s what I’m talkin about!
But now something strange has happened. I went and printed up a spare spool using a model that I pulled from a Printables collection (Printables) and all went well until I went to print the second half of the spool. I am using all of the defaults in Studio (except for turning down the chamber fan to 70%). For each of the print jobs that I have run so far I have the following turned on:
Micro Lidar Calibration
Bed Leveling
Resonance Frequency Identification
But something odd happens after the initial “Nozzle Cleaning” step, the nozzle gets parked, I mean GROUNDED into the flexible build plate just forward of the area where it gets its nose wiped. (see pic)
The nozzle then gets moved very slowly back and forth (<10mm/sec) then the hotend heats up to around 140ºC and bed leveling occurs.
This latest print I had a number of problems with what looked like oozing and a big ol snot accumulating around the nozzle which quickly deposited/fuzed onto the part and the nozzle/head ran it over (making a nasty clunking sound) all before I could hit pause.
I am worried that the printer head or worse the carriage got damaged by this event. Should I risk further possible damage by loading up a small test print and run the printer through the entire process to see if this is a repeatable issue? I’d really like to get some parts printed tonight if at all possible so any advice would be appreciated!
That’s a normal part of the process, it’s how they remove any debris from the nozzle tip before the bed levelling process. It’s explained in the Wiki if you take a look.
Edit: Adding firmware version numbers for clarity
BAM Studio: V 1.6.2.4
X1: 01.05.02.00
AMS: 00.00.06.32
Thank you for the replies folks.
I should add that this nozzle contact did not happen on the ‘Cool Plate’ side when I printed up some PLA samples.
I am currently running a new bed level and the nozzle contact happens at the exact same location. The nozzle gets wiped (twice) before it moves over to this particular location. What I do not understand is with the level of precision that we achieve with this printer that the nozzle, does not just contact the build plate but it actually has worn away the surface layer/label. And now the flow tests along the perimeter of the plate looks like ■■■■ compared to the first several test prints.
The current print appears to be progressing well. First layer looks perfect… oh ■■■■ I spoke too soon.
Printer went into a nozzle cleaning and first layer inspection with the Lidar, its blob city…looks like it did not do a complete nozzle wipe or it completely missed the wiping mechanism. Had to pause the printer so that I could try and salvage the parts and in the process I noticed that the ‘contact’ area looks worse than before.
The following pictures to illustrate:
First layer in progress.
The ‘Contact’ area after bed leveling and with the first layer underway.
Blobs appear after first layer (Lidar) inspection.
Manually paused the print so that I could remove blobs.
Hi Barry, Yes I purposely turned it off in order to print a spare spool as I could not fit the model onto the plate without running into those lines.
From what I read in the wiki, the flow calibration routine isn’t “usually” necessary to perform. I did have it perform this calibration once for PLA (and those four lines were ugly as well as the first layer for those parts) and for the first PETG print that I performed on this printer (which turned out beautiful). After reading the fine print in the wiki, I am hesitant to perform a manual flow rate calibration, I’ll try another automatic one on this next print to see if it makes any difference.
Here is the result of that last print, the part on the far right is the one with the initial blob, but you can see that another one showed up on the middle one. Yeah, I can see how perhaps flow control may be at issue here so I’ll address that next.
But I am still concerned about the nozzle digging into the build plate.
Bear with this noob, I haven’t had the time to read through the many threads here so I hadn’t seen the references to this digging/gouging. Glad that it is a ‘normal’ function for this printer. Many thanks for your replies!
Okay so a follow up to the most recent print attempt…enabled Bed leveling and Flow Calibration.
The nozzle temperature started at 255 for the cleaning step and dropped off to around 140ºC for the actual bed leveling process. It was during this cool-down that the nozzle developed a slight ooze…which stayed on throughout the bed level process.
Fwiw: I do manual flow calibrations for all my filaments and disable the automatic one. Saves time and filament each print and they’re not hard to do with Orca Slicer.
