Last night I tried to print a figurine and it mixed the support material in with the primary filament. I’m not sure what happened. I have a wipe tower but did notice there wasn’t much in the purge bucket despite the slicer saying there would be 96 filament changes. Slicer settings in images.
Weird. What does the Preview tab show per layer when dragging up and down? Only PLA in the model or support material mixed in?
Incidentally, the “Support/raft base” material does not have to be selected in this case - the material that is selected for the model body will be used by default (the PLA).
Here’s an example from Bambu Studio v1.8.4.51:
Are you using the latest slicer version? The “Avoid interface filament for base” setting is not in your screen shot.
Check the Flushing Volumes - use as high as possible with non-stick support material or when using PETG as support for PLA (800 works ok for flushing both ways IME)
A quick/cheap test of alternate settings would be to cut the model a few layers below your first support layer and print the top part to see what happens. And abort if it does anything weird again.
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As stated above, you need to send your flushing value correctly. The support material isn’t being purged fully.
To be honest, not many people use the PLA support material.
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I’ll check when I get home but I only downloaded it a few days ago. As for flushing, I just assumed default would work, but I still have some confusion.
If flushing is the provlem why is it not just a few layers but a significant numbers of layers? His entire face is support material?
Wouldn’t the prime tower help with this as well?
The slicer said there would be over 90 changes, I don’t know where that number came from but shouldn’t I be seeing far more waste being dropped?
Should I use PETG? I’ve only just started hearing about that as support for pla. Does it work better than support? I bought it assuming it was a good option as I can never get pla supporta to come off cleanly.
PETG works extremely well as an interface layer when printing PLA. The interface layer separates really easily and cleanly, but there are a few custom settings to a standard 0.2mm nozzle profile that will help:
Custom settings for: 0.2mm Standard @BBL X1C:
- Support: enabled
- Support style: Snug (not critical but it does make support smaller/leaner and easier to separate from the sides of the part)
- Support/raft interface: PETG selected
- Top interface spacing = 0mm (gives a very smooth top surface of the support - 0.1mm also works)
- Flushing Volume: ***** Manually increase the Flushing Volume between PLA-PETG and PETG-PLA (800 works fine) to prevent the “diluted” PETG from weakening the PLA and causing an inferior first layer on top of the PETG support (i.e the underside of the supported part).
That’s all there is to it! Try print a simple block with a space cut out beneath it and give it a try 
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Using PETG is a support option. There are a couple threads about this if you search around.
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Good info. I’ll order some petg later. Do those setting change if you use a different quality setting? Find vs draft.
If increasing flush that much is a wipe tower needed?
Thanks. Now I regret buying the support material.
Hey you recommended “snug” but I see that is only an option for normal supports not tree. I’ve been under the impression tree was the way to go? Also, I have studio 1.8.4.51 but the release notes say you have to be in “develop mode” to see the option “Avoid interface filament for base”
sorry for multiple replies here. So I went to flushing volumes and apparently by default it is set to auto calculate that and for some reason with auto calc it has it set to 0
Set the Multiplier to 1.
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I’m confused as to how autocalculate works as it doesn’t seem to actually do anything? It looks like that is what happened to me on the last print, it was not flushing at all.
Do this, and then “Re-calculate”.
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No I get that, I already did that and been fiddling around. What I’m asking is why the autocaclulate option in preferences seems to not do anything?
I think the reason the original model came out is because there was no flushing, but that was because it defaulted to 0 for some reason and autocalculate did nothing.
I think you answered your own question.
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No I don’t think so lol. Thanks for your help on the thread though. .
If 1.00 is entered in the multiplier field and then re-calculate pressed, the table will update.
In the image below:
- Spool 1 is grey PETG and spool 4 is orange PLA Tough.
- The values for the cells in column 1/row 4 and column 4/row 1 have been manually edited to 800 for maximum flushing when printing a PLA Tough part with PETG as the support.
- Spool 2 and 3 are not used for this print so the flushing values are irrelevant.
- I find this easier than using the multiplier.
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