Hello all! First post on the forums and my first foray into the world of 3d printing! While my a1 mini has printed some pretty cool things, I’ve reached a roadblock. I’ve been trying to print a birdcage to put a separately printed bird into as a desk ornament, but my printer keeps dragging the hot end across the vertical bars of the birdcage and breaking them all off. I’ve tried adjusting the retraction settings, wipe settings, and slowing it down to no avail. The .stl is one I found off of thingiverse, but what’s driving me nuts is that my local Microcenter is printing the exact same one on ender 3’s with no problems. I also tried printing a poop basket for my printer (off of makerworld) and it had a similar failure printing the “mesh” side design, crushing the mesh wall about halfway through. I am using inland basic pla. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated! I am still new, but can try to provide more details if needed!
Thank you!
Have you tried using Z-Hop? I thought it’s on by default but since you didn’t mention it… Otherwise maybe slower with a cooler nozzle temp might help. When printing PLA like that (those overhangs branching out) the tips tend to lift/pull upward when there isn’t enough cooling and then the nozzle hits them.
That would also be my suggestion. Reduce the speed, but also the acceleration. For the acceleration, look at the first shift, which is entered there as the default.
The difference with Ender from CR is that these printers print slower (for very small details around 10 to 20mm/s, normal speed maybe at real 25 to 35mm/s). And the acceleration is very low, look at how fast the print head of the Ender moves from one position to another when changing position).
Maybe not for this print, but grid infill cab=n also cause problems. (It’s the one where it prints // lines in y direction, then without changing height repeats for x direction, the head smashes into the previous cooled layers)
Thank you all for the replies! Duane777, thank you for the z-hop tip! For some reason, I could only find it under filament settings and not printer. I uninstalled and reinstalled Bambu Studio and now I swear there’s a printer setting button where there wasn’t one before. Z-hop is already on, but I put it at .8 from .4. I created a profile with your suggestions to give it a shot!
Forgive me, I’m still VERY new to printing and using Bambu studio, where is that setting specifically? I did slowdown bridging and gap infill, I’m hoping that since it’s that specific layer (always the same one) that’s doing both that will help.
Thank you for the tip! Question, where is this specific setting? I couldn’t find any setting with the same name, but made sure to change any infill off of grid just in case that was it.
Thank you all! I’m trying each tip and creating a “birdcage trial” profile since it seems to be a whole event 
Will post upon inevitable success/failure; I’ve seen what this printer can do and refuse to give up on it! It’s a learning experience after all!
Alrighty! Even with the above suggestions applied as best as I could, printer is still running the head horizontally across all the “spines”, breaking them off. It keeps occurring when it tries to bridge them all together or gap infill. (EDIT: Scratch that, after further examination the head is dragging on layers earlier in the print too, it’s just exasperated by the spines being more fragile than the whole base of the cage.) I’ve even tried another model and they both fail at the same point. To make things even more convoluted, I can print voronoi prints absolutely beautiful! But it’s failing here… Could this be a Bambu studio slicing failure? Are there other slicers recommended for the a1 mini?
Just in case it is a setting error or printer issue on my end, I have attached the links for the models that are failing.
The acceleration values can be found in Bambu.Studio under “Speed” at the bottom and then under “Acceleration”. First Layer steht beim X1 auf 500 (standard). As you can perhaps see in the picture, I have already reduced the acceleration for small objects.
If the supports continue to break off even at very low speeds, consider the layer height for the support structures. You can tick a box to select a different layer height for support structures. I hardly ever use this option. This is because I want my support structure layers to be exactly the same height as the adjacent object being printed. Select the distance between the support structure interface and the object as high as a layer is. For a layer height of 0.16mm, this means a distance of 0.16mm.
Another case would be warping on the print bed, in which case the supports would be at a slight angle and the nozzle would touch them.
It was a typo I did not notice - ‘cab=n’ should be ‘can’. You’ve changed it, so good.
If you haven’t found a quick fix, then best to start with test prints for calibration. Orca slicer (which is a fork of Bambu studio), has some calibartion prints. Calibrate the filament you are using to your printer, and keep the filament dry, etc.