First of all, a warm hello to everyone.
I have had a P1P for almost 6 weeks and have printed PLA and PETG with it so far. Now I wanted to print a cell phone case with TPU.
For testing, I print the Benchy with each filament first.
I chose the Bambulab TPU as the material in the Bambu Studio and wanted to try the first print with my RECREUS Filaflex 82A.
The feeding of the material was already difficult. Te TPU is very flexible but i could see, it comes into the printing head. The throughput with the feed button pressed was very small. After a few seconds the machine told “no filament”. The electrical return of the filament wasn’t working, so I removed the guide tube and was able to pull out the filament. To check, a quick print with PLA was fine.
So my second attempt started. Here, too, the discharge looked very thin, the printing of the Benchy started, but only a little material arrived on the plate, so i stopped it. But now I could not ejekt the material, the extruder didnt move anything. Removing the guide tube did not help. The TPU was fix in the clogged extruder. So I had to disassemble the extruder and found the stucked material.
Now my questions: Has anyone successfully printed TPU with the P1P?
If yes, how?
I just did my first TPU print on the P1P and it came out OK.
The Bambulabs official TPU filament was sold out so I purchased and used Duramic TPU 95A sourced from Amazon.
When i changed the filament - i just used the “UNLOAD” function on the printer to unload the old filament. I had no trouble feeding the TPU filament through the tube to the extruder head. I heated the temp up to 220C and used the “E” function to extrude all of the old filament out until i started seeing the fresh new TPU come out.
Here’s a wallet i just printed - Not perfect, but pretty damn cool. I encountered some stringing. I used the Bambu Labs TPU preset in Bambu Studio - with 20% infill, no supports.
In the extruder, there is a spring and an adjustment screw, where you can adjust how much tension is on the gear assembly. I have read previously that people with issues with TPU jam in extruder loosened this screw and that solved the problem. If i recall correctly you need to remove the front of the toolhead in order to access the adjustment screw - it would be accessible from outside the toolhead without removing anything but the toolhead plastic cover (not the removable part with magnets, the one behind it that is not removable without screws) - covers it. I even read that someone removed the plastic there to be able to adjust the tension screw without removal.
Update:
My subsequent print led to a clog in the nozzle.
I had to use the trick from this guide in order to unclog it.
Not sure i wanna print TPU anymore if clogging is considered norm.
I would like to find the tension adjustment screw mentioned by @gabe.peters
TPU 82A is a whole other beast than 95A. The difference in flexibility is immense. It will be impossible to print very soft TPU without adjusting the extruder tension.
The tension on the extruder of the bambu lab is quite high, and that’s necessary to get to the very fast speeds.
If you put soft TPU in there, the filament will be completely crushed and will go everywhere but the hotend.
I already made a topic about this. However I have not yet tested TPU yet
You can find the tension adjustment screw on the right side of the extruder. It is not planned to modify the pressure-you can not screw if the extruder is mounted. Look at the red line.
After that I tried to print a cell phone case with the same settings. This did not work. It clogged the extruder again.
It is really very difficult to get good results with this soft material.
Seem to be a way of dealing with tpus like 85A and softer by going slow. I had plenty of troubles trying to print fast but then slowed everything down to a snails pace and then tuned around flow factor to compensate for the elastic slip with ever softer filaments. So in summary slow speeds 10-30mm/s, no retraction (and obviosuly avoid crossing perimeters, some designs not viable) + some flowrate compensation as softer and softer filaments tend to elastically slip more with each extruder tooth.
I’m also struggling to print TPU (i’ll try to print Colorfabb Varioshore 92A) in the X1C as well. Since i started to print this TPU, i have deassebled the hotend and extruder gearhouse already tree times at lease ;-(. This filament i even was able to print on a bowden printer, but not on X1C.
I think, one of the problems for TPU is the relatively long melting zone in the hotend where the flex get stuck sometimes. Secondly, the max volumetric speed on the generic TPU profile is too high from my opinion. Reducing the mac vol. speed solves some issue, I still figure out the right balance of the setting to reliably print TPU.
I will have to check my settings as once I dialed it in mine come out very very clean and I use TPU quite often. Layers and outside walls are extremely tight and even a bit glossy…
I’ve had more success using the Generic PLA setting than the Generic TPU setting. Not 82A, 95A but possibly worth a try. The extra speed seemed to produce better results.
WIth my P1P I got great results printing Filaflex 95A with the Generic TPu settings. I just dried my filament overnight, made sure my bed was protected from air movement in the room, bed was clean and slowed the generic speed settings down by 25%.
Wow I was looking for a profile for TPU HF and I read a bit of the 2 topics here, Indeed interesting, good to know sh*t will come in when going lower than 90A shore hardness.
Soooo… I printed this Overture TPU High Flow white before, but I was in kind of a hurry and just sended the print.
I stored 1month ago in a vacuum bag with silica gel, it has breathed for at most 4hrs since the unpacking so I haven’t warm-dried it even once, yet.
Now I was willing to set the profile up a bit better and maybe shorten the 2 hours of estd. I was seeing into Bambu Studio.
And you scared me, so I didn’t try straight out to set 12 mm^2 per second.
I doubled the 3.6 of the Generic TPU profile as set for P1S to 7.2, carefully.
And I regret sincerely to have not set it straight to 12 like the HS TPU profile should be according to others. This thing looks like it could manage 12 mm^2 x second pretty easily.
Notice how the front of the hull is purposedly oriented straight face to the fan.
Daaaaang this thing came out gorgeous! There’s a string, one, just to don’t disappoint.
I feel a bit confused because I was expecting to have some problems. This way it’s a 20g print gone well but I haven’t learned much.
The really disappointing thing is that… Sunlu PLA Meta white has probably absorbed lotta more moist. The print I made this afternoon was a spider web compared to this, which is TPU.
I was wondering why, and I had to change material (probably distracting me with something else) to get the answer. Lul.
