I just got my X1C, printed the Benchy and LED lamp, both of those went very well.
Then I went to print a part I had printed on my other printer, and it did not go well. I’m hoping you guys can tell me what I did wrong. The purge tower seems to have lost integrity during the build, and maybe something about that caused a couple of layers in the main object to not adhere to each other. When I went to pop the tower off the plate, it crumbled at layer lines, and the part easily came apart at the bad layers you see below.
I started with the Support for ABS tree support profile, although I’m printing in ASA (with Support for ABS). This is what I intended to print:
This has happened to me. A couple of things I might suggest. For a single color print, the prime tower is not needed unless you’re doing smooth video capture. Then the purge tower will be necessary if you don’t want stringing to occur in the model.
However, I see couple of things here that could benefit from adjustments.
Eliminate the prime tower if you are not doing smooth video.
Move the tower as far away from the model as possible and closest to the purge wiper.
Increase the filament temperature.
Increase the size of the prime tower so it has a larger support area, and increase the brim width to ensure good adhesion.
Instead of the prime tower, you could use a draft shield (only available in Orca Slicer, with Skirt Loops enabled), which offers two benefits: it creates a temperature barrier if you’re experiencing unwanted air blowing on the model, and it also acts as a prime tower.
Have you monitored the internal temp of your chamber to ensure that you are maintaining temps above 40c?
Are you making sure the fans are turned off? ASA and other high temp filaments like it warm.
Have you tried manually calibrating the filament rather than rely on factory defaults? (Available as a standard function in Orca Slicer but not Bambu Studio)
It’s a single-color print, but using support material in the interface, so it needs to purge between them.
It was firmly attached the build plate. It just fell apart at specific layers, the lowest one about a centimeter above the build plate. As you can see in the time lapse, it lasted a very long time.
I haven’t. Too bad it doesn’t record all the sensor values during the print
I just used the profile as provided by Bambu.
No, I don’t even know how to do this.
I guess I could try Orca, but I feel like the Bambu slicer ought to be able to print the Bambu materials reliably.
Don’t assume this. Give it a try and see if you get different results.
It has been noted elsewhere in this forum that the Bambu settings often will provide false confidence.
While I remember, did you dry your filament? It’s important for diagnostic purposes to weigh it before you dry it and then weigh it after. This will confirm if moisture is a contributing factor. It’s important to note, it’s often not a single cause but multiple stacking causes.
There is no downside to loading Orca. It is a fork of Bambu but with many more quality-of-life features, like baked-in calibration routines that Bambu Studio is missing. It can coexist on the same machine and you can run them at the same time since it’s largely based on the same code base so you will likely not immediately notice all the features at first.
Regarding Bambu’s pre-baked slicing settings, as stated previously, many problems reported here stem from inadequacies in the default filament profiles for their hotter filaments. Often, these can be remedied through filament drying and manual calibration, but note that the latter is a skill you need to acquire to do it quickly and effectively. However, if you take on that challenge, you’ll free yourself to use almost any filament, knowing that you can always calibrate it on your own. It should also be noted that for some applications, it may be useful to have more than one calibration profile, as these often provide better results for different types of models.
Lastly, try slowing down the print using “quiet mode.” This will reduce the print speed on all print movements by 50%. The trade-off is that it will double print time, but it is a quicker diagnostic tool than manually tuning each speed function in the speed menu. If speed reduction works, you can go back and adjust individual speed settings, such as acceleration and overhangs, to see which one produces the best results for your model. However, this might be more trouble than it’s worth unless you’re doing a lot of repetitive printing of the same troublesome model.
In addition to @Olias sound advice, you may also want to consider increasing the flushing volume when changing filaments. The images do indicate weak layers even in the model. Are these always where filament changes occured?
I’d guess that not only the prime tower was weakened by insufficient purging.
Just hit the Flushing Volume button, double or tripple the flushing volumes (up to 999 is possible I believe) by typing new values into the table between the support material and the print material and see if that helps to get a stable model (and improve the prime towers stability).
