Thanks for sharing this! Would you be willing to share your starting G code? I’ve worked with editing the G code on my Creality printer but I don’t get it as well as I would like 
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FWIW, in an attempt to reduce the poop waste, I made this model to test the flushing volumes: Printables
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Thank you, before my next print I’m going to turn off the tower and optimize the flushing volume.
I also need to vent for a moment. I’m doing my second AMS multicolor print now which is supposed to use black and green filaments (spools 2&3). In coloring the model I missed one thin line of gray (spool 1), and it’s used a quarter kilo of gray already in flushing, plus has stopped printing 3x so far due to a clogged poop chute.
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Let me start by saying there is a great deal of improvement that can be made. Even the engineers at Bambu made the wire from the back of the ams to the inside of the ams barely long enough. The best of humanity could not spare an extra couple of inches of wire. This is how most things people do end up. If you try to discuss you get slammed instead of helped and then called a trouble maker.
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In my experience, the prime tower helps with reducing stringing after a filament change tho… It’s not so much useful when it comes to flushing out the old color so it doesn’t wash into the new one, but with the models I printed without prime tower, it seems that I had more stringing directly after the filament changes. Feels like the tower pulls out those strings before they end up in the print 
Not sure if it’s just a subjective feeling though…
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I don’t use the prime tower at all, and I set the purge multiplier to .55 or .6 and do the auto calculate. A lot less, but certainly not no waste.
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To be fair, biggest waste are the billions of Benchies that people keep printing! I really can’t imagine who needs a benchy with Rock’s head on it.
Remember that even BL X1C is a stupid machine, it does not know how to do things, you need to tell it how to do stuff. Some models have lots of infill in all layers, some models don’t have any infill in higher levels but the machine does not know that, so you need to set slicing parameters by hand for every print you make. Or you can just leave the basic settings and not care about few extra grams that the printer poops out. You can also use just one color and paint your model yourself!
There are no plug and play 3D printers!
“Remember that even BL X1C is a stupid machine, it does not know how to do things, you need to tell it how to do stuff.”
Ahh yes compared to the smart machines that nobody or anything ever had to give instructions to in order to function. Those darn sentient non-biological contraptions they are!
That attitude blocks improvements. Why add Lidar? We can just manually determine the flow rate. It is programmed to work as it does until they improve how it is programmed.
Ahh yes compared to the smart machines that nobody or anything ever had to give instructions to in order to function. Those darn sentient non-biological contraptions they are!
I’m not comparing it to anything, just saying that many people seem to be totally lost of the fact that user is controlling the printer through slicer settings.
Like mike.yearwood here saying lidar would calibrate the flow rate. Which it does not do and Bambu Labs has clearly stated that lidar only helps probing nozzle height and pressure advance. But even that has nothing to do with optimizing purge amounts. You really need AI for that and without AI we only have a stupid machine that only does what it has been programmed into.
Hi Jules,
How do I mod the prep to be as quick as yours in the photo above you posted?
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Not an answer or any solace for your issue, however the CEO of Bambu Labs addressed this issue in a recent Interview. He too is concerned about poop. They are working on the issue he said. How l9ng it will take to resolve or make better, he did not say.
With color or multi material printing, waste has been a big issue. Given that this method of printing is in its infancy, I see a lot of room for improvement.
I understand concerns with throwing away filament especially the expensive stuff. For me, this is just part of how it works. I hope someday for better options like inline purge and splice with zero waste of any kind. Literally just hit print and get full color at 800-2200mms print speeds.
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Yes. My mistake. I meant pressure advance. My point is there are ways to program solutions for many many things. To purge from black to white, one can lay down a line of white, then compare it against a second line of white and continue until there is no detectable color difference. That would be a very good purge. No AI would be required.
How do you “lay down a line of white” at layer 188? You need prime tower for that…or an AI that sets your slicer parameters to optimal for you. There are soooo many things people can print that it is impossible to pre-code a solution for every possible situation. When the slicer at the moment does not even know how to arrange object in decent manner, there no hope for multicolor printing optimization. We need to do that by hand for a long time still. And not all people are capable to do it. Hence, 3D printers are not PnP.
I’m fairly confident lidar has very little actual use, even in theory, now or in the future. People have been testing with it and looked it’s code and it sure looks like a gimmick to me.
My X1C is fantastic printer, best option at it’s price range! People should not expect too much of it. Someone said they should have bought dual extruder printer instead. Well, that would have worked until you want more than 2 colors. And I hear they are a pain to calibrate. You can always paint your prints!
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You know in advance how many colors you will try, so it’s possible to determine the purge required by doing what I suggested. There is a routine being developed:
People should expect a lot from vendors or we end up with the stream of copy-cat printers before the Bambu.
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I get your point. I mean you can literally do that. Print lines and play with numbers until you have purge and prime volumes based on your needs.
Remember, it’s gonna get complicated when you add infill and maybe objects as you go forward.
Myself, I got into 3d printing for color, and I have my own numbers I use.
You don’t. At least I think I understood. You load x color, then you unload the color, without doing any purge/prime you start printing and measure how long before it’s the color you want.
Obviously you Math at this point… Or just make adjustments until you get what you want.
I think that you can achive the same by just setting all purge volume to zero, and doing a single rectangular layer print using two colors
That prime object looks awesome. How do you change tower to objects please?
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