i got an A1 about 3 weeks ago, when i picked it up i got a bunch of Inland brand PLA filament. i got a lot of great prints with the default settings using this filament
then i recently bought from Elegoo PLA Pro filament, i had adhesion issues, warping, and general quality issues… i adjusted my print settings and for the most part got it printing good enough, then i switched from black to blue and that’s when things went down hill.
some how towards the end of my first print with the blue Elegoo PLA Pro filament bits of filament got imbedded into the extruder gear, this cause a few subsequent prints to fail horribly. i took the extruder gear out and cleaned it and at that point was fed up with Elegoo filament, so i sent it all back to Amazon.
i switched back to the Inland PLA (while i wait for a shipment of Bambu PLA) but now im having a new issue that i cant seem to solve. im not 100% sure how to describe it, it seems like some layers are great then randomly it will skip a bit of maybe have poor adhesion, but then some layers look good. i have attached some photos of spools im trying to print, that were printed directly from the Handy App, i didnt slice them and i have printed them before with success prior to the story above.
Also it would not hurt to check the screws of the heating assembly as described in this wiki article.
They tend to loosen over time and need to be tightened again. I did this the first time after I had my A1 for about a month and was surprised that three of the four screws had come loose already. Now I check them every 4 to 6 weeks and re-tighten them carefully.
i did this as well as the cold pull… the subsequent prints were the best iv seen to date, i think the tightening removed the minor wobble i was getting
I’ve just done a cold pulls and tightened the hotend heating screws (they were loose a bit). There is a slight improvement but it’s still not printing correctly.
The clicking clicking noise is gone.
I’ve done a full calibration after tightening the screws.
I’m using the standard Bambu PLA filament to address these issues. Otherwise for the last few months, I was using the filaments from 3DQF (Manchester manufacturer) without any issue.
Any potential advise ? I’ve bought the A1 in July.
why will it happens now as the filament never left its box ?
No I haven’t done any pre-drying; waiting a week in the drying box before starting to print when I’ve initially received the filament from Bambu and 3DQF. I’ve waited to have around 15% before using the newly fresh filament.
Filaments are not neccessarily dryed after having been drawn, (water) cooled and then wound. Nowadays, it is common that they go into the bag with a fair amount of moisture.
Welcome to the world of filament moisture. Filament direct from the manufacturer can have a whole range of moisture contents. That it’s new and unopened doesn’t matter. This is set by manufacturing processes and even the type of bag that is used to seal the filament in.
Putting filament in a dry box will remove moisture but it is an extremely slow process at room temperature. That’s why all filament dryers have heaters. It’s why clothes dryers have heaters. Water evaporates faster at elevated temperature.
Standard filament dryers are limited by ambient relative humidity. If humidity is high, filament dryers can lose effectiveness. If you can even hit a low target humidity in the filament dryer, it will take longer. If humidity is high enough filament may not even dry.
When drying filament, this is why it’s important to note the final humidity in the filament drying chamber since it tells you right off how drying went or didn’t. Scales can be handy to quantify the water loss but if that loss is small, humidity in the dryer can tell you why.
Most have pretty good results with filament dryers. There are custom clips on MakerWorld to hold doors open to get better exchange with outside air to help get rid of liberated moisture. If ambient humidity is high, though, those clips won’t help.
When you put filament into poly boxes with desiccant there are some things to keep in mind.
The desiccant will help to hide the moisture content of the filament. Since water leaving filament is a very slow process at room temperature, the desiccant can scavenge that water relatively quickly and the dry box humidity indication won’t be a reliable method to know filament moisture content.
But if you take the desiccant out, the filament (if fairly full spool) will dominate the humidity in a sealed dry box and the humidity indication becomes a reliable way to get a handle on filament moisture. It isn’t a direct measure of filament moisture but relates directly to filament moisture. Well dried filament should peg those round hygrometers out at their minimum indication of 10% with no desiccant - just filament in the box with a hygrometer.
Sage advice