I’ve been searching for a compact flash drive to use in my P2S, and after digging through the web, this forum, and Reddit, two common recommendations kept popping up: Samsung FIT Plus USB and SanDisk Ultra Fit.
I ended up choosing the Samsung FIT Plus for one key reason: temperature tolerance. Samsung rates the drive up to 85°C, while the SanDisk Ultra Fit is only rated up to 35°C.
Since I print a lot of ASA and plan to run PC and PA6-GF soon, my chamber regularly gets toasty. All of these filaments thrive in a heated environment, and there are plenty of reports of SanDisk drives failing in high-temp situations. It’s not hard to imagine why: the drive warms up during use, the chamber warms it even more, and suddenly you’re way past that 35 °C ceiling.
So if you’re looking for a small, low-profile flash drive that doesn’t stick out of the case and can survive a hot chamber, I’d personally recommend the Samsung FIT Plus or any similar drive with a solid operating-temperature rating.
Not affiliated with any brand, just hoping this saves someone else a bit of searching, timelapse videos (and maybe a failed print or two).
I’ve not seen a P2S in person, but my understanding is the the USB port is outside of the chamber, so that only the connector is inside the printer. The actual electronics will be in ambient air, probably no more than a few degrees above room temperature.
The flash drive is needed for transfering models to printer ? I was thinking that Bambu Studio can send it to cloud and then to the printer, but it’s saved in the infernal memory or you need a USB drive for that purpose too ?
It is not. You can transfer prints via the cloud or via your local area network. That said, the USB can be used for transfering prints if you so choose. It is also used for storing video and time lapses captured by the printer.
I have a P2S and can clearly see the chamber’s light through small openings inside the USB port when a device isn’t plugged in, suggesting the drive itself is exposed to the heated chamber. Even if that weren’t the case, some of the chamber’s heat would get conducted through the components of the port, which is not completely insulated.
Here’s an image of the (fully exposed) USB port from the Bambu Lab wiki next to a photo I just took from the chamber of my own printer (which is still quite exposed):
Can confirm that the Samsung Fit 3.1 drive with 256GB is a good choice. I have one running for 3 weeks now, with no issues. The P2S seems to save video footage of ALL your prints (even when timelapse is off), and stock +100 GB in a week time of intensive printing. There are some posts on this forum of people having their P2S crash due to USB issues.
On my X1C, all prints are recorded because “Auto-record monitoring” is ON. It’s more useful than timelapse because it is continuous, not just periodic snapshots. You can see the exact point when a print fails, at the cost of filling the storage quickly.
These photos show exactly what I was worried about. With an operating limit of only 35°C, I’m pretty sure the SanDisk Ultra Fit is not the drive Bambu Lab should sell, recommend or use in their stock photos.
I’m pretty confident I can borrow a Fluke thermal cam (or at least a decent thermal sensor) from work, so I’ll update this thread with some real measurements once I get the chance, unless someone beats me to it first.
I can confirm SanDisk Usb drives do have problems. Mine was constantly switching to readonly mode. Some people on reddit suggested it’s because of the operating temperature being breached. I switched to a Kingston Usb drive and did not notice the problem any more save for only one time. I raised a ticket with support.
Thanks for the info. Waiting for my P2S and was about to buy some random usb-drive. Didn’t think of this heat issue at all so now I’m gonna order that Samsung Fit Plus 256gb.
As mentioned earlier, the Samsung Fit 3.1 with 256GB is now 5 weeks running without problems in my P2S. I did a temperature check with a handheld infrared thermometer while printing PETG-HF and the USB drive showed 36°C after a couple of hours of printing.
Does no one have a suggestion? I don’t have a Bambulab yet, so I don’t know how much data the camera generates. But I also don’t want to spend money unnecessarily. The USB stick will only be used in the printer.
When you insert an USB stick, the standard setting will be "Auto-record monitoring”. That will record full-lenght video of ALL of your prints, and will add A LOT of GB on the USB stick. So I would suggest, if you can afford it, to go for the 256 GB Samsung Fit 3.1.
Hi In case the USB drive is “full” does the printer block when printing? Is there any warning message showcased in the display/bambulab studio screen that the USB is full before starting to print?
I have no idea, and no experience with a “full” USB stick, but there are a few posts of people having their P2S “crash” due to the USB-stick they use. It is not clear what causes this issue, it might be because the used USB-stick is too slow, too warm, or has too limited storage capacity…
