Just a reminder that they are now severely regretting admitting the banana bed issue, and even sending out the beds.
So anyone who is thinking that they are looking out for you, they aren’t. The realization has struck them that the banana bed issue won’t be solved for this iteration so they either reset market expectations (it is within spec guyzzz). I mean, can you imagine the sh*tstorm if they start replacing beds en masse?
They are insistent that I install the bed as somehow the plastic will magically contort itself into flatness True I am not a material scientist but this entire thread is proof that the bend gets worse in most cases when heated. They even offered to install the bed for me, but unfortunately after two bent beds I have lost complete faith in their ability to deliver a flat bed. Most importantly, I do not have the time (or interest) in wasting toward something which has no guarantee of delivering. Fixing their manufacturing defects isn’t my issue.
So, for those of you who got a flat bed, you are lucky. For the rest of us, either return the damn thing or prepared to be gas-light’ed with “it’s within spec” (and yes, they will install it for you as they offered me!)
Hey I actually used exactly your method to take measurements! In fact your post is a sliver of hope here that perhaps the new beds which are coming installed may be better.
Unfortunately, I have a 0.60mm dip tapering off slowly. That’s a big dip. The most I see yours is something like 0.18? Nonetheless that is still within acceptable range and bed heating can sort it out (or even if worsen it, can’t be that bad).
In short you are one of the lucky ones! Do you mind sharing your bed version?
Its a V3 bed type. All new printers should have those, but mechanically they all appear to be the same, only the electrics appear to have changed between revisions
1.8mm, however it has a thin fiber film layer on on top. Milling will expose unprotected magnet rubber. So better just shim it with aluminum tape or apply new protective layer after you mill it down.
As expected, new bed was warped, out of the box. Not as bad as the original, but definitely not close to flat. As people have pointed out, things change when heated so I didn’t bother to measure the warp when cold.
Swapped the bed out. For those who wonder how long it really takes – if you work on complex electro-mechanical devices regularly and are good at it, figure on 1h15m-1h30m for the first time, if you get everything right. Ended up taking me about 2h as I had to redo a couple of steps putting it back together. Pay attention to the rubber pads under the bed mounting tabs. I knocked one off and didn’t notice until after I had the new bed screwed down. Also pay attention to the routing of wires around the back mount. I ended up with one wire on the wrong side of the mount. I probably could have left it, but I’m a little OCD about stuff like that. Final note, the little silver wire retention bracket, on the rear mount, actually has two places it can mount. At least on my printer, the forward location is where it is supposed to go. Now that I’ve done it once, I could probably do it in close to an hour. If you aren’t super mechanically inclined or this kind of work makes you nervous, or you are just slow and steady, 3-4h isn’t at all out of the realm.
The above is with the cold plate an bed at 35C. The warp is approx 0.42mm on the X axis and 0.22mm on the Y axis. I didn’t take a picture, but I also ran an X axis PETG print on the engineering plate – 70C. The warp there came out at 0.13mm. For reference, I consider <0.05mm to be acceptable and 0.05mm-0.10mm to be tolerable.
I’ve got the heatbed soaking at 60C right now and will up it to 100C and let it soak there as well. We’ll see what the results are.
Sadly this is a cultural issue and has come up a few times. Whenever I order from that part of the world I always keep in mind that I’m making a compromise for price and willingly accept that if there are issues there’s almost no point fighting because admitting fault isn’t something that comes easily.
BTW, I got reply from support about bubble on magnetic sticker. It’s official they recommend to puncture it to release the air, but they will send a new bed if it does not work.
Although explanation about air under teflon tape does not apply in my case, bubble formed between aluminum heater plate and magnet rubber.
I think we are relying too much on this, and frankly, this is an Orientalist attitude. I do a lot of business with the Chinese and suffice to say that they are, as a whole, more willing to admit fault than their American counterparts. Why is that? Because at the end of the day these people who set up shop to cater to the globe are not stupid; they adapt to and cater to global expectations as their bread and butter depends upon it. They have no choice but to be extra nice. It is 2023 for God’s sake!
Chinese style capitalist culture is nothing like the Japanese, frankly.
What is happening here is not any different than what you’d discover in an American startup. They have decided to reset market expectations regarding the accuracy of their printers, while employing gaslighting tactics to escape this issue without a mass-recall/replacement scenario. They will either stick with the “reset expectations” strategy and reserve the flat beds for the Pro version OR they will quietly start releasing straight beds without a lot of public fuss. Transparency is only going hurt their fledgling business. Ergo, it is not in their best interest to look out for this crowd.
I tried reading the thread haha. Seems mostly positive? Which is a great thing… unless I am missing some spiciness. Do summarize for us what happened there.
Basically Neoden tries to “solve” issues in the background and many people have had issues with them not admitting there is an issue but jumping through endless diagnostics.
I’ve seen this with a few PCB manufacturing related companies which I acknowledge may be tainting my view slightly and I’m in no way saying it is universal but anecdotally it’s reasonably prevalent.
How exactly are they not looking out for you? They’ve sent you two replacement beds already. After several people have pointed out to you that a cold, uninstalled bed will straighten out once installed and heated, you’ve said that you don’t want to waste 4 hours of your time installing it just to find out.
Understandable, but now they are even offering to install a new bed for you, which apparently isn’t good enough either. If it’s not good enough for you, take the refund and wait for their next release so you can purchase it after others can review it (or buy a competitor’s product).
But what’s annoying to me is you keep insisting that flat beds are “lucky” and not the norm. When in reality, it’s more than likely the opposite given how many printers they’ve sold and how many of us there are with flat beds printing things just fine. You keep insisting that Bambu Labs are somehow being deceitful, and yet they are still trying to help you. On top of that, you keep insisting this is an “en masse” problem, threatening to go to social media and “the influencers” and create additional problems for them publicly (still not really sure what your end goal is, given that you said you were going to go the chargeback route, and have advised others to do the same).
Now you’re claiming they regret admitting there was an issue and sending out replacement beds. This doesn’t make any sense to me given that quite a few people are reporting that their replacement beds have fixed the problem or made the bed warping much less significant. This proves they are moving in the right direction, and more importantly sends a strong signal that they are trying to make things right and do right by their early adopting customers.
Again, I agree with you that warped beds are a problem for some people and absolutely needs to get fixed. And it does appear that some of the replacement beds are not perfect. I’m not giving Bambu Lab a free pass on this. I have no doubt it’s quite a few beds that have problems, but it’s still probably a small percentage of the total number of printers sold. At the same time, so far it appears like they have helped (or tried to help) every single person who has said their bed has warped, including you. And they’ve also appear to have given a refund to every single person who actually sent back their printer if the warped bed was still an issue (even if the printer was outside of the return window).
That’s not gaslighting, that’s pretty darn good customer service. Gaslighting would be them denying that there is an issue to begin with, claiming that the issue was actually your fault, and then refusing to help you.
I’ve seen only one report of it straightening when hot and it was almost flat to begin with. The rest, including mine are just becoming more warped when hot.
They didn’t offer me a refund or an exchange. They kept on pushing me to install the BENT bed, and I continued to refuse that. They eventually offered to install the same BENT bed for me (send us both the printer and the bed and we will install for you). I refused. Don’t lie.
With every email, I specifically made sure to recommend that I tell them to refund the money and take back the printer. They refused. Now I have to bring my card into this. Hate the chargeback option.
You are wrong if you think that all Bambu wants is a sunshine-flowery world where we all get along the demographic here which expects a reasonable degree of “flatness” is on the chopping block with this iteration (but they will save it all for their upcoming Pro version).
Measuring it cold when not installed is not useful data. Plastic flexes, and heat makes materials expand.
Pretty much all printers in this price range are going to have slight variations in the surface of the heatbed that are fractions of a mm, I don’t believe any of these will every truly flatten out 100%. But that’s what auto bed leveling is for.
I have no reason to lie, and what I stated was true (they’ve sent you multiple replacement beds and offered to install it for you). You have one replacement bed that is apparently straighter than the other (but measured cold, not installed), why not send that back to have that installed? If I had to guess, they’d probably make damn sure it was as straight as possible before sending it back to you, given that you started this thread and have been the most vocal about it.
There are almost 800 posts in this thread now, so forgive me if I missed some, but last I checked you had only asked for a refund a few days ago and hadn’t heard back. There have been several others who have received full refunds (including consumables) outside of the refund window, which seems extremely generous to me. The only person who I know was denied a refund was that Peter dude, who didn’t want to send his printer back before getting a new one.
I don’t recall saying anything of that nature, but I think Bambu Lab wants to make things right with their customers who are unhappy, as evidenced by their willingness to send out multiple replacements and to make accommodations (like offering to install replacements and make refunds outside of the return window).
But at the end of the day, I’m not sure there is anything they can do to make you happy at this point. I don’t think a perfectly flat cold bed is going to remain flat at temperature. If you’re unwilling to install one yourself and you’re unwilling to have them install it, there isn’t much else they can do.
True I am not a material scientist but this entire thread is proof that the bend gets worse in most cases when heated. They even offered to install the bed for me, but unfortunately after two bent beds I have lost complete faith in their ability to deliver a flat bed. Most importantly, I do not have the time (or interest) in wasting toward something which has no guarantee of delivering. Fixing their manufacturing defects isn’t my issue.
