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.
I really really hope that Bambu throws you some scraps for all the hard work you do running their PR for free. I mean, I am not even mad, just incredibly impressed
Being vocal in threads like this is incredibly important. Unlike you, I don’t think companies are moral (or immoral) entities. They are amoral and require incentive to “do the right thing”. Worst case scenario for Bambu, being vocal forces them to kick their butts into gear and invest in new R&D regarding the bed for this iteration (unironically this is the best case scenario for the consumer. Or do you think being pro-consumer, while being a consumer, is illogical?). Frankly, I love being pro-consumer, and if I find it entertaining enough, may even spend money out of my own pocket to launch it all over social media don’t tempt me.
Anyway, despite what you say, their beds are still bent and a lottery.
Look, I have no beef with you, but Bambu royally ticked me off by forcing me into going the chargeback route.
I tore down my old bed this afternoon. Thought I would post pictures for the curious. The magnet layer is 1.75mm and is just stuck on. With a little careful pulling, it can be removed as a single piece. The actually heater is, as someone else noted, a 3mm aluminum PCB.
The mounting bolts do actually go through the heat bed. The whole bed assembly is effectively floating on the leveling springs. The heater plate isn’t completely free to move within the plastic surround, but after pulling off the plastic housing, it’s pretty obvious that it is just a cover and not at all structural. It will bend and flex with the aluminum, not the other way around.
Note that the top surface is not machined in any way, other than the cutouts for the screws and bolts. This is purely a bonded aluminum PCB, straight from manufacture.
I’m starting to think about making a replacement bed – sandwich a heater between two aluminum plates. Need to look at the mechanics a bit more to see if I could actually get a substantially thicker stackup in there.
PLA is printed at low bed temperatures, so flatness while cold is totally relevant. Also installing it into the printer does not change its flatness as comes as a full assembly. From how heater plate is constructed and from results of thermal imaging I posted yesterday, caved center won’t flatten when heated because it heats more than perimeter, which causes it expand more and only increase bowing, not reduce it.
I don’t know if you ever ran yours at max temperature but I did for some 110°C warping tests and did long prints with 80-90°C bed temp which probably improved adhesion. I removed it in one piece with a lot of trouble but not in a state suitable for reuse.
No. My old bed had minimal printing at PETG bed temps. Otherwise, it was all PLA. I would describe the current state of the magnet sheet I removed as “usable”, but certainly not in a state that I would do so for anything other than testing. I could definitely see significant time at high temps causing the adhesive to adhere better.
Funny to me that instead of actually discussing the points I brought up about how measuring a cold bed will have different measurements than a bed at temp, you just ignore it and repeatedly claim I’m a Bambu employee or working PR for them.
Companies, like people, act in their own best interest. It’s in Bambu Lab’s best interest to take care of their first major problem, as it helps future sales. Happy customers are a revenue stream. Unhappy ones are not. It has nothing to do with morality. It’s literally capitalism.
I don’t think a rational individual would do this, but you do you. I don’t think you’re really interested in having an actual conversation about these print beds, their design problems, and possible solutions. Seems like your only motive now is damaging Bambu Lab.
So you got a bed that wasn’t perfectly flat and had to manually level it? Doesn’t that kind of prove my point that expecting a 100% flat bed from the factory isn’t realistic, and that manual adjustments are needed if you want something super flat? My last printer cost 4x as much as the X1C, had auto bed leveling, and still advised me to manually calibrate the bed platform to ensure it was flat every couple hundred hours I printed with it.
(I have zero experience with Prusa printers, but a quick google search says plenty of people with warped Prusa beds too. I’m sure they aren’t in the majority).
PLA is printed at 40-45C. That’s not cold or at room temperature where people appear to be measuring their print beds. That’s at minimum heat, which would cause some thermal expansion. It’s probably close to double the temperature of the bed at room temperature.
Which is exactly why they should be installed and warmed up before measuring, as that’s the only measurement that matters.
Default bed temp for PLA in Bambu studio for Cool plate is 35°C. Also saying that 40°C is double of 20°C is utter nonsense. Temperature in Celsius does not start from 0. If starting from 0 use Kelvin scale (equal to Celsius but with 273 degree shift), which will make it 293K vs 313K.
If I had the same capability to flatten the X1C bed, this thread wouldn’t exist. This isn’t tramming (leveling ) and my bad for referring to it as levelling. The Mk3 heater is attached to the Y carriage frame with 9 screws. Those that care about flat bed, fix the center in place and use the outer eight to adjust the bed to flat. It is quite easy to get it within the measurement tolerance of PINDA probe used by the Mk3 for ABL.
The X1C has phenomenal ABL. It unfortunately has a ■■■■ bed. Yes, the ABL allows you to turn out great prints on a non-flat bed. You just can’t care about whether sides are straight or angles are true. No way I can print this on my X1C, which is quite unfortunately because I was planning to. It took a lot of hours on my Mk3 and I was interested to see how long it took on the X1C and give it to someone who is a huge Star Wars fan.
It is quite clear you have no idea about how thermal expansion and the warping it causes actually work, else you would not speak about an absolute scale of temps. And also, the was talking about °C, so his statement was even mathematically correct.
But so you understand. The temp. difference is what is relevant and what causes due to thermal expansion the stress on the build plate which causes the flatness to change. For real professional applications, you actually design the a plate to be unflat on purpose so that the thermal expansion will flatten it. If you would have made it flat to begin with, it would be warped, not flat. Not saying BL is doing that though.
But you can only get decent measuring if you heat the bed to working temps, and with the used materials it is impossible to get a perfectly flat bed at all temps that are supported, though a warp of a >1mm should be able to be avoided.
The cool plate has a temp range of 35 - 45c, so I was using the middle ground there.
Except, I didn’t say this. I said that a heatbed warmed up to use the cool plate is probably close to double what room temp is. Obviously I’m making some assumptions, because room temp is variable based on location and user. My own printer sits in a warehouse that’s cold in the winter and warm in the summer, so there is a huge temperature swing there too. It’s currently 56F out there. A printbed that’s been warmed to 40C is probably close to double what room temp is (104F for 40C, 113F for 45C).
I feel you. I was originally pointing out that expecting a perfectly flat bed out of the box isn’t realistic. They all require calibration.
I do agree that it’s a poorly designed bed with poorly chosen materials. I’ve said that from the beginning (although I’m sure it’s easy to have missed that given this thread is stupid long now). With a properly machined, full metal bed, it could be an unbelievable printer. I’m still trying to find some people to send me their warped beds so I can machine an exact replica of the BL bed and strap it on and see how it functions. I want to make it as close to original as possible (so it’s not something that’s placed on top of the current bed, or requires silicone, or has gaps that would cause uneven heating).
Exactly. The flimsy aluminum board they are using isn’t helping with this thermal expansion/contraction. It being bolted directly into the plastic bed frame is probably what’s causing the issue, as the plastic is expanding much more than the aluminum at high temperatures. I wonder if a fully machined bed isn’t needed and just a better, thicker, truly flat aluminum plate would be enough to keep it from warping. This would also have the benefit of keeping the plastic edging to prevent burns, as I suspect a full metal bed would get hot as balls.
I’ve been following this thread as my bed is super warped as well. I have had adhesion issues since I received my X1C for the last month now and just couldn’t figure out why… Until now. Im super curious about something however and maybe some more engineering types can help here. Could a fairly cheap solution be a double magnetic sided polypropylene glass fiber build plate allowing easy installation while also allowing the use of the already purchased coated spring steel build plates we have all purchased? I imagine a 3-4mm thick piece would be sufficient as is the case with many who use bare polypropylene surfaces to build on. It seems this could be fairly easily pressed, milled, cut into a design that would interlock with the bambu heated bead? Or maybe a borosilicate glass would be better?
My printer will come next week. Question, is it possible to use a mirror on top of bed? Or do u see a problem?
I plan to buy two 256x256 4mm Mirrors. On one I will stick the print surface from the Creality CR10s Pro (have some spare). I only had a hand full of failed prints in the past while the print comes lose. And on the second mirror, I buy a magnet foil to use the springsteel plate from BL.
