Honestly, I am done with the Bambu PETG.
I have been 3D printing for 5+ years, and have printed hundreds of kilos of ABS and PETG.
I have spent > 10 hours on debugging, calibrating etc. and I havent been able to achieve a reliable and repeatable quality.
I am not talking about specific issues. I have been able to fix many of them, but for one i fix, another one pops up.
First of all, let’s say how it is: The Bambu PETG Profile is absolutely useless.
Keep in mind: Before I tried the suggestions below, i did the following:
- Dry filament
- PA calibration
- Flow Calibration
- Temp Calibration
Some of the suggestions i read and tried:
- Dry the filament for 12 hours
- Use Orcaslicer
- Do the Orcaslicer Calibration
- Turn up the AUX fan to 90% (even though i think this is a bad idea and only treating symptoms for the cost of layer adhesion)
- Turn off “Slow down for overhangs”
- Slow down the print
- Lower the volumentric flow
- Set print speed to 50%
None of these suggestions has helped me to achieve a consistent and good quality. I had artifacts…problems with overhangs…problems with layer adhesion…problems with extrusion…(not at the same time of course).
I also have tried all sorts of settings other people have shared. Still nothing.
Why am I making this thread: Are there other people with a X1C out there who made a similar experience and gave up on Bambu PETG Basic?
If yes: Which brand did you buy, and did it fix your issues?
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Commenting because I feel like I’ve been gaslit by people saying that I should have no problems because they can print Bambu PETG basic just fine. I’m sure some batches of PETG are fine, but I have had the same experience as you with their PETG.
I’ve tried multiple different spools in different colors and cannot get it to print well, even after drying and calibrating just like you.
I’ve tried the fixes outlined in this post and by a redditor here but to no avail.
For reference I’ve been 3D printing since ~2016 and haven’t had this many problems with any other plastic or brand of filament before. It’s frustrating, since the X1C is what I use for work and I hate that I’m stuck with a bunch of filament that I can’t figure out how to print.
I managed to get by with PETG on my X1C when it was using a 0.4mm nozzle, but when I switched to 0.6mm nozzle I got a lot of stringing.
The big puzzle is: why is PETG so difficult on this machine, compared to other filaments? I printed a lot of PETG on my Prusa MK3, including using 0.6mm and 0.8mm nozzles and a Volcano, and I hadn’t run into this before. Is it maybe something about the nozzle material or geometry or something about the flow through the hotend on the X1C that makes PETG more prone to stringing?
Until there’s a solution, or I revert back to 0.4mm nozzle, I plan to use non-PETG filaments.
I have no proof and no evidence either, but I have a wild guess that maybe it’s related to the hardened steel nozzle, for the simple reason that I had not been using that type of nozzle on my Prusa. Maybe there’s some kind of a coating or plating that would make the hardened steel work better with PETG?
However, I’m not wedded to this hunch. If somebody has a better theory, I’d be interested.
Have you run into problems printing other brands of PETG?
I have an X1C at home with a CHT style hardened steel aliexpress modded hotend (0.4mm) and bambu PETG basic seems to work better, but I still can’t get it to print without some sort of dealbreaker flaw (extremely sagging overhangs, stringing, warping etc.)
Im experiencing many of the same issues with my brand new X1C. As a experiment I moved the filament to my P1S and printing the same parts, the results were dramatically better. This was my first time using BL PETG and I’m not happy with it. In my opinion it should print equal or even a little better with my X1C.
Last week I purchased some eSUN PETG filament to play with on the X1C. I have had very good results with it using their profile for the P1S so I hope I will have the same results with it on the X1C.
eSun also has a PETG profile for the X1C that they published on their website. If you try it, please report back on how it goes for you.
Without doing the calibration testing first, which I normally do, I did a short test print and with the eSUN filament and process profiles applied the print job turned on very well. Some very slight stringing but without doing the calibration testing I’m pretty happy with the print. One thing to note is that I ditched the engineering plate in preference to the textured PEI build plate.
I just started the first part of the flow rate calibration test and will see how far off their profile is from my printer. I’ll keep everyone up to date with my testing but so far its promising.
Usually with a new filament brand (I should really be doing by color too but oh well) I’ll run through flow rate calibration (usually one pass is good enough) and pressure advance calibration using Orca Slicer. For PLA that’s been good enough for me.
I did that with the Bambu Lab PETG basic in grey, and with some suggestions from the discord, I changed the filament profile to these settings:
The changes are:
270 Nozzle
80 Bed
Max Vol. speed → 10
For cooling, aux fan was turned off, exhaust was turned off, layer time for max speed increased to 12s.
I also lowered the wall speed to 60mm/s as was recommend to me.
These are the results:
As you can see… not great. It almost looks like the filament isn’t a consistent diameter from the surface finish. There are also bad seams, sagging, holes in the outer wall, etc.
Last thing, this filament was dried using bambu’s PETG preset. My next last ditch attempt is to throw this and another new spool in a real convection oven to bake this filament bone dry and pray that solves the issues I’m having.
I was even thinking it was a machine issue, until I printed some PLA and it came out great:
LOL, Bambu’s PETG is definitely the worst PETG I’ve printed. I have some $18 eBay stuff that prints better. But honestly, PETG isn’t an easy to print material. Its sensitive moisture and nozzle temps, needs high bed temps, can over-adhere and damage beds, sticks to nozzles, and doesn’t do overhangs terribly well (but not terrible either).
So, while I do think BBLs formulation is off, I don’t think all the problems are down to their product.
Somewhere along the line PETG was considered an “easy to print” filament where in reality, that is not the whole truth.
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At least you’re not getting a whole lot of stringing. That’s what most people struggle with in regards to PETG. Probably your filament is already pretty dry.
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Yeah I probably should have spent my money elsewhere if I wanted easy an easy to print material with higher temp resistance than PLA (probably ASA.) As for stringing, the grey was actually pretty bad before I dried it. The black that I tried just crumbled into a million pieces like this (not my pic.)
I’m going to try to dry the black and see how that works out.
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I had the same nozzle grinding with brand new BL PETG my print jobs. Drying the filament helped but it was still overall horrible. I can tell you that I wont be buying their PETG again.
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So I did the calibration for eSUN PETG and the found that their profile was spot on for my X1C. This is a screenshot of my calibrated settings for my printer. YMMV
Ive been using BL PETG basic for almost a year on my X1C with zero problems.
What slicer, profile and process are you using? Did you calibrate it? I have had little to no luck with the BL PETG.
Do you mind sharing some pictures of your prints?
I will stand by my claim that Bambu Lab PETG Basic is pretty much meh. From my experience very subpar filament with which I run in numerous issues.
I have fixed the issue by buying a different brand. I’ve tried VoxelPLA PETG+ (lol, I know the funny name). But it prints miles better.
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In my experience,
0.4mm nozzle and any dense infill is NO GO for PETG Basic.
Either very low Gyroid infill or switch over to 0.6mm nozzle.
My experience is the polar opposite.
0.4mm steel nozzle has a lot of issues printing PETG Basic, most of them - failed infill and clogging.
0.6mm hardened steel - almost zero issues with PETG Basic.
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