Hello,
I’m new at 3D printing and I have my X1C for less than a week now. I just printed my first large item and after some time I noticed a “step /shift” in the print. Can you tell me what that is and how I can fix it? In that print I also noticed some kind of detachement of one of the support. Is this related ?
Try placing the flat side on the bed, then you don’t need supports.
Unfortunately the piece is too big to print flat on the bed.
I could split it in half and glue it, but If I can I would dlike to avoid that.
The lifting is probably caused by warping so try raising thehe bed temperature and turn off the auxiliary fan. But still this would not be an easy print.
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Ypu can also try normal supports, so theres more touching the plate. Or make the support brim larger.
If its too much filament, you can do normal paint on supports in areas you think need it.
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It looks like you’re printing functional parts. That’s what I use my printer for. It is an amazing sense of accomplishment when you can make something you can’t just buy at the store.
However, I’m afraid you’ll have to adjust your expectations of what the technology can do. Your model is a good example of what FDM(Fused Deposition Modeling) is just not really good at. If you’re expecting to make a smooth plate, I might suggest honing your skills first on much smaller models so you can gain experience in what is and is not possible with your setup. However, I can suggest a few things from your photos alone.
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Your filament is incorrectly calibrated. This is evidenced, but not limited to, just a few of following artifacts
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The stair-stepping affect your getting can be ameliorated to a small degree by lowering the layer heights. But there is a limit and since you are forced to tilt the plate, there is no way to get the same result as if you were to print a model in a flat or vertical orientation. The laws of physics are just working against you. Note that if you thought your print was long at 0.28, set it to 0.08 and see how much time you’ll need. It will more than double the print time.
All in all, my best suggestion is to slow down and master smaller objects before diving into something this ambitious and wasting a whole spool of filament and not to mention 12 hours of print time this model might have taken.
Also, make sure you understand how to verify moisture in your filament. The short answer is to weigh it before and after drying to measure that moisture was present and then removed after the drying process. Factory sealed Bambu filaments are notorious for being wet. Only 2-3g of moisture on a 1Kg spool can make a difference. Drying at least eliminates this as a cause. The X1 has a drying mode. The Bambu Wiki has an excellent tutorial on this.
And lastly, review your filament calibration. If you’re using defaults, they will only get you so far. The hardest part of the learning curve is learning to recognize the difference between an error in calibration, improper slicer settings, and the limitations of the technology or model.
A great example is someone trying to print a 1mm round hole using a 0.40mm nozzle at a 0.28mm layer height. The resolution simply isn’t possible with a filament printer to achieve that fine of a result. These are the nuances you’ll need to learn to understand what can and cannot be done.
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Thanks for the info. Just to give background.
- The filament is Bambu Lab PETG-HF. I used the filement profile for that filement suggested in the slicer. I did dry the filament in a crealty space pi box and indeed I lost 2g on the brand new spool. However that was a couple of days ago. Do I need to dry it each time ?
*I used all the default settings and thus only 2 wall loops. - when you say the filemant is incorectly calibrated, does that mean doing the flow rate and the flow dynamics calibration in the calibration tab of bambu studio ?
- the part on the screen was using the 0.16 mm layer setting. It predicted 19h of printing but when I saw the steps I stoped the printing. So I “only” lost 3 hours or so.
To answer your question about drying: No, it’s not necessary to dry it before each use. However, it is necessary to weigh it before and after drying to ensure that moisture was present and then removed. You may have a spool that didn’t need drying, but moisture must be ruled out as a factor in diagnostics. Otherwise, you’re just guessing. Also, for the same reason, don’t assume that time has anything to do with a guarantee of a dry spool. If you placed it in the dryer with the lid tightly closed overnight, it may be dry but unless you weighed it, you can’t be sure.
I’m surprised you’re getting this kind of result from Bambu Lab PETG-HF. I’m not a huge fan of Bambu filaments in general, but I purchased a spool of that filament just to see what the hype was about. It is a very forgiving filament, I’ll admit, and it does print at high speed as advertised. My only gripe is that it’s nearly 70% more expensive than the similar Elegoo Rapid PETG, which I paid $13 per spool for and had delivered from Amazon the next day with free shipping. Bambu, on the other hand, took an impressive two days, which was a record, but I had to spend $20 per spool and buy another $30 of stuff I didn’t really need to qualify for free shipping. Forget about returns on filament—if you try, you’ll just be battling a 3-6 week ticket response on their website.
The Bambu calibration routines are a blunt instrument. This is especially true if the filament quality control is inconsistent as is too often the case with Bambu filament–search this forum for filament issues.
'll give you an example of just one calibration point and the difference it can make. Let’s take pressure advance.
Here’s an example of a test part I did with and without PA turned on. Notice the corners bulging with the “N”(no PA) part. It should be noteworthy that I had manually calibrated that filament using both Orca’s PA Pattern calibration and their PA tower calibration which Bambu Studio does not have and is far more accurate.
I saw that Bambu Studio recently adopted the PA Advance pattern tools from Orca Slicer. Unfortunately, when Bambu made their draconian policy change regarding the forced-use of Bambu Connector back in January 2025, I uninstalled Bambu Studio as a safety measure to ensure that my installation of Orca would not be co-opted by anything Bambu might do as a result of deprecating the bambusource.dll libraries that Orca relies on. So I can’t help you verify this calibration tool on Bambu Studio.
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I did weight it before and after. And that’s how I know it indeed lost 2g during the drying process.