Received my Bambu H2C and I’m a little bit disappointed that this printer takes even longer when it comes to time until prints start. When I watch the procedure, he takes everytime, even when you disable everything you can and just want a quick draft print with one nozzle, it takes ages until he starts.
He moves in so many directions when cleaning the nozzle it makes absolutely no sense to me. The worst thing is that he always touches the cutter mechanism when going back and forward in the step of cleaning the nozzle. But this makes really no sense because it just makes loud noise and does nothing to cleaning.
I can understand that there need to be many checks when printing with a tool changer in many colors so everything looks nice and precise, but please stop all those random movements in different directions in the beginning doing nothing. Or concentrate them on the hard jobs and give us a quick printing option. I know I can write my own procedure but I would expect that from Bambu!
Oh it’s stupid long, but it needs to be. The machine is a complicated piece of kit that needs to do all kinds of calibrations to validate function and precision. It’s possible they could refine the process some, but I highly doubt it’d save much time. It’s the price to pay for having a printer like this and get the results we expect.
This is why I do a lot of prototyping in my little A1 mini that sits next to my desk. It’s fast and simple, so it can turn out prints rather quickly.
If you are talking about the old printers prior to Bambu era, I don’t miss it.
I started 3D printing a few months before Bambu Lab came onto the scene. As I remember, on these old machines, after starting a print job, staying and watching the first layer was pretty much mandatory. If the first layer doesn’t look decent, one would have to stop and adjust the Z-offset and restart. Then stay and watch to see if the new offset works.
I don’t mind the newer printers taking over the printing-babysitting for me.
You’re probably right. Though I’ll probably still do some watching. I almost always watch the first layer go down. Hard to break that paranoia from my Ender 3 days. Granted half the time I’m watching it via Bambu Handy these days.
As many already mentioned, this is a fire and forget machine.
I started my 3D printing adventure with the Creality CR6 which already had auto bed leveling. But this machine required babysitting for the first layer. And somehow it required bed leveling quite regularly due to printing at different bed temperatures.
In those days it was quite normal.
On my Voron 2.4 I meshed the bed at 10 degrees C intervals, and auto selected the mesh to match the temperature.
And still sometimes Z-offset changes were required to get a good 1st layer.
Now with the H2D, I don’t have to worry about anything. It always gives a perfect 1st layer at any bed and chamber temperature.
In the beginning, I watched it many times to analyze it’s movement’s and yes, some could be optimized, but as mentioned already, it might save a bit of time, but I don’t mind.
I have passed the babysitting phase and just send and forget. And I walk over when I handy app tells me the job is finished.
Just give it some time and you’ll appreciate the things it does.
The startup dance is fine, lol, don’t make us go back to this
I do edit the “mech mode sweep” out of my gcode startup routines though, and do calibrations manually every now and then. not because of time, but I really am unsettled by the noise and how it travels thru the entire building lol
Naa I had a Prusa as a first printer and it was click and forget years ago. It also started super quick with basic checks. After that Bambu X1C where things first got time consuming until start, but I got used to it. But this thing kills me when I’m prototyping. I don’t need to calibrate everything each time i start a print. Manually from time to time or when you really want so get something beautyful. But those moves forward backward a hundred times what do they give us except some noise?
Also why isn’t there a prototyping mode where it saves all calibrations and even keeps the filament in the head. So it would be possible to start instant print with simple check if the bed is clear…!
Now that would be wicked cool if this existed. Instead of a dev mode a rapid prototyping mode where you agree to potential quality loss in order to rapidly turn out prints.
I don’t understand why the quick input shaper check isn’t an optional switch on the UI.
It should be an optional thing since all it does is not update the input shaper but just verify the resonate frequency (and scare your neighbours with huge loud noise).
Having to remember to switch custom gcode profiles really annoys me.
What seems like pointless movement that hits the cutters is the sensorless y homing. It could have a shorter rebound, but Im not sure it would keep it from still hitting. Could also home at the front of the Y axis, but would take longer and only save some cutter interactions. I liked the cutter actuator front, like the x1c. But that killed some bed space due to the exclusion zone needed. I did find that it was also best to do the bed leveling and nozzle offset every print, too
The H2C really does perform the same movements very frequently. And it activates the cutting arms dozens of times in the process. So it takes a really long time for the printer to start up… and it’s quite loud.
I wouldn’t be surprised if this could be optimised a little more in a future update.
I agree that I would like to see faster startup - particularly for draft print jobs, or prints shortly after a previous print has just finished, especially when the build plate didn’t need to be removed and refitted.
Although I find having the printers in another room, and having more than one printer helps to make the problem less noticeable - and I agree that having reliable startup/first layer is much more important than startup time.
I agree. Coming from an Ender 3 way back, which just heats and goes, a lot of these steps are not needed. Most or all of the nozzle “junk” falls off with the priming strip and if you add a skirt then it’s good 99% of the time. They should give the user the option to do all or none of these “rituals”.
