Bambu P1S

Pretty compact and easy to use

We have a Bambu P1S to print with and a Bambu AMS 2 Pro to store and swap filament. This is a home 3D printer that is pretty easy to use and is at the level of Ikea to set up and use.

There are a few catches to the thing, though.

Aftermarket Plates

The printer package came with a Textured PEI plate and Smooth PEI plate. I've only ever used the textured plate and for normal matte PLA or for PETG I didn't use glue or anything to make it stick. I even got away with printing with some Bambu PLA Silk on it without glue. However, when I tried to print with some Elegoo PLA Pro, the filament would not stick to the plate. Likewise, when I printed a particularly tall model, the bottom of the model cooled sufficiently to detach while the printer was going at the top.

When I asked my friends Porter and Chris who have both been using 3D printers far longer than me, they recommended I use either glue or get a different plate or print a brim. Being particularly lazy, I decided to get the Biqu Cryogrip. Unlike the other plates, this one has some coating that will degrade if you use IPA to clean it, but it works beautifully.

We use it most of the time now.

We also use a brim for that kind of print as well.

Bambu Studio Model For Filament

The model that Bambu Studio has for your projects and your printer is that your printer and AMS have a set of filaments in various slots and your projects have a separate set of filaments that they built with. You then sync your printer and filaments to be ready and when you go to print you have to map the filaments correctly.

As a newbie, I printed Spaghettification spaghetti by accidentally mapping a PLA filament rule to a slot with PETG filament in it. What happened was that I loaded someone else's 3mf project and then didn't realize that the project comes with a mapping. Don't do that! You may destroy your hot end like I did. I don't know what I was thinking, obviously one must assign a filament slot.

Continuing a Print

You will eventually run out of filament at some point during printing. There's no way to avoid that unless you're very careful managing your filament. When this happens, often Bambu Studio cannot continue the print even if you replace the filament in the same AMS slot. In my case, I wasn't able to load the filament from Bambu Studio either because the UI just won't let you do that.

Fortunately, the printer itself will respond. If you push the filament into the AMS2 feeder like you're loading it for the first time, and then continue the print, everything will just work.

Filament Settings

Bambu Studio comes with some presets for well-known brands, but for the rest you can get them from 3dfilamentprofiles.com. For example, here's one for the Sunlu PLA+ Silk 4-color.

Troubleshooting

Fixing a filament jam

I had the filament get stuck a couple of ways: filling the hot-end (requiring a replacement part - which Bambu had included); and with the filament getting mechanically damaged so it wouldn't retract.

Hot-end Nozzle Dislocation

It's really not supposed to look like this

. Read more about this at Spaghettification.

• Replacing the Bambu P1S nozzle

Mechanical Damage

Filament is supposed to be nice and even so that it can go through all the grooves

I was using some Sunlu Wood PLA when it ran out. I had another roll on another AMS2 slot so I swapped it in and proceeded with the print. It completed just fine and then failed to withdraw the filament, so I was forced to remove the extruder, take off the gears, and remove the damaged filament. I thought this would be very hard but it actually turned out to be a pretty straightforward task.

• Disconnecting the wires, etc. to get the head off. This video actually shows you more than just getting the head off but I found the Bambu official video easier to follow for the rest of disassembly of the extruder to get to the gears.
• Removing the gears and clearing the extruder canal. The crucial thing this video shows is the trick to getting the gears off with a 2 mm hex head.
• Using a bottle-cap on the gear rod. If you don't have the gear removal tool, which you likely won't, you can still get things done with a bottle cap slightly bigger than the gear.

In my case I had to pull part of the filament clear then cut off the bit prior to the bulge, and then use a pair of tweezers to pull out the remainder. I reassembled everything and then the whole thing just worked. To be honest, I have no idea why this happened because the print actually completed before everything went wrong. It seems like what happened is that the filament melted a little so that it ended up pooling just above the nozzle and then cooled after like that which prevented it from going in either direction.