This is bamboo, and this is the Bambu Lab's X-1 Carbon 3D printer.
This is going to be more of a vlog / workshop video where I just need to do
some maintenance stuff, try and improve
the print quality out of this machine and take you along for the ride.
As well as give you some first impressions of the first couple of weeks
of printing with this.
We need to head somewhere so I can get some supplies for this project.
So let's head to Lowe's.
I'm going to be employing an old trick in 3D printing at this point.
We're going to head to the landscaping section and look for some pavers.
After I located the pavers that I needed and loaded those up,
it was time to head to the faucets, so I could get overwhelmed by options.
I hit
this one with the kitchen knife last night while shaking it off into the sink.
So now I need to replace this.
This isn't that kind of Maker channel though.
We have a 3D printer to work on!
Overall, the X-1 is an impressive machine out of the box,
but there are a couple of things
that have become shortcomings for me already,
and I wanted to just go ahead and address them.
So let's get into working on this machine and we'll discuss what problems
I've been having with it and what we're trying to address
here as we go through it.
We're going to start by adding some support to the auxiliary fan,
the fan that mounted to the side panel and blows across the bed of this to add
part cooling.
Well, it's only double sided tape to the side panel machine
like it was built by Linus Tech Tips.
I have not had any problem with mine, but some users have had theirs straight up
fall off of that side panel or start to fall off.
I've been printing a lot of higher temp
materials and I am going to continue to do so.
So I am worried that that eventually is going to happen.
So I'm going to put this on.
This is a printable support piece available on Printables.com.
This helps to support the fan and actually more securely mount it.
Now this support piece is actually designed to slip into
an existing location on the floor of the machine.
You basically just shoehorn it in there it kind of clips into place
and there are 2 bolt holes
where you have to put a couple of M3 bolts through to bolt it down.
This is designed to have a piece of like foam underneath of it to add
just a little more support to this whole equation.
I'm going to use double sided tape personally.
The only reason I'm using double sided tape is because it's what I have
that is the proper size to fit into this situation.
The reason the first thing we're doing is installing
a fan support is because the next step is we're going to install
this sound insulation.
The X1 carbon is just loud.
It's not that the fans or the motors are loud on this thing.
It's just that it runs so fast
that it generates a bunch of noise from its movement and the design of it.
The metal side panels, the lightweight plastic injection molded pieces of it
don't really do much of anything to cut down on the noise.
This is just some self-adhesive sound insulation that I picked up from Amazon
that I'm going to stick to the insides of the panels of this machine to help
try and retain heat a little bit better and to dampen down
the sound of this machine, at least a little bit.
I really don't know if this is going to work
or do what I want it to do, but we're going to find out.
To make the next couple of steps a little easier.
I want to just take the AMS off the top.
I don't need it on there for right now, but that's actually surprisingly annoying
to do.
The clip to release
these connectors is actually sandwiched between the body of the connector
and the body of the printer, which means you end up having to stick a screwdriver
in there to release the clip.
Now the sound insulation is between 5/16 to 3/8 of an inch thick.
So it's not just going to fit everywhere I want to put it inside of this machine.
I do have to be careful about where I'm putting it.
To install that stuff
I'm going to remove the side panels off of this machine to make my life easier,
but that means I need to first mark where I want to put the insulation
so I know where the obstructions are going to be.
One thing I'm not certain about is the bottom floor of this machine.
One: filament
falls down there off of the bed, which is annoying to clean out by the way.
But the bed travels pretty far down and I'm worried that even the thickness
of the insulation that I have is going to be too much down there.
I have a thought, though!
I have a bit of this stuff left over from projects.
This is sound deadening for cars and it's only 50 mils thick.
So on the floor of this printer, this might work really well.
It has a foil backing on it, which in a car
is meant to keep heat out of an interior.
In this case, it'll help to keep heat in.
It's shiny and silvery, which I don't love that.
They do make it in black, but this is what I have.
With our game plan in place, time to pull the panels off of this thing.
So there
are actually screws pretty much everywhere on this thing.
There are 2 of them down here.
There's a handful of them inside.
These panels are held on a lot better than I thought they were.
This gives you a bit of a chance
to see the underside of the machine where you can see that
all 3 of the Z-axis lead screws are run by a single stepper motor.
Time to remove the back panel.
I just found a warranty void sticker
behind the buffer section on the back of the machine.
Good thing those aren't actually legally binding in the US.
It's honestly a little hard to overstate how flimsy this panel is.
This is definitely getting a bit of sound insulation attached to it.
Let's take a look inside the electronics box while we're in here.
I was just so close to having this panel off, but there's a couple of screws,
I think, behind the front idler for the core X/Y on the side.
I can't
recommend removing the panels like this to do what I'm doing here.
Hold up a second Alan!
I did find the additional 2 screws that I needed to remove the right side
panel that I was really trying to get off.
They're kind of hiding behind 2 little flaps in the gasket for the front door.
Actually getting down to the insulation on the back panel.
I measured out where it's going to be safe for me to apply insulation
to this thing and laid it out on the panel.
This is missing the exhaust fan the electronics, just anywhere where
I feel like I can afford the thickness of the material I'm going to be applying.
Unfortunately, I can't fit a ton of insulation
on the back panel, but any bits going to help with how thin this stuff is.
With the measurement and layout that I have, I transfer that to the thinner
foil based material, cut it out and then apply it on to the back panel.
Moving forward, I then do the exact same thing with the thicker foam.
Now I've got 2 layers of insulation.
I'm going to try and do this as many places as I can.
If you're interested in this, I'm dropping a link in the description to a DXF file
so you could cut out this shape for the bottom panel piece for yourself.
That's the easiest one for me to provide a template for you
and with how thin plastic injection molded piece it is.
I feel like that's one place that's really going to benefit on this machine.
Here's what I ended up with on this machine for insulation.
I can't afford to put anything on the back panel between the bed and the back
black plastic.
There's just not enough room there for anything except for the thinner material.
And honestly, it's going to look a little ugly
to have that shiny back on it when I'm filming into the machine.
So I've just decided not to do that.
However, the base, the left and the right hand side panels
all have insulation, and I've added it in a few oddball little places.
There's little sections of it trying to diffuse the noise
wherever I can, especially thinking about corners.
But how big of a difference has it made to the overall sound?
We'll come back to that after we deal with the next problem I'm having,
which is ringing and the vibration calibration.
When I first set up the X-1 Carbon, one of the first things I wanted to do
was print a new StealthBurner shroud for my Voron 2.4 Build
with a multicolor design using, this PolyMaker ASA.
I had previously done this on my Ender 3 with the Palette 3 Pro
providing the multicolor.
However, the print quality wasn't good enough,
so this was a good test for the X-1.
I printed this 4 or 5
times on the X-1 now, and I keep running into the same issues.
The StealthBurner shroud is probably a really good model to test this with
because it's got a lot of hard direction changes on it.
And I'm seeing ghosting and ringing.
And mind you, this is with the machine doing its own vibration compensation.
It seems like it's compensating incorrectly
because the angles, all the corners on the outside face of this,
the one printed on my Ender 3, they feel crisp and sharper.
The ones printed on the X-1 are more rounded and softer,
seeming like the machine is overcompensating
on turning the corner, but not after the corner.
To prevent that ringing with Klipper,
I could run a test, look at the data and then apply it as I see fit.
I can't do that here.
So what I'm going to do is a couple of things
to try and improve this one, I got the paver and the rubber paver
to go underneath that.
I'm ever so slightly hoping that the addition of all these sound deadening
I put in here maybe changes the frequency of the vibration of the machine
and might affect this. That's only a slight hope.
And realistically, the thing is probably going
to have the biggest impact and one of the only things I can actually do
to this machine to effect it is, adjust the belts on it.
Hopefully the combination of all these adjustments is going to achieve
what I need to achieve.
Bambu Lab has a wiki page,
that I'll link in the description down below, with instructions on this machine
and some maintenance stuff.
Including a link to a private video about how to adjust the belts.
I'm just going to show you real quick how I do it.
First things first,
we need to loosen up these 4 screws accessible on the back of the machine.
These are holding the motors in position.
We just want to slightly loosen these, not remove them from the machine.
Now we need to manually slowly move the carriage around inside of the machine.
What we're doing here is giving the belts
a chance to roll around, move and position the tensioners where they need to be.
They are spring loaded.
Basically by moving this around we are manipulating it so that the belts
have a chance to wiggle around and the tensioners can load up as they need to.
Then parking the tool head in the very back middle of the machine.
Now we can tighten up those 4 screws we loosened up earlier
with the belts adjusted.
We have to do a self-test so it can do a fresh vibration calibration.
But for that it's advisable to put it where the machine is going to live
so it takes everything into account when it does its calibration.
First I'm gonna slap down this rubber paver that I picked up at Lowe's.
I don't know if this is really a great idea,
but I'm going to
place this underneath of the stone paver to see if it makes any difference.
Now is what I'm really expecting to do.
A bigger difference are stone paver.
This is 16
inches by 16 inches, which is right around the footprint size of the X-1.
The table the X-1 is currently on is a temporary solution.
It's an IKEA desktop on top of a Bora Tool Centipede work stand.
It's not perfect, not ideal, but I did do the vibration compensation
on top of this and it should, I would think, be able to compensate.
I also calibrated and printed on my workbench
that I usually use with this machine and got similar ringing results.
It's not just this base that I have it on right now.
Now that the machine is stable
where it's going to live, I'm going to run the self-test.
So it does a fresh vibration calibration, ensures nothing is wrong.
I forgot one other reason that I wanted
to insulate the inside of this machine was the chamber temperature.
They market this thing as a 60C** chamber, but it's not actively heated.
It's only the hot end and the bed heating the air inside of there.
And I personally have not seen it go over 50 degrees Celsius yet,
and that's been printing Nylon, ASA, PolyCarbonate.
I'll bake the chamber by raising the temperature and preheating it for a while
before I actually start the print and I just haven't seen it get that hot.
So I'm hoping maybe a little additional insulation will help.
And that almost immediately proved to not work because I didn't
get over 48 degrees Celsius while printing ASA with 100 degree bed temperature
245 on the hot end.
Which is probably a pretty good segue
way for us to start talking about, was any of what I just did worth it?
Let's first take a look at the thing
I spent the most time on here, the insulation that I put in there.
Clearly I didn't gain temperature, but I did notice that when I'm
touching the sides of the printer, the areas where I have the insulation
are noticeably cooler than the areas that I wasn't able to add it.
Unfortunately, right above this little cross member
where the belt's ride in there and the carriage on the Y axis travels,
I just could not get insulation in there because it's all too close
to the side panel.
And I think that's really where it could most use it.
It might be an idea to put some insulation
on the top of the glass, on top of the machine.
The AMS sits up there, so I'm not really looking
through the top of it at any point now.
That, of course, would be ugly.
You might be out there thinking, "Yeah,
but a lot of the insulation you did is ugly." AND You'd Be Right!!
The thing about it is, that all of the stuff I did is internal.
With the door closed on this machine, with it across my studio,
even if I'm filming it from outside, you're not seeing any of that.
That's why I wasn't worried about doing it.
Something like one of my Vorons, I wouldn't want to do it
because it would just ruin the aesthetic of the machine.
And I realize form over function is just silly, but I'm a content creator.
I want my stuff to look good.
But the real question is, did it at least reduce the sound of the machine?
When I first got printing with it, I didn't think it did.
But then I pulled up a video clip that I filmed before running the 17 minute
Benchy G-code that's on the machine.
It's not a huge improvement, but with the decibel meter
in about the same place,
I'm getting about 5 decibels decrease in noise from this machine.
And I'm really feeling like the frequency of the noise coming out of it now
is maybe a little less harsh and I'm not as bothered by it as I was before.
Was it worth the time I put into it?
Probably not.
But I did it for SCIENCE!
But what about print quality between the paver, the insulation
and of course, the belt adjustment and recalibrating this thing?
Did I see any improvement in print quality?
No, I actually saw a decrease.
Maybe it's just me being extra critical of it now, but comparing
the ringing results on this stealth burner shroud that I just printed after
everything you saw me do in this video, I think the ringing is worse.
I think the corners are maybe even a little softer than they were before.
The only thing I can say is I have the cement paver
on top of that rubber paver, and that does seem to be
doing a good job of decoupling the machine from the table that it's sitting on
to reduce the noise and to really isolate the machine.
But I wonder if it's not maybe allowing the machine to resonate
more within itself rather than dissipate into the table.
Again, I did calibration with it
sitting how you see it on the rubber pad on the table, all of that.
I was going to leave it there, but I actually saw while editing this video
somebody post and say, "If you're getting Ringing on your print
still, it's because you're on an unstable table",
which I knew people were then going to in turn say that about the testing
I did in this video.
So I took the Bambu X-1 and I put it on the concrete floor of the studio.
I reran a self test, I recalibrated and I started printing another StealthBurner.
And the results of that StealthBurner are marginally improved from before.
Comparing the print results
with the X-1 on the Paver versus on the Concrete Floor of the Studio.
There is a marginal improvement in Ringing.
Overall, I definitely see a difference, but not a massive one.
If you look at each of the angles of the StealthBurner, the stealth
look of it, you'll see like a double line at every single corner.
That's not supposed to be there.
Comparing to the original Ender 3 print that I did,
which yes, has that quality issues for different reasons, but
the corners are just so much crisper on that print.
It doesn't translate in video quite as well as it does in person,
but just running your fingers over those angles, there's a massive difference.
This is not the totality of testing I've done.
I've printed 7 of these shrouds at this point.
I've tried different
speed settings, flow rates, I've played with settings at this point,
and I haven't gotten any that I've been truly happy with.
I think it's time I reach out to Bambu and start a conversation with them
about what's going on here and what am I doing wrong
or what does the machine need?
Don't get me wrong.
The Bambu Lab X-1 Carbon is an impressive machine.
I didn't note it earlier, but these multicolor StealthBurner shrouds
the one on the Ender 3 using the Palette 3 Pro, that took about 9 hours to print.
Whereas the one on the X-1 with the AMS, 4 and a half hours!
And I feel like that time savings for a lot of folks
is probably worth a little bit of ringing or the rounded corners
that I'm being a little picky about.
As far as the auxiliary fan saver piece that I printed and added
on, quality design.
You should check it out if you have an X-1,
I'll drop a link of a description below to that design.
That's going to wrap it up for this video Folks.
The X-1 Carbon is an impressive piece of technology.
It's got room to improve in my opinion, especially at least my unit.
I've seen others that I am friends with who have gotten better results
out of theirs than I'm getting out of mine.
Is it that I'm doing something wrong?
Is it that there's something wrong with my machine?
I just don't know yet.
I hope you found this video interesting. If you did, please drop it a LIKE.
It really helps out.
Let me know in the COMMENTS, What did you think of this type of video?
What do you think of the X-1 Carbon and the problems I've had with it?
Let me know what you're thinking in the comments down below.
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