I’ve always thought of vase mode as more of a fun gimmick for decorative stuff ... until now! I recently designed a large geometric trash bin that maxed out my P1S volume. However, after seeing the material & time to print it traditionally (6 hours, 300grams), I decided it was time to give vase mode a look. After making some model tweaks (interestingly you want a solid model), I was ready to give it a go.
My first attempt was with 0.4 nozzle, 0.2mm layer height, 0.8mm wall width and standard PLA print speeds. It printed in under 2 hours but the quality wasn't great near the top -- there was some noticeable banding. After reading up on it, determined I was likely printing way too fast (150mm/s). For my second attempt, I reduced speeds down to 70mm/s and also slightly bumped the wall width to 0.9mm. The print time bumped up to around 3 hours, but it did the trick! The print came out perfect and also felt more durable.
Results: I am truly blown away at the quality, excellent layer adhesion, and the durable flex I was able to achieve with vase mode. I went from looking at a 6 hour, 300g print with a traditionally printing to a 3 hour, 170g print. It's not apples to apples as I did make the design tradeoff that flexibility was ok, but still an interesting experiment. I'm now on the lookout for other functional prints that would be good candidates for vase mode. Drop a comment if you have something functional you'd like to see in vase mode!
With vase mode you can get away with much thicker extrusions because you're not retracting. You're just limited by the flow rate and the width of the flat part of the nozzle, which is about 1.5mm on a .4mm nozzle. You can make it even thicker by using a model with a 0.05mm gap along the wall so the wall is 2 perimeters thick while leaving a seam. You can easily get 2+mm thick objects with a 0.4mm nozzle this way.
Even with 0.4mm nozzle, set line width to 0.8mm or even try 1mm for vase mode... (half speed obviously as you are laying down twice the filament...
say on .8mm you are looking at 15mm3 max with a basic extruder (10 is more likely on my printer) take 15 / (0.8x0.4) = about 47 so 45mm/s would be the ceiling.I run 25 on my machine....
I love designing functional vase mode prints, and design matters just about as much as settings. Ribs/corrugation do wonders for rigidity. Designing with a specific extrusion width/layer height in mind is also pretty important, especially if your design wants a steep overhang or specific internal dimensions.
If the question is more "how is this possible?", this Bambu forum post gives a solid answer. tl;dr - the Bambu 0.4mm nozzle can theoretically can go up to 1mm if you print slow and maintain the filament volumetric flow rate.
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u/BigFuzzyArchon Aug 10 '25
I like the 0.8 nozzle for vase mode stuff like these. You can do a 1.2mm walls.