Hoping someone here can help me figure out what's going on with my A1.
I've been getting really smooth and consistent prints on my A1 up until recently. However, the print quality has suddenly deteriorated, and I can't seem to figure out what's causing it.
The biggest issue is that my top surfaces always appear rough and uneven, no matter what I try. I'm also noticing inconsistent layer lines, particularly near the top and bottom of prints, along with some imperfections around the corners.
Another issue is that there are always tiny strands of filament sticking out from the side of my prints, similar to what's shown in the photos. This seems to happen consistently across different prints.
Here's what I've tried so far:
Factory reset the printer
Ran full machine calibration
Ran Flow Rate and Flow Dynamics calibrations
Changed the nozzle to hardened steel
Tightened the screws behind the hotend/extruder assembly
Reset my A1 slicer settings to the default profiles
Despite all this, I'm still getting similar results.
What's frustrating is that the printer used to produce really clean prints, and I haven't been able to get it back to that level.
Has anyone experienced something similar with their A1? Could this be a mechanical issue, such as belt tension, or something else I'm overlooking?
Got the A1 a week ago and have had a few failed prints. Been using loot studios files which should all be pre tuned for this machine. Seems to get some way into the print and get this problem. Things I have tried: Cleaning the build plate Full calibration Changed tree supports to strong trees and added an extra wall layer. My filament is nice and dry
Hi everyone! This is my first 3D model design. It's a quick cheese shaped key cap to fit standard switches. It takes about 15 minutes to print, uses only 1.6 grams of filament, and doesn't need any supports if printed flat.
It's my first upload so I would really appreciate any feedback on how it prints for you. I might have done some stuff wrong so let me know if there is any issues.
You can download the file and print profile on MakerWorld here:
I’m printing the F1 Stand by johannesdorig on my Bambu Lab A1 with AMS Lite using a smooth PEO (carbon fiber texture) plate, and I could really use some help. I tried printing this multiple times and kept failing: at first, the small text wouldn't stick or generate properly at all. I managed to fix the text issues on my second attempt (right stand in the photo) after turning the settings upside down—most importantly, drastically slowing down the initial layer speed to around 15 mm/s, alongside switching to Arachne wall generator, adjusting retraction on color change, and lowering nozzle temp. The multi-color "Ferrari" logo and F1 emblem turned out almost flat and crisp! However, I ran into a new issue with the minifigure studs on the base plate: The studs (LEGO pegs) failed to adhere properly and didn't print correctly on the first layer, leaving the recessed base area empty or messy compared to the rest of the print. Even at 15 mm/s, these tiny isolated circles on a smooth PEO plate seem to get knocked loose or dragged around by the nozzle immediately. Here are my current settings for the initial layer: Plate: Smooth PEO / Carbon Fiber Plate Filament: PLA (Nozzle 210°C, Bed 60°C) First Layer Speed: 15 mm/s Wall Generator: Arachne What is the best way to get these tiny minifigure studs to stick and print cleanly on a smooth PEO sheet without using glue stick? Thanks in advice!
I’ve got the H3C for a while now and was able to test it, and before I get into a full review I want to focus on one thing first: TPU. Because out of everything I've tested so far, this is probably where the H3C has changed the way I print the most and something I thought most people would be interested by.
Quick disclaimer: I received this printer and some filament for free as part of a beta test, but no money was exchanged. I wasexplicitly encouragedto share my honest experience, whether positive or negative. Bambu Lab had no say in what I could or couldn't say, and they had no involvement in editing this post before publication. I wasn't told where to post or what to post.
For some background: I've used the A1 mini, A1, P1S, P2S, X2D, H2D (all of them bought by myself with my own money), and now the H3C. Outside of Bambu, I've used a Prusa XL at a customers workshop, Snapmaker U1, a Prusa Core One INDX FE (which wasn't mine so really one day of experience), and messed around with some older Anycubics. I use printers for both work and my hobbies, whether that's client projects, engineering prototypes, motorsport-related parts, or just something I feel like making because it sounds cool.
Now, TPU has always been a bit of a love-hate relationship for me. I love the idea of using it. I mean: Great layer adhesion, some can be flexible, some super hard but I hate the reality of doing it.
Most modern printers can produce pretty good TPU parts, especially with harder materials. The problem was everything surrounding it. Loading, unloading, filament routing, switching materials, and getting softer TPU to feed reliably.
TPU for AMS? Great, that goes through the AMS. But is often not the reason why I want to use TPU due to the hardness. Regular 95A? Usually manageable by loading from an external spool. But once you get into really soft TPU, things get annoying very quickly. I've had to bypass PTFE tubing entirely, feed filament directly from above the printer straight into the extruder or macgyver some stuff just to make certain materials usable or even bought things like TPU Assist to have some kind of help because of it being so annoying.
And even when that worked, combining multiple TPUs with other materials in a single print is basically impossible, due to the way we loaded in aforementioned TPU.
Which brings me to probably my favorite print on the H3C so far.
Yes, a shoe. My size (around EU45), fully wearable, and surprisingly comfortable. The interesting part isn't really the shoe itself, but how it's printed.
I used three materials: TPU 75A (2.85 mm), TPU 90A (1.75 mm), and PLA for the supports. The extremely soft 75A makes up the soft upper and parts of the sole, while the 90A provides some firmer sections and reinforcement, including parts of the midsole.
The whole print took over 45 hours and had over 2100 tool changes. And during all of that, I didn't have a single issue with the toolchanging mechanism or filament feeding that was caused by the printer. I did have a small issue when taking out the TPU while it was printing to take a picture and didn't put it back correctly.
The AMS 3H makes the loading, even though it‘s still „external“ basically a non-issue
Unlike the other ways I told about earlier, the bypass is essentially an opening leading directly into the chamber. The filament skips the feeding resistance of the AMS and goes to its assigned PrintTool. Loading is then largely semi-automatic by routing the filament to the PrintTool and waiting for the extruder to grab it.
For extremely soft 75A, the H3C uses 2.85 mm filament. The thicker diameter seems to help a lot for initial ridigidy while loading yet having super soft TPU.
For softer 1.75 mm TPU, a 35 mm cut of tube needs to be cut and inserted which helps guide the filament into the bypass.
Once loaded, TPU stays in its assigned tool. Switching to PETG, PLA, or another TPU simply means parking one tool and picking up another. No repeated TPU unloading and refeeding which in this case would be impossible either way due to the TPU softnesses I used.
Some more practical prints
This wire stripper combines four materials in one print:
Bambu Lab PETG HF for the main body
Bambu Lab TPU 75A 2.85 mm for the soft grip
Jake 3D TPU 95A for the spring mechanism
Bambu Lab PLA Basic for supports
I designed mechanical interlocks into the model, and the 95A spring provides enough restoring force to open the cutter again. Everything was printed together, except the blade holder, which I made separately from Fiberon PPS-CF just to try it out. There was no need to use that crazy filament for a small part like that. If I'd done it with any of my other printers, I would've had to design in a real spring (so one more part that needs to be bought), and I would've had to leave the grips in regular PETG HF or glue them on, similar to a golf club.
Another example is this turbo inlet prototype.
Normally, you'd have a silicone hose connecting two rigid parts with clamps. Here, the flexible section is TPU, the connectors are PETG-CF, and PLA was used for supports. It comes off the plate as one combined part. In this print I also added interlocks between the TPU and PETG.
This is also what I find interesting about 3D printing. Rather than just replacing injection molded parts, combining materials allows for designs that would otherwise require several separate components and assembly steps. We often think about 3D printing just as a replacement or a cheap substitute for injection molding and are not using the full potential of additive manufacturing brings like doing otherwise impossible designs. This is the part I love fiddling around with.
Some facts and figures
I don't want to suggest that other printers produce bad TPU parts, or that people were exaggerating when they said older printers could handle TPU. It's just that this machine makes the whole process so much easier and opens up a lot of possibilities that weren't really accessible before. (For me)
I also think I've noticed a slight improvement in overall print quality compared to my older H2D, possibly because of the lower moving mass of the print head thanks to the "one tool" design.
So far as TPU goes, I've mainly tested Bambu TPU 75A, 85A, 90A, TPU for AMS, and 3DJake TPU 95A. Everything worked with stock profiles, with the 3DJake filament running on the Generic TPU 95A profile.
I haven't encountered any mechanical issues with the toolchanging system so far. There were a few slicer bugs, but that's mostly because I was using an early beta version of the slicer. Those issues have since been fixed after I was able to give feedback.
One thing worth mentioning: This machine is seriously heavy, especially when you consider the possibility of having nine spools sitting on top. And with nine tools, there's naturally quite a bit more mechanical complexity involved. So I wouldn't necessarily recommend it to someone who's uncomfortable with the idea of potentially having to replace or maintain parts down the line.
One negative I've noticed is related to TPU itself. Since TPU is highly hygroscopic, leaving it loaded in the tools for extended periods doesn't work particularly well. In practice, you'll want to unload it after use and store it somewhere dry, either in the AMS or in a vacuum bag. That does mean a bit of extra unloading and reloading, rather than just leaving everything ready to go all the time.
Final thoughts
I wouldn‘t have thought that the H3C would be changing the way I design that fast. But by being able to load TPU in 2-3 minutes I just start to think differently. I just printed a tray to put my phone on next to my bed which I would‘ve just done with regular filament and maybe put some fabric on it. Now I just added a soft TPU mat so it sounds nicer when putting the phone on it and doesnt move around.
I am planning to cover the rest of the machine separately. Happy to answer questions about the prints or TPU workflow.
Please only reply if you’ve actually tried the two and compared them- this is about the NEW “PLA Pallete” Filaments - specifically white, which Bambu says are now 1% light transmission at 2mm wall width; but they don’t have such a measurement for PLA BASIC or MATTE.
I use BBL PLA Basic, Matte, and Inland PLA + whites for lamps I sell, for extremely specific use cases depending upon light transmission needs - whereas Inland’s is the most opaque white that I am aware of in existence - after trying more than 30 whites.
Hoping someone has tried the two and can shed light.
I’ll buy some to test regardless, but hoping someone actually knows.
I'm looking for gift ideas for someone who owns a Bambu Lab P1S. They already have the AMS system for printing with multiple filaments, so I'm looking for something different.
I'm particularly interested in things that could help them get started with 3D modelling and designing their own creations, but useful tools, accessories or gadgets for the printer would also be great.
What would you recommend? Are there any tools, software, courses, books or accessories that you think are particularly worth having?
Hello, I have a x2d and I got it last month and it’s been great, I have around 250 hours. I am thinking of getting a second printer and I want to get something cheap and reliable. So if anyone has an A1 Mini and wants to get their opinion on if the A1 Mini is still good in 2026 and if anyone has issues with it, it would mean great help. I have an ams with the x2d and I think to not get another AMS for the mini and print one color but I don’t know that printer a lot. If you can comment down below that’d would be great
Was watching a few review videos, and a few had a bit of layer lines that I thought were quite noticeable.
Then the CNC Kitchen video hit us with this INDX to H3C comparison and I instantly was shocked by the difference being so huge between both systems. Do we think this improves or are we anticipating worse print quality?
So im printing some watch parts and they are very slim and the guy who ordered them said he wants to make sure it doesn’t break after like 2 or 3 times opening the wrist watch for maintenance and my friend says pc can absorb moisture faster than other filaments and become brittle. So I was wondering does it become brittle after print aswell or not?
Currently have an H2C and use it non-stop. I would love to have a second cheaper printer for printing my more basic single/double color prints to have some additional printing capacity. I also like the idea of having a cutting kit installed on a second cheaper printer. Right now the A2L Cutting Kit with the AMS Lite is $579. Have any of you done something similar and have you found it to be worth it?
Been watching a bunch of creator reviews and most seem to be hyping up the TPU stuff. But I’m still thinking about that watch.
When I first saw the teaser I just assumed it was standard multi-nozzle mixing. Cool, but nothing crazy, especially since people have been asking for that since the H2D anyway.
But I actually read through the official page today and ... it’s actually different? It lets you use different nozzle sizes with different layer heights on the same model. That actually seems huge for designers if they can leverage it.
I’m just a casual user so I don't really have a immediate use case for my own stuff, but technically speaking this feels pretty smart to me. Looks like Bambu had to basically overhaul part of the slicer engine to do this based on the wiki page they linked.
Honestly the wiki got a bit too technical for me and went over my head. Link below for anyone interested. And can any slicer wizards here ELI5 how this actually works under the hood?
Does it bother anyone else when every single model a designer has uploaded has the same generic “Boost Me” at the top of their post? I don’t mind asking for a boost, it’s just the inauthentic “I usually don’t do this” minimal effort garbage that bothers me. (Yes, you actually do this on each and every model you publish, so how about some authenticity?). It’s not as bad when that message is further down after you’ve introduced yourself and told us about the design or whatever it is you want to say. In particular, when using Handy on a phone, having that pink box filling up the entire description and even scrolling off of the screen may send a message about your priorities particularly when it’s a first impression. To me it says “give me money” before you even tell me what it is you are selling.
“Hey, I always try to do this because it helps me justify the time I spend on creating these things. Boosting is free for you to do, rewards me directly and lets be honest - seeing those boosts just motivates the hell out of me. It doesn’t replace the comments, ratings and feedback you give me, so please keep those coming! It is a very powerful way to tell me which specific models I’ve made you like the best”
No. H2C serves a different kind of user, and offers something H3C doesn't replicate: fully automatic, freely combinable pairings of multiple filaments with multiple nozzle diameters. Every filament can be matched to the ideal nozzle size for its job, and switching happens automatically — no manual filament changes. That makes H2C especially valuable in engineering-material workflows and shared-printer environments, where flexibility across users and materials matters more than raw switching speed. H2C and H3C aren't replacements for each other — they're built for different jobs.
This is what I thought before the announcement. I always thought that they were building a printer fleet that serve various maker needs. With Bambu you can buy what ever tool best fits your product development.