Tuesday, July 2, 2024

Bambu Lab X1C - Print Chamber Temperature

3D Printing + X1C + Chamber Temperature

Not directly related, but when I was looking into drying temperatures and build plate temperatures I also noticed building chamber temperatures. It's one of the aspects of the X1C where could have been just a tiny little bit better.

It has caused many people to mod their machines, with varying degrees of success...


Why?

It would be great to bring the room temperature of the X1C to 60 degrees. If you can keep the whole build chamber to a constant temperature, then the whole print will be at a higher temperature, and thus have more time to settle internal stress, as well as giving the material a better chance to adhere to adjacent layers.

There must be a reason why the X1E has a heated chamber 😁


Why not?

Unfortunately,  that might simply not be possible.

  • The chamber fan only pulls air out of the unit
  • The cooling fan pulls (colder) air from under the bad and blows it at platform height
  • The temperature sensor is in an odd location


Science! Or at least the experimental / empirical / real world gathering of data

This guy has done an interesting video on heating the chamber of the X1C:

It's a pity he never posted the promised sequel...


Takeaway

  • Bambu's internal temp sensor isn't a reliable source for chamber temperature
  • After about 24 minutes the building chamber has reached the max temperature... and then the temperature will LOWER again (for a moment)...
  • After roughly 10 to 12 minutes a standard X1C will reach 50+ degrees, which is about the best you can expect. You can wait much longer, but that costs a lot of power and time
  • The printer gets inaccurate at temperatures (above the bed) of 70 and more


See also this graph:



(Click to enlarge)


My resulting approach: I set the bed to 90 degrees, wait ten minutes, and then start my (ABS) print. That appears to be enough. Note that my printer is standing on a shelf, and heat may be trapped surrounding it. That might help.


Bento box

When you think about it, a Bento box / Carbonmax would not only help with cleaning and filtering the air, but it would also move air throughout the chamber, and bring the whole chamber to a more uniform temperature.

Well, it's on my to do list...


In the future...

... I see myself modding the X1C after the warranty period, by:

  • separating the electronics from the building chamber
  • install better fans (especially noise levels can be a bit annoying)
  • integrating a Hepa / carbon filter in the right side panel (think of it as a larger cousin of the Bento box)
  • adding some sound insulation to the rear panel
  • adding some heat insulation to left, right, and rear panel, as well as to the top
  • adding some form of protection to make sure the temperature above the heat bed won't go out of bounds

... but not right now. This thing was (and is!) too expensive to risk the warranty right now. But in two years? Who knows?


EU vs US

Note that EU machines behave differently from US machines!


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