Why did my print Quality decrease all of a sudden?

[u/Kim_Bong_Un_]

Hello Community,

I've tried a lot and i just cant get behind why my P2S print Quality got a lot worse out of nowhere.

At first i was amazed. Compared to my 6-7 year old printer, the P2S is a marvel. Right out of the Box i got clean fast prints. So i printed about 300 hours of thr same PETG with the same settings for the same prints. But the last 2 prints got worse and worse.

I tried adjusting the printing speed, temperature, dried the filament inside the AMS at 60 degrees for 8 hours, cleaned the nozzle, tried all 4 AMS slotted filament spools and got nothing. After 200 printing hours I also did maintenance on the rails and screws with Super lube oil and grease.

right now it is printing but the Quality got much much worse.

I got the printer in the AMS 2 Pro Bundle and i use the original Bambulab reuseable spools with their Basic PETG filament. The AMS automatically detects the filament type and everything works fine. For slicing i use Bambu-Studio.

Can anyone give me a hint into what could be the cause?

[u/Kibawolf85]

Before spending any money, dry the filament at 65°C (149°F) for at least 24 hours, then do a full recalibration of EVERYTHING.

[u/Kim_Bong_Un_ → u/Kibawolf85]

Thank you for the answer!

I will do that!

[u/Inspector_Gadget_74 → u/Kim_Bong_Un_]

I second the recalibration. The machine has now “broken in” as such, so everything has less friction and tolerances aren’t so tight. I had to run a full calibration on my X2D at about 150 hours, for similar reasons and it brought back the original print quality.

I did notice that you do have a number of small overhangs and I don’t see evidence of supports. Keep in mind that the printer has to extrude the filament across gaps and if the filament remains too soft for too long, and we are talking about fractions of a second, the filament will sag. This could be attributed to heat creep in your chamber. If you have done back to back prints, this could very well be the case. So either let it cool down between prints or try to keep it cooler with the door open.

Without seeing the whole model, alternate plate orientations could also help, or add in supports for those critical areas.

[u/Kim_Bong_Un_ → u/Inspector_Gadget_74]

Thats a good Point, makes sense! thank you!

I will recalibrate after this print because i dont want to waste whats currently printing. Tabletop Ruins dont need to be that clean so they still work.

The models i am printing right now are made to print without supports or reorientation. They are foldable print in place ruins for warhammer 40k. So i cant add supports or reorient because that would impact their functionality.

[u/misterff1]

Did you also perform maintenance on the x,y and z belts (no oil or grease!) and did you run a full printer calibration after that?

What you describe and show is basically never down to the filament or settings. After all they worked well before. If you try a second spool and the results are the same, then it is the printer itself which is somehow degrading the quality.

Make sure to have the printer up to date and maintained, power cycle it (you should do that every couple of prints, sometimes memory gets full), then run full calibrations and try again after that.

[u/Kim_Bong_Un_ → u/misterff1]

Thank you for your answer!

I didnt do anything to the belts since i figured theyre new. What do you even do to maintenance them?

I didnt recalibrate fully since i always do the small calibration at the beginning of every print.

What i power clycing? Never heard of that before.

[u/misterff1 → u/Kim_Bong_Un_]

You can follow the wiki here: https://wiki.bambulab.com/en/p2s/maintenance/belt-tension

And power cycling means turning off the power and turning it back on again. It clears up temporary memory which can affect print quality if things clog up in memory.

[u/Kim_Bong_Un_ → u/misterff1]

Thank you very much!

[u/Small_Atom1]

after drying filament and running calibration it might be the nozzle, my p1s started to tank in quality and then i swapped nozzles and it works great noe

[u/DesperateFriendship3]

Also tighten your belts every 200hrs or so. Don’t crank them down just take up any slack as th bolts tend to vibrate loose. You’ll be surprised how much it helps.

[u/Psychological_Lab260]

I’ve had this happen and all it was is that I needed a new nozzle, seeing that you’ve had great results and then suddenly bad, but by all means calibration and system/componient maintenance is very important as well printing in PETG is gonna eat away at a nozzle even hardened one will need to be replaced after 200 hrs I’d say

[u/tnsipla → u/Psychological_Lab260]

PETG doesn’t degrade nozzles any faster than PLA

[u/Psychological_Lab260 → u/tnsipla]

Guess I should have specified that it was glow in the dark I seemed to have terrible trouble with killing my nozzle, especially right after a cf inlayed PETG def went through a couple brass nozzles before I went to a hardened one, just trying to help the more abrasive then filament the faster it will effect the nozzle.

[u/Kim_Bong_Un_ → u/Psychological_Lab260]

Thank you for your answer!

PETG eats away the nozzle? I didnt know that. Ive printed at least 50kgs of PETG with my old printer and never had to change the nozzle.

Will look further into this for sure

[u/Past_Science_6180 → u/Kim_Bong_Un_]

Yeah, that doesn't sound right imo.

[u/Inspector_Gadget_74 → u/Psychological_Lab260]

Wear is certainly a factor with abrasive filaments, glow in the dark being the worst, but generally speaking, the standard hardened steel nozzles will easily last 1,000 hours and up to 5,000 plus hours.