I’m considering pulling the trigger on an X1C but the waste is a huge turn-off. I know there are options for purging to infill or a sacrificial object, but last I heard there’s still a considerable amount of purge/prime. Can someone who’s played with the settings tell me honestly how much progress has been made in reducing waste?
From bambulabs themselves not much. But you can tune the amount of purge between each color manually. For instance going from any color to black requires less purging than going to white.
It’s going to have some filament waste regardless, but there some things you can to reduce the waste.
Have a purge object, check purge to infill setting, explore reducing the purge filament between material changes.
Most importantly print multiples if possible… It purges the same amount whether you are printing one object, or twenty.
It’s a bit overblown IMO. Unless you’re going wild with multi material it’s about the same as any other printer. Sure it purges a little even if you don’t change filament between prints but it’s still such a small amount. I found myself purging a little each time with my Prusa and Enders before too.
If you’re that worried don’t get an ams for multi color printing. Get an ams to reduce waste for automatic spool runout switching.
Download Bambu Studio and slice some multi material prints. The preview tells you how much filament will be purged. There are several settings and model characteristics that will affect the purged volume.
Flushing volume: this directly controls the volume purged while swapping between any two filaments. Darker to lighter colors will need a higher flushing volume. You’ll also need a higher flushing volume when changing materials.
Purge to infill: this reduces the purged volume by accounting for the volume that can be printed as infill before reaching perimeters. It’s not very effective for smaller models because there is just less infill area.
Printing multiple copies: this reduces the ratio of waste to printed parts, since for each layer you’ll need the same number of filament swaps.
Part orientation: often the part orientation will have a dramatic effect on the number of filament swaps. Imagine a blue cube with a red face. This can be optimized to one color swap if the red face is horizontal instead of vertical.
Print sequentially: For multiple parts on the plate, grouping them by color similarity and printing groups sequentially can reduce the number of swaps. Imagine two blue parts and two red parts on the same plate. This can be optimized to one color swap for the entire print instead of one swap per layer.
In my experience, the waste for average complexity multicolor prints is similar in scale to supports, and is easily offset if you’re upgrading from a less reliable printer. Failed prints are filament waste too.
No direct experience here. A friend has one, he’s quite experienced with printing, so I assume he got it dialled in well. Recently he talked about a small mandaloroan helmet he printed (mostly grey, but black in the parts that really would be a hole). About 10cm high. He had about the same amount of filament in waste as actual print.
