I just received my U1 and have printed a few multi-color models. The freebie dragon model that comes with the U1 includes a prime tower, and Orca slicer enables prime tower by default for multi-material printing. I disabled the prime tower in Orca and had lots of stringing and extra bits of filament stuck to the model when it printed, so disabling it is a bad idea. But the default prime tower parameters use a lot more filament than necessary to simply get the print-heads ready to print cleanly. I have been able to reduce the size of the prime tower by playing with the Width and Prime Volume settings, but I think that is still much more than necessary. With Prime Volume set to the minimum 1mm3 I get minimum filament usage with the tower Width set to 25mm. That still results in a tower that is about 10mm x 25mm, which doesnât seem right for purge volume of just 1mm3.
Is there any way to have Orca generate smaller purge towers and use less filament? The benefit of multiple print-heads is supposed to be less filament waste, but if the slicer builds the same purge tower for single print-head printers then that benefit isnât realized. Maybe it doesnât matter as much for larger models, but for the small models Iâve printed so far the tower uses more filament than the model.
Yes. I still like to use the original prime tower settings we tested for the Standard profile. Thatâs 15 mm^3 prime volume and, I think, 30 mm wide. It just makes a little skinny tower thatâs actually mostly structural. The outer shell is constructed so it doesnât fall down. The priming are just lines inside of it.
I asked about this being increased, and the answer was they found, especially for thinner layer height, that adding prime volume helped with finer detailed prints. Though note doing thinner layer height already results in a larger area of prime automatically. (Since prime is specified in volume, it does a longer line for thinner layers.)
At any rate youâre free to change it and see if youâre satisfied with the results still. I am.
And as was said, itâs still significantly less waste. The tower may look big, but itâs only 5-30g of waste and mostly hollow, depending on how tall the print is. 30g of prime for a very tall, many hundred gram print ainât much!
(I do tend to agree with them that more priming helps on lower layer height. Getting a smaller amount of extrusion started seems to be a little trickier. I just think their setting is conservative since thatâs accounted for by it being a volume setting.)
Thanks all for the responses. Some purge tower is definitely needed for good print quality, but the default Orca purge tower settings are quite conservative. I have played with the purge tower settings in the Multimaterial menu, but havenât been able to reduce the tower by much. Reducing the purge volume setting doesnât have as much of an effect as I expected. But as was pointed out, the amount of material in the tower is not that much, so Iâm not going to worry about it.
Hello all. I am a new user to the U1 and Snapmaker Orca, but have been in the Bambu world for a few years now. I purchased the U1 to get away from large amounts of waste from color swaps, as the info stated repeatedly the U1 would have considerably less waste. Printed the âcute dragonâ provided with the system and was astonished to weigh the prime/wipe tower and the dragon just to find the tower weighed almost as much as the dragon.
So I started digging in to SO and cannot figure out how to prevent flush purges into the tower when short wipes are required to build up pressure and clear any ooze. I seem to be looking for separate purge and wipe tower settings, yet donât see them.
Is the solution to change all the flushing volumes to zero if I am not changing colors on a single tool head? If this has been answered somewhere else, please advise and I will happily trot off in that direction. Thank you.
Prime/wipe tower settings are mainly under Multimaterial print settings, and some are in the material profile as well. You should not have any flusing volumes specified in a U1 profile, unless a 3MF file from another printer was opened directly (not imported), which may pull in the single extruder multiplexer settings for a different printer.
Still for a printer sold on âzero wasteâ it is disappointing that the one and only pre-sliced model supplied in the machine actually prints a prime tower only slightly lighter than the model (heavier if you include the poop from calibration)!
The problem with the prime tower approach is that the printer has to waste material building the tower up to create a bed at the right level for priming upper layers which may have more changes than lower ones. I hope that manufacturers will consider a different design in future to optimise this. One approach would be to have a an additional powered roller bed at fixed height under the nozzle storage position. Priming would be done onto this and it would rotate past a scraper before completing a full turn. This roller could also have nozzle cleaning brushes at a position on the circumference.
Iâm curious, Iâve seen or heard absolutely nothing about the U1 being âsold as âzero waste.ââ Is that frustration talking or is that âinformationâ thatâs readily available?
Iâd say for the Dragon test print, they use a prime tower that will guarantee success! It would not be very much fun to have your first print come off the plate with color bleed, stringing, and zits due to a toolhead swap and not purging any material. That just doesnât make sense from a business standpoint.
Now that youâve run the test print, with what I assume is âfreeâ filament that came with the machine, you should be able to run your own tests and share those results with the Community. I myself do not like the default settings for prime towers in SnOrca and would love to hear how others are saving filament by changing settings! If my tests are worth sharing, I most certainly will do so.
Defaults to prime towers in Bambu Studio seem to have changed a couple of updates ago. I had always used smaller than defaults to great success and then all of a sudden they were much larger
OK often it is âzero purge wasteâ which is true, but misleading if youâve not had experience with a filament changer, and mostly Iâm hearing YouTube âinfluencersâ (who often miss-speak and say âpurgeâ when they mean âprimeâ, or do not even make the distinction), not the company itself. I am actually very happy with the printer, particularly the speed and print quality, I just think there is a better way of handling the prime requirement. Having thousands of users experimenting with different slicer settings is another good way of generating plastic waste (not to mention time waste) and I guess I hoped the settings would already be optimised on a consumer oriented product such as this. I guess how impressed a user is with the ratio of output to waste will largely depend if their expectations are set by experience with a filament changer or in my case the SnapMaker 2.0 dual extruder. Those filament changers must be really, really bad in this respect!
But let me just emphasise again, this is a good product, very good!
Awesome, great to hear you are happy with the printer overall! Makes much more sense now that I understand more of where youâre coming from
I love my P1S but as stated in other posts, I will now mostly use it for single color prints. The poop waste from the AMS is needed to do is job but absolutely ridiculousâŚ
I also understand what you mean about everyone running tests but Iâm willing to make that sacrifice if it helps me and the Community. Right now, moving from the AMS system, that also uses a prime tower, to a system that has almost zero poop waste is a huge win for what I want to print!
Itâs a great discussion to have and hopefully we can find a nice balance between what we need and what the machine needs to be successful!
I canât find it (Minimal purge on wipe tower) in the Snapmaker Orca app =\
In general, whatâs the approach here? Is there some safe percentage to reduce from the current profile, or is it done by trial and error?
Will these settings work good for any profile?
Thanks.
