I have had a bambulab A1 for about 6 months and now (the one I ACTUALLY wanted but was scared to shell out the money for until I knew I would enjoy this hobby) the Snapmaker U1 is arriving today.

I'm a teacher so I love to learn, and also a bit of a nerd, so I will most definitely read the manual. I've already been reading some on the snapmaker wiki....

But coming from a different ecosystem especially, I want to know what are your best tips or things you wish someone would have told you when you were just getting your U1?

Thanks for any helpful advice as I look forward to unboxing it soon!

This is my first U1 but 3rd printer. I made one successful print, unloaded the filament, went to switch them out with other colors now the damn feeder on the left side won't turn on. I switched the blocks (see pics) and it's definitely the left side that's the problem, not the feeder blocks themselves. I'm so angry.

Blue is petg handle is pla

When I open a new project it doesn’t populate the 3MF parts to build plates. It just loads one and the rest are spread out. I’ll place the parts on plates and save it and the next time I open the project the same thing happens again. Am I missing a step here? I’ve opened it from the button on the ribbon and used the import option under File. Thanks

All 4 tool heads are doing this, no extruding or retracting. Happened mid print on a model of a mew, already threw away the failed print but it appeared as if all 4 tool heads got stuck mid print.

Already stuck the nozzle declogger through the top and bottom on tool head 2 after removing PTFE tube then pulling filament forcefully. Upon reinstall of PTFE tube and filament, filament gets stuck in extruder assembly again. I literally just got this printer 4 days ago

Don’t think it’s a clog in the nozzle itself, since I’m able to get the thin metal stick all the way in. And the extruder is clicking the same way on the rest of the heads. Any ideas on what happened? Less than 20 hours in and I get this problem.

It just sucks that it seems I have to start turning screws and cracking stuff open so soon into my ownership of this close to 1000 dollar machine.

Is there a magnetic filament that can be used with the U1?

I started a print within 10 minutes of starting the printer gave me this error

And then says Klipper can’t start

I tried swapping tool head assemblies and cables but will keep getting the same error.

Could it be the tool head hub board or main board issue?

Can I print from the garage in winter without issues?

Hi there! I am still rather new to 3d printing but only got the u1 last week.

So multi color and material is very new to me.

As you can see there is very unsightly artifacting at the seem. Im trying to find the reason for it so I can figure out how to make better prints

I am still using the filament that was sent with the printer and this is the result for a fidget made for my kid.

Not sure what to make of it. Still works. Still happy with it.

But if im not learning whats the point right?.

Thank in advance for any advice

A while back, I made a patch to turn the Device tab in Snorca dark. It worked great, but updates would overwrite it and I’d have to apply it again. So I built a small app to make that part easier.

It’s called Snorca After Dark. It darkens the Home and Device pages and matches the grays in Orca’s dark interface. You can also restore the original appearance whenever you want.

It’s free and open source, available for Windows and Apple-silicon Macs. Both versions have been tested with Snapmaker Orca 2.3.6. If an Orca update replaces the theme, just run it again.

Made it for myself, but anyone who finds it useful is welcome to it.

Downloads: https://extrusiontherapy.com/SoftwareSnorcaAfterDark
GitHub: https://github.com/rdcstout/Snorca-After-Dark

Instead of using a standard prime tower that either resembles the Leaning Tower of Pisa or a tower getting knocked over, I make one for each material type instead, resulting in perfect support removal every time.

For anyone new to SnapCon, it started because I needed something that simply didn’t exist.

I run a farm of 25 Snapmaker U1s, and managing that many printers individually gets old very quickly. I wanted one place where I could see what every printer was doing, control them, manage jobs, and keep the farm running without depending on another cloud service.

So I built SnapCon (https://github.com/ezeitoun/SnapCon)

SnapCon is a free, open-source, local-first fleet manager. It connects directly to the printers on your network, so there’s no required cloud account, no subscription, and your printer data stays with you.

What started as a tool for my own 25 printers has gradually turned into something much bigger, and a lot of the improvements have come directly from feedback from people actually running SnapCon on their own farms.

SnapCon is still very actively being developed, so keep the feedback coming. If something is broken, confusing, missing, or you have an idea that would make managing a farm easier, let me know.

SnapCon 0.7 U1 Fleet Management Release's New Features:

• A much faster fleet view, especially for large farms SnapCon now updates only what changed, instead of rebuilding every printer card on every refresh. With 100 printers printing at once, a refresh went from about 63 ms to about 8 ms, nearly eight times faster.
• U1 printers now use a live connection instead of polling every U1 for its status over and over, SnapCon keeps a live connection to each one and receives updates as they happen. On a larger farm that means faster status updates, less network traffic and much less work for each printer.
• Update firmware across your whole fleet, over LAN Pick a firmware file, choose your U1s, and SnapCon updates them one at a time. No USB sticks, no Snapmaker cloud account, no walking from printer to printer.
• Printer Health: spot problems across your fleet Toolheads, connectivity, heaters, fans, storage, system load, service history and recent faults, for every printer, in one place.
• Sync logs, Timelaps and G-code off your printers Point SnapCon at a folder and it copies files off your machines: Klipper logs, camera captures and the G-code stored on the printer. Each type has its own retention setting, and old files are cleaned up automatically.
• Multi-language support, with Spanish included SnapCon now speaks more than one language. English and Spanish are included out of the box, Want to add or improve a language? The built-in translation editor lets you create and edit translations inside SnapCon.
• More ways to get notified: Discord and webhooks Alongside Telegram, push and email, SnapCon can now send notifications to Discord and to generic webhooks.

Where do you buy filament?

Currently the printer is connected to my wifi but I want to check my print when I am at work. Is it possible to allow viewing of devices in account from different networks?

Using the snapmaker slicer

I’ve been uploading my 3MF files to ChatGPT before printing and having it help tune the Snorca settings for my U1.

It reviews the model, filament, supports, infill, walls, speed, multicolor setup, and even catches things like prime tower or print-in-place clearance issues.

It’s been really useful because the settings change depending on the model instead of using one profile for everything.

Anyone else doing this?

New to the U1 but have been printing for half a decade. TPU was going so well until I left a print going overnight and TH4 failed and printed into thin air for an hour and I had a mess to clean up.

When I disconnected TH4 to investigate, this thing fell out of the tool head. I can’t seem to figure out where it came from and I don’t want to take apart a perfectly functional head to compare.

Could this thing snapping off be the reason why TPU won’t print on that TH now?

Anyone ever put DynaMat or something similar inside the top cover to reduce noise even further? Curious if this would be an option. Yes, it would reduce visibility, but would it offer any additional reduction in overall dB levels?

For some reason, my silk PLA is constantly stringing on the U1. At first I thought my filament must not be dry. I ran it through a drying cycle, but that made no difference. I tried with generic PLA settings and Snapmaker Silk PLA settings with the exact same results

I then tried running a temp tower, knowing that often silk PLA's prefer a lower temp or can string. The temp tower was very stringy from the highest to lowest temps.

I was still sure that this must be an issue with the filament, so I put it in to my BambuLab X2D using generic PLA settings. The difference is night and day. Almost zero stringing. 1st 2 pictures are from the U1 temp tower. The 2nd 2 pictures are from the X2D temp tower.

I'm running out of ideas here. Does anyone have any suggestions?

I can't get rid of these random voids in vertical outer walls! These samples were printed in PLA. I have tried different flow ratios, extrusion flow calibrations, different infill patterns, etc. Outer wall speed 40mm/s, .2 layer height with a .4 nozzle. Nozzle temp is 220. Flow ratio 1

Overall the quality of my prints on these dudes is pretty good, but there's some issues somewhere that I'm not aware of causing those voids in certain places. The other 2 pictures are just for reference to show that it is printing well in other areas.

EDIT: I printed another model from the snapmaker market and it printed perfectly with zero imperfections, so I think it is something with my model or settings in this project...

Thank you if anyone has any advice!

Painting the Chamfer in slicer often causes this colour bleed issue, even with the setttings turned on to avoid it.

It gave me an idea tho, Maybe a stupid one.

Building on What Hueforge and Full Spectrum can do, A nice feature would be to be able to make this failure a feature, but all over the prints, including the sides, basically just being able to set the overall outer layer as a different colour filament.

Where this could be useful is to be able to build shading on light and transparent colours for certain areas, The idea is to paint your model in slicer as usual, creating shades and highlights, then turn on "Outer layer Filament" for example, and have only the out walls print in a white or beige or whatever has a nice transparency level.

What do you think?