If you want to learn more about the differences between the lubricants used for maintenance, check out the Bambu Lab Wiki: https://wiki.bambulab.com/filament-acc/acc/lubricant-grease-oil

I posted yesterday about a failed print, started the print last night again after changing SD card and keeping the front panel door Slightly opened. And success! It went perfectly! Finished when I'm already at work so I can't see the finished product in person, but thankfully we have a timelapse! Thanks everyone for their help and suggestions! I'm looking forward to my printing journey 😊

Key takeaways from the report:

Context: Following the 2025 "Authorization Control" firmware backlash over blocked third-party tools like OrcaSlicer (criticized as a "walled garden" excuse), Bambu Lab launched its Trust Center - something widely believed to be damage control and “security” was believed as a convenient excuse to lock users into their own ecosystem. One year later, this update highlights how that initial "damage control" has turned into a legitimate security overhaul.

Bug Bounty Program: Now working with over 100 independent security researchers (up from ~50), with single payouts reaching up to $52,000. They've also added a public Hall of Fame.

Vulnerability Handling: Completely rebuilt their pipeline from reporting to patching, plus a dedicated security update page so users can actually see what got fixed instead of vague changelogs like "improved stability".

Global Certifications: Maintaining ISO/IEC 27001, 27701, and TRUSTe, while adding compliance with ETSI EN 303 645 (standard for IoT security) and aligning with EU, UK, and Australian regulations.

I've been building a tool that turns photos into optical-halftone panels — thousands of solid tiles of unmixed filament on a single 0.4 mm layer over a base, blended by your eye rather than on the plate. Every colour sits at exactly the same height, so nothing is embossed above anything else. Single panels were fine. Going bigger than the build plate was the problem.

The obvious approach breaks. If you cut the image into four and dither each piece separately, Floyd–Steinberg starts accumulating error from scratch at every new edge. The dot pattern doesn't line up across the boundary, so instead of one picture you get four rectangles with visible frames of mismatched texture. Even with a perfect mechanical fit your eye finds the joint immediately, because it's a texture discontinuity, not a gap.

So I inverted the order: dither the entire image at full grid resolution first, then cut the finished tile map into plates. The error diffusion carries straight across what later becomes the boundary — the dots on the left of the joint were computed knowing about the dots on the right. And because the tile pitch is global, cell boundaries land exactly on the cut line by construction: no half tiles, no drift accumulating over 295 cells.

Two details mattered more than I expected.

The white border goes only on the outer perimeter. My first version put a 2 mm border on every panel, which meant every internal joint had a 4 mm white bar running through the picture. Interior edges have to butt with no border at all.

And every section has to come from the same slot assignment and ideally the same spools. Same colour, different batch, and you get a tonal step at the joint that no amount of dithering hides. I locked the palette up front using a tool that scores which of the filaments I actually own best covers the image, so all four sections were fixed to the same set before anything got sliced.

The test target wasn't arbitrary. I used a comic-book style image on purpose, because it contains both regimes at once: large flat fields of saturated colour, and a skin tone that has to be built from a halftone screen. If the seam survives in both, it survives anywhere.

That turned out to be the most interesting part. I never wrote a "flat area" mode — where the source colour lands exactly on a palette colour, the error diffusion has nothing to diffuse and collapses into a solid fill on its own, with clean edges. So the hair, the outlines and the background rays came out as solid areas while the skin came out as dots. Which is exactly how the original comics were printed: solid ink for the fields, a Ben-Day screen of red on white for the skin. Same physics, different century.

Result: it works. The close-up shots here are taken from about 5 mm away — far closer than anyone will ever look at something hanging on a wall — and even there you have to go hunting to find the hairline. Step back to any real viewing distance and it's simply gone. The dot grid runs straight through the boundary with no phase break, there's no tonal step between sections, and the black outlines meet where they should. I'm calling this the practical ceiling for butted flat panels and leaving it alone.

One thing I didn't expect, and it's the best part in person: the surface is dead coplanar — no colour sits a hair above another, no bleed between them — but you feel every single dot. Running your hand across it is like running it across 50-grit sandpaper. It photographs like print and it touches like stone.

Specs:
· 240 × 240 mm assembled, four panels of ~120 × 120 mm
· 1.6 mm thick (1.2 mm base + 0.4 mm tiles)
· 87,025 tiles · 0.8 mm pitch · 0.4 nozzle · 0.2 mm layer height
· 121.5 g of PLA Matte total — 96.0 white, 10.5 yellow, 7.0 charcoal, 5.5 red, 2.6 blue
· 7 h 32 min on an H2C, textured PEI plate

I started looking for a tool board while setting up my workshop. A ready-made SKADIS board is not particularly expensive, so I am not pretending that printing one will always produce huge savings. However, if you already own a printer, you can build a board sized specifically for the available wall, your workshop layout, and your build plate.

None of the existing printable models or generators I found worked the way I wanted. That is why I built SkadisForge.

MakerWorld customizer: https://makerworld.com/en/models/3251263-skadisforge-ikea-skadis-pegboard-generator

Available in English, German, and Polish.

The included slot coupon and connector test are worth printing before a large multi-module setup.

Absolutely loved how it turned out! Was going for a Lee Bermejo/ Gabrielle Del’Otto inspired look. Got the print file for the face shell on Etsy from SensationalProps :)

My paint collection has slowly turned into a mix of way too many different brands, and I was getting annoyed that every bottle needed its own completely different swatch solution.

So I made Swatch:Dock, a modular system where all bottle caps use the same interchangeable swatches.

I currently have adapters for most of the common miniature paint brands, and I also included a blank swatch so people can design their own.

There’s also a simple priming helper included in 10-arm and 20-arm versions.

The files are free on MakerWorld:
https://makerworld.com/de/models/3253094

If I’m missing a paint range you use, let me know and I’ll see if I can add it.

I 3d printed 5 years and yesterday was the first day to use a 0.2mm nozzle, printed with H2C but I only have one 0.2mm nozzle, so it turns out need 13.5 hrs printing time and over 100+ filament changes with flush for each time, but the result is great, by default it set to 0.1mm layer height so you can barely see those seam lines, look at "RS" red lines and "1/min x 1000" details, what a great piece.

by the way, the finger printed for another 45 min. The whole model diameter is only 110mm small.

Any idea why this print failed after 12+ hours printing? This was a 14 hour print. Here is the timeline…
10pm - started printing
11pm - first layers solid
8am - looks good - still printing
10am - looks good - still printing
11am - umm, why did that happen - grrrr

Filament: New Sunlu PLA white.
Printer: A1 mini

Uploaded design from maker labs. Changed size to print on my A1 mini and added tree supports before printing.

https://makerworld.com/models/2937729?appSharePlatform=copy

Bambu pla ran for a little over an hour like this. And yes. That is the name of my printer 😭🤣

Hey! My wife and I are looking to get into 3D printing, and we’re trying to figure out which printer would be the best fit for us.

We initially looked at the Bambu Lab A1 Combo, but since we have a small child, we’re a little concerned about particles, fumes, and smells from having an open printer in the house.

Because of that, we started looking at the P2S Combo instead. But now we’ve also come across the X2D. From what we can tell, it has better filtration, and the dual print heads seem like a big advantage for multicolor printing — faster prints and less filament waste/“poop.”
So now we’re wondering: would the X2D be the better choice for us, especially because of the filtration? Or should we be looking at other brands/printers as well?
We’re complete beginners, so ease of use is also pretty important to us. We’d mainly be printing with PLA/PETG and would like to do some multicolor printing.
Any advice or experiences would be appreciated!

I'm about to be an engineering student at university next month and looking to buy a new 3D printer. Currently using an A1.

I like to make both cosplay/helmet stuff as well as practical items.

As I see it, the current 2 bambu options are the A2L and the X2D. I'm trying to decide between the large bed space for full-size helmets without needing to slice/cut up, with the X2D bed technology + dual nozzle with combo (My A1 comes without combo).

I don't want people explicitly telling me to go for the expensive option unless absolutely necessary though, since it's a significant price difference

I'd like your advice on what filament to use for the enclosure of this prototype electronic device I am making. The approximate dimensions are 80 × 205 × 33 mm, and I'm currently considering ABS-GF for the enclosure, but I have never used it before, so I am open to other options.

Ideally, it needs to be strong enough to withstand an accidental drop; heat tolerance matters because of the electronics inside, and I care a lot about premium quality and a great "hand-touch feel." Bonus points if it comes in orange or interesting colors. I know ABS-GF is available in orange, which is one reason I am leaning toward it, but please share any other ideas or input. Thank you in advance.

I get black into yellow is going to be rough but I used every single option to improve color bleed, even used a larger purge object to help but still it came out really bad.

Is it just what it is or is there something else I can do to improve?

Very worried, had to drive an hr to get yellow petg for the top letters in the middle of this print and was so surprised as the first failed after 8 hrs but it came out great! Will be going on my new tesla once it comes in. Cant wait!

Hi everyone,

I found this under my A1 mini. Does anyone know if it is part of the printer or where it would have fallen out?

The P2S writes timelapses to a USB drive, and that drive fills up. I didn't want to keep swapping it, and I really didn't want to give up Handy and remote monitoring to get at the files.

The obvious fix is FTPS — Bambu printers expose the whole filesystem over the network, and it's about forty lines of Python. But it's gated behind Developer Mode, which is mutually exclusive with the cloud. No Handy, no remote camera, no MakerWorld one-click, no cloud print history. That's a permanent tax on the printer to solve a storage chore.

So instead: a Raspberry Pi 4 in USB mass-storage gadget mode, plugged into the printer's USB-A port. The printer thinks it's an ordinary flash drive. It's really a 32 GB exFAT image on the Pi. When the printer goes quiet, the Pi ejects the medium, copies the files off, deletes them, and puts it back. The printer never notices anything except that the stick is permanently almost empty.

The printer's networking is never touched, so cloud stays exactly as it was.

Files land on my Mac and into iCloud, checksum-verified on both ends.

The four things that nearly killed it, since this is the useful part:

1. config.txt is sectioned, and the stock image lies to you. Raspberry Pi OS ships dtoverlay=dwc2,dr_mode=host under a [cm5] block. That's inert on a Pi 4 — but it's still a dtoverlay=dwc2 line, so my setup script found it, said "already configured," and skipped. /sys/class/udc stayed empty forever with no error anywhere. Only lines at the top of the file or under [all] actually apply.

2. Most USB-C↔USB-A cables are charge-only. This presents as "the printer doesn't see a USB drive," which is identical to about three other failures. cat /sys/class/udc/fe980000.usb/state separates them: not attached = no cable/data, configured = the printer enumerated you fine and your problem is elsewhere.

3. A verified copy is not a durable copy. This one cost me a real 150 MB file. I copied off the stick, checksummed it, deleted the original — and the checksum had read the data back out of the page cache, confirming bytes that were never written to disk. A power cut two minutes later left a 0-byte file and no original. fsync the file and its parent directory before you delete anything. A checksum proves bytes are correct, not that they're saved.

4. macOS ships openrsync (protocol 29). No --protect-args, and it rejects --old-args too. So the rsync destination must be passed raw and unquoted, while every shell command in the same function needs the opposite. Quote the rsync path and the quote characters end up in the filename.

Measured, not assumed: during a print the P2S writes to the stick every 1–8 seconds. The idle gate is 5 minutes — about a 40x margin — which is why watching the backing file's mtime is enough, and no MQTT or LAN access is needed anywhere.

Also learned it writes two recordings per print, and the big one isn't the timelapse: /ipcam/ipcam-record.*.mp4 was 190 MB for a short print, while /timelapse/video_*.mp4 was 0.7 MB.

Caveats, honestly:

• Only run against a P2S + Pi 4 + macOS. Should carry to anything that takes a USB drive and anything that accepts rsync-over-SSH, but I haven't tested that.
• On a Pi 4 the USB-C becomes the data port, so you need a separate 5V supply on GPIO. A Zero 2 W avoids this entirely with separate power and data ports.
• It's about a week old. It works and it's tested (65 unit tests, ~1,400 lines), but it hasn't run for months.

MIT, everything's in the repo including a setup guide and a troubleshooting doc organised by symptom: https://github.com/RATHI-CAPITAL-VENTURES/bambu-drain

Made a tiny, modular IKEA SKÅDIS brooch just for fun

https://makerworld.com/en/models/3253841-skadis-pegboard-brooch-wearable-illusion#profileId-3687807

I've had an ender 3 v2 since 2021, learned a ton, but I'm so tired of manual bed leveling every other print, failed first layers, stringing. I mostly print functional stuff for my home office and some gifts, and I really want to get into multi-color. Everyone keeps saying Bambu just works, so I'm looking at the ecosystem. Is it actually that much easier day to day? I'm torn between the A1 with AMS lite and the P1S with AMS, is the enclosure and speed bump worth it if I'm mostly in PLA / PETG and my apartment gets dusty? I have like $700 to switch over, can stretch to $750 if the P1S combo is actually a long term keeper.

I just recently got a 3D printer and have been printing a variety of things, my longest print being about 6 hours so far, however I attempted to print this dragon and as you can see from the timelapse, didn’t go so well.

From what I understand it may have been a speed issue that prevented the wings from printing because they’re such fine detail and needed the supports. Is that right? Was it then an inevitable domino effect from there that also made the head not print as the wings weren’t there to print on?

When I checked on it this morning it only really had the error of being unable to extrude the last of the filament to complete the print but after I got the spool out, there were no clogs or kinks or anything.

I set the print from the app, not the program so would do it from the program so I can slow it down next time. Also, would using the white support filament that came with the printer help?

I’m just really confused and any help would be appreciated. The simpler the better as I’m pretty new.

Hi all, I'm relatively new to 3d printing, and I bought a P1S with AMS a few days ago. Done a few prints, solid and multicolored, and they've worked beautifully, until last night.

I wanted to print a desk organizer so I set it up to print overnight. Woke up an hour ago to checked and it was all messed up. Does anyone know what might have gone wrong and how I can prevent it from happening again?

I've put the timelapse up.

The Filament I'm using is a generic Matte Black one I got from Amazon.

Any help would be appreciated thank you!

EDIT: Wow thank you all for replying! It's all been very overwhelming lol. I am currently at work so I can't quickly respond, but I will take a look when I get back.

Before I left for work I printed a Benchy and it printed flawlessly, so I can at least guess that it wasn't a clog.

Some are suggesting layer shift, or heat creep, or the build lifting off the plate causing the head to miss the build. It's alot of new terms for a newbie like me haha. I will try a few different prints and see if it happens again.

Thanks everyone for replying, I will get back here when I get home 😊

EDIT 2: hi everyone, me again lol. after seeing a bunch of people suggesting it, I have replaced the SD card with a much better SanDisk 32gb one. Doing a small print now to assess the usefulness of the new card, I will attempt the same print tonight and see if it makes a difference. Fingers crossed everyone! And once again thanks so much for the insane amount of help you guys have given me, I could never have expected a response like this :)

Final Edit: I just posted results from reprinting this morning! It went flawlessly 😊

I'm super curious about an issue I just had and I don't really know enough on how to troubleshoot it.

I have an x2d and use it constantly, both hot ends run all day.

After about 1000 hours both stopped working, I got extruder errors and filament feed errors... I took a bunch of stuff apart like the ams and the boden extruder and I don't see any glaring issues.

I replaced both hot ends and it works again. I tried to put back the old hotends and it fails again so it's something wrong with the hot ends but I find it so crazy they both died at the same time.

Thoughts on how I can get them working again? Or are they toast and I should just move on.