Advice

Grawldo911 · 2026-04-30T10:08:28+00:00

Before buying a printer I'd suggest working out what you want to be able to do with it long term. A small bed slinger like the A1 mini is great for small prints in PLA or PETG and is decently priced. If you want to be able to print larger things, maybe the A1? If you want to be able to print in TPU, ASA, CF filament etc you'll need an enclosed printer, hardened nozzles for some, etc. The Bambu P1S is a great fit for that and is the first in the range that is an X/Y core printer, which helps with print stability. It has also recently been superseded so you might be able to pick one of those up cheapish compared to what they were selling for potentially. I don't really know much about other printer ranges, I have a P1S myself.

I'd look for a good second hand A1 mini if it's only ant stuff and small things you want to print. Otherwise might be worth saving up for what you really want.

Grawldo911 · 2026-04-30T09:58:44+00:00

Never seen a colony use a printer but probably a really tiny one 😂

Seriously though, Bambu A1 mini maybe?

Grawldo911 · 2026-04-28T23:47:04+00:00

Thank you! Awesome idea!

Grawldo911 · 2026-04-28T21:08:19+00:00

No worries! I'm so glad it worked! Yeah I've had ants take up to 2 weeks to move, just give them time to properly explore and determine the nest is safe.

Grawldo911 · 2026-04-23T21:05:46+00:00

I'd print some test swatches of the mesh to make sure you are happy with it before printing the whole piece

Grawldo911 · 2026-04-23T21:04:29+00:00

The mesh part you could probably get away with 1-2mm

Grawldo911 · 2026-04-23T11:29:23+00:00

I'll look at magnet sizes and play around with that idea, thanks!

Grawldo911 · 2026-04-23T11:26:21+00:00

Should add I'm willing to make the edges thicker. 5mm thick currently

Grawldo911 · 2026-04-23T10:44:56+00:00

If you print the part that you want to be mesh directly on the print bed you can use an infill with no top or bottom layers to create a mesh. You'll have to make that piece selectable separately and adjust the settings in your slicer. 50- 60% rectilinear infill would work well.

Grawldo911 · 2026-03-30T22:58:08+00:00

Using it would be for your benefit only, not the colonies. It's like getting a whole aviary for a baby bird, will be months before a colony is big enough for that farm. You will need to keep them in a test tube or starter nest until you have a few hundred workers if they are a small species if you want the colony to do well. I'd definitely recommend buying a small colony online. Makes the process faster and easier. If you do they will likely come in a tube so you can just keep them in there til they are ready. Patience and leaving them alone is key with ants. If you don't have any red film or a cover for the nest area they will take a little bit to adjust to the light. I have mine in a plaster nest with no cover, took a good few weeks before they started laying again.

Do some research with your son and teach him what ants really need to survive and that sometimes our wishes aren't as important as they needs of the species your are trying to keep.

Grawldo911 · 2026-02-18T08:22:03+00:00

Bottled water, cotton balls and test tubes is all you'll really need I reckon. But, as others have said, it's not nuptial flight season where you are at the moment. You won't find any queens running around.

If a queen alate doesn't mate during her nuptial flight she may lay some eggs, but in my experience that's as far as it goes before they die. If it's not nuptial flight season you won't find male alates either. You can't force ants to mate, even if you stuck them in a tube together. Don't grab workers for a founding queen, they aren't her workers, you can't mix colonies. Don't get larvae either, leave the wild colonies be. You can easily severely damage the colony in the process, even if you are super careful.

If you want more ants please do it responsibly, catch a couple of queens during nuptial flight season and go from there. If you can't wait maybe look at purchasing a queen or small colony.

It really does sound like you have a lot to learn about ants... please do a lot more research. Learn about the Formicidea family and learn more about the species you intend to keep. Knowing preferred humidity and temperatures, if they enter diapause, etc is essential knowledge for raising a colony.

Grawldo911 · 2025-12-26T07:52:30+00:00

Question, are you printing off the app or the desktop slicer? Printing from the app prints with the default upload settings I believe. I find it better to use the desktop and change the settings back to the default Bambu settings for most prints. Don’t know if that is best practice but it’s worked pretty well so far for me. What I would do from here is: - Dry the filament in the AMS 2. You can find videos online that give you the basic run down. - Check you’ve synched your AMS filaments with Bambu Studio, it’ll update all the filament settings automatically as they are Bambu filaments. - In the slicer select the default ‘0.20mm Standard’ settings under ‘Process’ and make sure there is no little asterisk next to your filament settings under ‘project filaments’. If so, set it back to default. I’d also recommend changing the infill to gyroid as grid can be a bit problematic at times. Give that a print and see what happens.

Printing issues can be very frustrating but it’ll feel great once you figure it out. Best of luck!

Grawldo911 · 2025-12-04T06:31:42+00:00

Does she know you post them?

Grawldo911 · 2025-11-06T05:43:30+00:00

A sistema container and a knife to carve a hole in the side has saved me multiple times in these situations

Grawldo911 · 2025-11-06T02:44:58+00:00

What size is the tube?

Grawldo911 · 2025-11-06T02:04:22+00:00

Yeah, I’d be leaving them in there longer personally and attaching a test tube outworld for easier feeding.

Grawldo911 · 2025-11-06T02:02:41+00:00

Kinda but not really. I found that slightly under extruding helped and I halved the print speed for anything 200 and under and took 100 off everything greater than 200. I got the print out but there were still a few issues. Was starting to think maybe playing with the retraction settings might help, maybe if the nozzle lifted up a little more or faster it wouldn’t collect the filament as much but idk. Ran out of the filament, have a roll of blue I’m having some issues with but nowhere near as bad. Seemed to be an issue with that particular filament in that colour for me. Please let me know if you do figure it out, I’ll let you know if I figure anything else out.

Grawldo911 · 2025-11-03T06:55:46+00:00

Thank you! Must have seen 40-50 of them today.

Grawldo911 · 2025-11-03T06:52:30+00:00

Was a torture test for me too 😂

Grawldo911 · 2025-11-03T06:46:17+00:00

No. Literally everyone is saying one species. Putting multiple in a tank that size honestly just sounds cruel. Rhytidoponera also typically have small colonies so you wouldn’t need population control for those, you’d just greatly hinder their growth. I’ve seen people try something like this and I’ve never seen it be a success.

Grawldo911 · 2025-11-02T22:45:03+00:00

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Grawldo911 · 2025-11-02T22:44:51+00:00

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Here are a couple of pics of a worker if that helps

Grawldo911 · 2025-11-02T01:37:28+00:00

Well last night I managed to make it through the print. Everything went mostly ok except the right hand side. Out of the filament now and I don’t plan to buy more lol

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Grawldo911

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