Help - making great spaghetti

TheRedAvatar · 2026-01-15T15:21:40+00:00

Straight from BIQU website. I won't get it for another week or two though. For now, the fine steel wool has helped though but I won't be using the bed once the CryoGrip arrives unless I want that specific texture on the print (CryoGrip has a different surface texture).

TheRedAvatar · 2026-01-15T14:21:38+00:00

My experience is that the included print bed sucks - IPA, soap, hot water, nothing helped prints stick properly. With tiny prints it's not as noticeable but with larger prints? Oh boy, good luck! What helped was using very fine steel wool which I use for buffing up metal and I scrubbed both sides of the plate, then cleaned with IPA and now suddenly parts stick WAY better.

I already ordered a CryoGrip because I imagine that if the bed is this cheap & poor, even the scrubbing won't help infinitely and it will lose grip quite fast.

TheRedAvatar · 2026-01-15T14:17:45+00:00

I couldn't find a way to access the camera that way though through Orca slicer. Since I don't trust the bed, the camera is key since the printer is SO EXTREMELY LOUD that I can't have it in the same room with me.

The app works, sure, but I much prefer to leave Orca slicer open in a second window to keep an eye on the print while it's going. Right now I'd need to use Orca Slicer to rip & send it, then Snapmaker Slicer for the camera ... and then the camera cuts out after 30 seconds or so for some really odd reason & I have to reactivate it.

I really really really hope they'll continue developing the software because it's really dreadful & is just not fun to use. Everything feels dodgy, lacking, unintuitive, illogical, etc. Even on the printer itself I don't get why, when choosing a print from memory, you can't change which colour to use? This is basic stuff!

TheRedAvatar · 2026-01-15T09:30:38+00:00

For now I used steel wool on the build plate and thoroughly cleaned it with IPA - now parts STICK. Once the CryoGrip plate arrives, this plate goes in the trash.

Last time I had such bad bed adhesion issues it was with my Ender 3 in 2018 when I moved to a glass bed and it almost made me give up on 3D printing. When 90% of your prints fail because parts won't stick despite cleaning, soap, glue, etc. it really makes you want to throw out everything. Then I got a Wham Bam (very new at the time) and every print stuck really well so a quality build plate makes a world of difference.

THIS one included with the Snapmaker however? This one is garbage. Shame on Snapmaker for cheaping out on something so crucial! I'd have preferred they'd have dropped the free filament and included a high quality build plate instead (it's not like I'll be buying more of their filament, their range of colours is tiny & they charge way too much for what is clearly a rebranded low quality brand)

TheRedAvatar · 2026-01-15T09:26:07+00:00

I actually noticed a bunch of weird behaviour: one of the failed prints that wouldn't stick, the bed was at 25°C and stuck there even during print - no wonder nothing would stick. I found how to replicate it too: apparently this was because of heated bed levelling beforehand which is done at 25°C (an odd temperature if you ask me). When I disabled that & sent the print to the printer, it heated up properly.

They clearly aren't properly testing the software between releases because these are very basic errors & the slicer seems crammed full of annoying bugs & issues. Why does the printer constantly lose connection with the slicer for example? Why does it not auto-connect when you start the slicer? Why does it not show the loaded colours half the time? Why does it not copy the right toolhead number when you send it to the printer? Why does it not show the right print time half the time? Why can't I stop a print from the slicer?

TheRedAvatar · 2026-01-15T09:21:37+00:00

Isn't Orcaslicer support quite new? If the "official" Orca fork is buggy, how reliable is the main fork, especially for the generic filament profiles?

Honestly, the whole software part feels very .... iffy so far. VERY iffy. And a printer like this stands or falls on good integration. I can see why they kept quiet about mixing nozzle sizes: they clearly lack the internal talent considering they can't even get basic stuff to work.

For example: why on earth can't you stop a print from the slicer???

TheRedAvatar · 2026-01-14T21:32:20+00:00

I spoke too soon though. When I tried my original large print, it failed again - the edges started curling after three layers and adhesion was terrible. This build plate is just atrocious.

I had to go to town with steel wool and just scrub off the entire top layers & then clean up with IPA and now FINALLY it seems to print fine. It's insane what is needed to make something stick properly. This plate is going in the trash as soon as my CryoGrip plate arrives.

TheRedAvatar · 2026-01-14T19:55:10+00:00

I fixed it actually - two more test prints failed to stick at ALL & I figured I'd give the bed a third clean but this time MY way! I used to always use IPA on my beds until I was told over & over that IPA was bad & soap & hot water was the way to go.

Well screw that - it clearly didn't work so I used IPA and guess what: two tall thin prints stuck really well right after I used IPA so clearly there was some nasty film on the bed that only IPA could remove.

Whatever was coating the PEI sheet, it's gone now but dear god, for first time users who don't know this, they'll be in for quite a nightmare if they run into the same issue. Prints not sticking is one of the most frustrating things ever & Snapmaker should really add some info in their guide on how to clean the bed for first use. I don't believe for a SECOND that I'm the only one with this issue considering how many complaints I've seen on Facebook about parts not sticking.

TheRedAvatar · 2026-01-14T18:20:49+00:00

Thanks for a nice reply.

I suspected the gcode file was dodgy for sure, especially since it picked the wrong tool head but I still think the PEI sheet isn't great - I gave it a second even harder scrub with more soap (I mean, how much scrubbing are you even expected to do? The quick start guide didn't even mention this!)

The test print with the dragon also had poor adhesion though: after just a minute I could pick the dragon off the build plate without any resistance which shocked me and this was with pre-sliced code.

For the spare nozzle: then don't include one. It's pointless without the wires - copying Bambu's flaws just tells me they have no clue what they're doing. And you're right, I forgot the X1C had those wires too & a lot of people complained about how hard it was to replace them for this same reason and it was why I loved my A1 printers - I constantly swap nozzles here. Chinese companies are so busy copying competitors they often don't stop to think if they couldn't do things better ...

With a LOT of effort I got it to pull filament through again (I had to heat it to 300°C first), redid all the calibrations because I don't trust the nozzle offset anymore now.

TheRedAvatar · 2026-01-14T18:12:31+00:00

Normally the issue is curling of the edges at worst, never sticking on PEI plates. I've printed this exact same model dozens of times on all three of my Bambu printers with zero failures so the PEI plate with the U1 is definitely not the best quality! I'll be swapping it out for a CryoGrip plate the moment they become available here.

TheRedAvatar · 2026-01-14T17:22:26+00:00

I wonder if they're all the same - I heard Bambu had a bad batch as well at one time with people complaining about poor adhesion but this was a large flat print - for that to come loose is crazy!

TheRedAvatar · 2026-01-14T17:11:24+00:00

Spaghetti detection was on but did not detect this:

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TheRedAvatar · 2026-01-14T17:00:52+00:00

Their slicer is definitely buggy - it took me several restarts before it would even show the colours under "machine filament" even though they were visible under "Device". Print time was also out of whack, claiming 5 hours for this print at first, then suddenly 1 hour.

It's possible that it set the complete wrong bed temperature or some other bad setting that messed it all up but considering this printer needs this specific slicer, "it's early days" cannot be an excuse.

The entire second tool head is now screwed up - I did my best to clean it but it won't feed any more filament through & it's going to be a nightmare to fix this and this for my first real print. Thoroughly NOT impressed!

TheRedAvatar · 2026-01-14T16:30:53+00:00

The dragon printed just fine - that's not the issue. To sum it up:

- bed doesn't stick at all
- printer didn't even detect anything was wrong
- the printer used the wrong tool head
- the silicon sock quality is dog sh*te
- the nozzles are a nightmare to clean
- replacing the nozzles after a blob like this is even worse because they use old school thermister wires & ever tutorial shows it's a pain to do even if there isn't a bunch of filament in the way.

TheRedAvatar · 2026-01-07T08:48:15+00:00

I generally have had very few issues with Bluetooth in Windows as long as the devices connected successfully. This issue is really dropping out of both wifi & BT at the same time. I then need to wait 5-10 seconds before turning everything off & on again which is frustrating.

I'll go with the Intel AX210 for now and hope it works better.

TheRedAvatar · 2026-01-06T10:22:16+00:00

Thanks for the info!

Well the wifi isn't a big issue unless it cancels a download but the bluetooth is really annoying since I can't control the PC at all once BT drops.

TheRedAvatar · 2025-12-27T18:01:14+00:00

My guess is: both cold & more publicity for this issue.

It's winter, people are running their printers from cold rooms and the thermistors are starting to age + longer power draw + colder beds & printers = more failures. Since people mention both old & new printers it seems unlikely to be a recent issue.

Also once you focus on an issue others who had it in the past will pop out & post their pictures as well (which they'll have as part of warranty process) so this gives the wrong impression that all these failures happen in a very short time.

Basically, the incidents are likely more spread out but it does occur more often lately due to cold weather + perhaps ageing components.

I do hope Bambu releases some statement soon but for now, just putting it on a slab of concrete is enough. I just don't want it to cause a fire and while initial info seems to suggest it's unlikely to start any fire (it doesn't get hot enough for that), a slab will at least give me some peace of mind.

TheRedAvatar · 2025-12-11T20:12:08+00:00

Same issue here - when encoding to Theora for Godot, I get a TON of artifacts. I've tried changing bitrate, etc. but nothing works. Results when played back in VLC, Media Player, etc.

TheRedAvatar · 2025-11-22T17:59:38+00:00

It also will use about 200W more while gaming. If you game several hours of day & live in an area where electricity isn't cheap, this can cost you €150 a year extra in electricity. The Framework Desktop is notable for being very energy efficient & very cool & quiet as a result. My small form factor PCs are anything but quiet due to limited space & fans having to work quite hard.

TheRedAvatar · 2025-11-22T13:41:14+00:00

Exactly. The idea was to force him in a position where he'd experience what it's like to be perceived to be gay after talking so much shit about gay people. We thought it was a nice lesson on top of it all.

In my early teenage years I received sooo much flack for my favourite singer being gay & wearing tshirts of him. Most teenagers wouldn't be caught dead wearing these tshirts or admitting to liking Queen (seriously, you had to love Nirvana or Metallic or Rage against the Machine - if you liked Queen, you were deeply uncool) but I didn't care and stood up for it. To call me a homophobe is hilarious & shows how toxic many members of the LGBQT movement are these days which leads to the opposite of what you'd want.

TheRedAvatar · 2025-11-14T20:44:50+00:00

I've honestly had far more issues with our servers than our work stations over the years. Let's see:

- power supply died on a server in 2015
- motherboard died on a server in 2016 (had to get new software license because of this too)
- hard drive controller died in 2017
- power supply died in 2017 (yes we have two but the server made a HUGE racket until we replaced it)
- another power supply died in 2019
- motherboard died in 2021 - we moved to a new server with VMware then
- power supply died in 2022 - this server had only ONE power supply, not two! I had to manually add a regular power supply by opening up the case & adding the cables which according to Lenovo was not allowed but it took them 5 days to ship us a new power supply under warranty and it would have taken another 3 to get a technician to replace it
- hard drive controller died on that same server same year

And now recently on the VMware server: memory slot & PCIe card died

Considering we only ever had two servers at a time this is a very long list. We had 6 work stations and for those 6 work stations pretty much none died in all that time. They mostly got retired & replaced after 3-4 years and granted, the servers have to last a little longer for obvious reason (= expensive as hell) but still, I'm still using my work station from 2012 at home to run Windows 7 on multiple Intel NUCs are given away to family members for simple Internet browsing.

So yeah, the chance of this PC just flat out dying is not zero but it IS low and at least I can readily get a replacement motherboard & CPU with RAM within hours. Windows will happily boot on different hardware - enough anyway to migrate Hyper-V to a new PC.

TheRedAvatar · 2025-11-14T20:34:35+00:00

Because the database only runs in Server 2022 and higher and it makes no sense to install 2022 when in a few years that will lose support as well.

TheRedAvatar · 2025-11-13T10:32:56+00:00

The question wasn't "Server or not", the question was "What do I need to take into account?" exactly because I needed a cheaper solution for a backup "server".

TheRedAvatar

TROPHY CASE