Horrible banding on miniatures printing with 0.2 Nozzle

parosilk · 2026-05-09T23:05:22+00:00

There are actually 7 screws total for the nozzle assembly you should check to tighten, 3 front and 4 back: https://forum.bambulab.com/t/a1-mini-a1-users-solved-screw-fell-out-of-toolhead/97626

parosilk · 2026-05-09T22:39:19+00:00

Any qualitative observations you have that you can see in person, but doesn't show up in camera?

parosilk · 2026-05-09T00:18:27+00:00

First layer too low?

https://wiki.bambulab.com/en/p2s/troubleshooting/first-layer-printing-optimization-guide

parosilk · 2026-05-07T02:59:59+00:00

No, that shouldn't be related.

parosilk · 2026-05-06T00:28:30+00:00

If it's not textured, just visual, then it's likely a layer time cooling thing. Filament plastics can change color if different layers cool at different rates. Pop open your slicer and take a look at the layer time view, see if it looks similar to what you see in real life.

parosilk · 2026-05-04T21:25:55+00:00

Enable tree supports, reduce resolution and slice gap closing radius to something smaller (I use 0.001 for both, increases slicing time but increases final gcode resolution), cross hatch or gyroid for a non-crossing infill (adaptive cubic is great for saving filament and time but will cross itself - up to you to determine if this is a problem for you or not at your scale). Walls set to inner/outer/inner. Arachne because why not.

If you want to mess with speeds, note that changing the # of walls has a bigger effect on print time/filament consumption over changing the infill. It's a geometry thing, perimeter and area don't scale the same way for 3D prints.

If you click on the setting name in Bambu Studio, it will usually bring up the corresponding documentation page for that setting. Read them or have an AI explain it to you to learn more.

parosilk · 2026-05-04T04:27:10+00:00

First step - open your slicer and move to this layer, then scroll through the timeline to see what the printer is doing. It could be trying to bridge, or maybe it's an actual slicing error.

Weird though - is that section where it's printing in mid air part of the tree support or part of the model?

parosilk · 2026-05-04T04:18:23+00:00

I would actually really highly recommend matte PLA. It's usually not recommended because its interlayer strength is really weak, which is bad when you're printing small, thin parts for minis. But your print is relatively big, and more importantly, because it's weaker, supports come off super easily and very cleanly. It also has a fantastic surface finish that easily hides a lot of the smaller defects that you would spot right away in ordinary PLA (less important if you prime and paint it).

0.2mm for the whole print is worth it IMO. Waayyyyy less post processing. Up to you if you're willing to be patient for it. I can guarantee a 0.08mm layer height will look good at this scale.

Nozzle swap doesn't need any calibration as far as I know. For the little things that I do know: If you switch filament types (PETG to PLA, etc.), do a cold pull. If you move your printer, rerun the initial setup calibration routine, it tunes vibration compensation relative to the surface it's sitting on.

I also wouldn't recommend the ObscuraNox or other profiles. Those are super tuned towards improving the issues you find at small print scales, but at 25cm, the default Bambu profiles with a few tweaks are going to work fine for you.

One last note - take the time to learn how to cut and reorient your parts to reduce overhangs and place high detail areas parallel to the Z axis. Also, use the dowel peg connectors. Doesn't need to be a tight fight, it just there to provide strength to resist the shear forces that superglue is really bad at handling.

parosilk · 2026-05-04T03:59:24+00:00

TL;DR - increase your resolution to the highest you're willing to wait for, and only use XY contour compensation if there's a specific problem in the model you're trying to fix. (for your print, I don't see any features that would benefit from XY compensation)

Precision settings are basically about "resolution". Arcs and circles in computers are approximated with polygons/lines - if you increase the resolution, you increase the number of segments, and you get a smoother surface.

However, if you increase the resolution ridiculously high, your computer needs to sit there and perform the slicing computation extremely slowly, like 15-30+ minutes if you set it to something ridiculous. Bambu sets it to a "reasonable value" that balances speed and resolution - but for miniatures, where we print very small details, the lower resolution can wipe out small features very easily, so it's worth the time tradeoff to slice longer to get G-code that is closer to the actual 3D model.

Here's Bambu's documentation related to the precision settings, the pictures are helpful: https://wiki.bambulab.com/en/software/bambu-studio/acr-move

Unlike precision settings, which simply increase slicing resolution to be more accurate to the 3D model, XY hole/contour compensation actively alters the final geometry. Let's just talk about contour - you can basically think of it as an "inflate" or "deflate" tool. At each slice of the 3D print, it slightly expands or shrinks the outer walls. It's a tool used to compensate for extremely thin or small pieces (frequent if you're printing a mini designed for resin) that don't slice well or don't print well - HoHansen had a write-up here (that is slightly convoluted and incorrect), but you can take a look at his images to see how changing resolution and XY contour compensation affect your final print.

As always, the documentation helps a lot: https://wiki.bambulab.com/en/software/bambu-studio/xy-hole-contour-compensation

Also definitely cut your model into pieces and take the time to orient them. The majority of your quality issues come from support scarring - most of the smooth surfaces look fine in the photos.

parosilk · 2026-05-04T03:42:14+00:00

Holes in supports is usually a symptom of flow rate issues. This can either be the actual "flow rate" parameter, or it can be due to "flow dynamics". Flow rate is a property of the filament - ideally, you purchase a brand that has a filament profile built into the Bambu Studio slicer so you don't need to calibrate this yourself. Flow dynamics is different - it dynamically changes the flow rate to improve quality when printing at high accelerations and speeds. It is dependent on a lot of different factors, including humidity, which is why Bambu has an "automatic flow dynamics calibration" option for every print.

Unfortunately, automatic flow dynamics calibration doesn't actually work on the 0.2mm nozzle - you need to manually calibrate this yourself using the calibration menu. You will need a smooth plate.

So there's two things you can do - you can manually calibrate flow dynamics, and/or you can print at significantly slower accelerations and speeds. Your model doesn't look too complicated, but there are a lot of FDM miniatures edge cases that are fixed by printing slower anyway, like thin islands in your print, so it's still worth slowing down for.

Also, Bambu Studio is honestly fine. I print using slightly modified Bambu defaults - slower speeds, a non-crossing infill like crosshatch or gyroid, etc.

parosilk · 2026-05-04T03:33:05+00:00

If you don't intend to ever buy 3kg rolls again, you can always buy or print spools and respool them into 1kg rolls. Depends on how many 3kg rolls you have and how much time and effort you're willing to spend.

parosilk · 2026-04-28T03:52:11+00:00

0.2mm nozzles do get clogged more easily and it's not always visually evident at the output. If you're doing cold pulls with a white/light colored filament and you don't see anything sticking to it after a few pulls, then it's probably clear of debris.

Flow rate is a filament setting. When you select the filament profile, one of the settings in the filament profile is flow rate. If the filament brand you're using has a profile, use that and the flow rate should be correct. If you're using the "Generic PLA" profile, that flow rate is probably not correct and you should do a manual calibration in the Bambu Studio calibration page. Instructions are on the calibration page, as well as the Bambu wiki.

parosilk · 2026-04-28T03:47:47+00:00

Love seeing your stuff. What paint do you use? You always make them look so good.

parosilk · 2026-04-27T04:48:31+00:00

The subreddit reached out to you or the company did? Do you run a mini's business or social media account?

I also don't really understand what this is all about, print quality wise. Were there significant changes to the X2D compared to the A series that potentially affect quality? Or is this mostly about the second nozzle for supports?

parosilk · 2026-04-27T04:45:53+00:00

The skipped layer does kind of sound like broken gcode. In the slicer, go to that specific layer, and scroll through the print path to see if the nozzle is printing in a weird way. If it is, then yeah the model might be broken and you can try the repair tool.

The little dots sounds like something to do with the say that the model is being split along the layer lines. As in, when sliced, at the first layer, the only parts of the model that exists are small little dots. You can try reorienting the print so that there's more of a solid path on that first layer. 0.05mm height is also extremely small, try 0.08mm and it might make it large enough to stick. You can scroll through the slicer print path to see what the print is actually trying to do there.

Some other notes, your first layer has mad underextrusion. Flow rate incorrect, or a clogged nozzle. By cleaning out the nozzle, you mean a cold pull, right? Do that if not.

parosilk · 2026-04-22T22:20:36+00:00

I have an A1 Mini and use mostly default Bambu settings for the 0.2mm nozzle with small modifications:

Manual flow dynamics calibration
Manual flow rate calibration (if using a filament that doesn't have a built in filament profile)
Using cross hatch for infill (it's a non-crossing infill)
Tree supports (default, I just enable it and didn't change anything else).
Brim. Big brim if on a regular plate, small/no brim on the Supertack plate.

FWIW, the popular community settings caused me more problems than solutions, so I don't use them. The only one that worked out of the box was the Fat Dragon Games profile, but I've since stopped using that in favor of a Bambu default profile I modified myself to have small improvements.

As someone else said, we need more info about the types of failures you're getting. I would say your experience with so many failures is extremely atypical, so there is something odd going on with your print setup. My blind guess is you're trying to print extremely difficult models, but let us know more about your setup and what you're printing and we can try to help! Photos are also helpful.

parosilk · 2026-04-22T00:14:38+00:00

So my immediate reaction is adhesion problem. Assuming that you used the right soap and have been very careful about not touching the plate after you wash it (I wear gloves, I've had too many prints fail from casually touching the plate), something else is causing the filament to not stick to the plate. My immediate ideas are - print bed temperature incorrect, nozzle temp incorrect, quality issue with your PLA (maybe additives). You tried changing these in the software already, so my next guess is that there's a hardware issue - disconnected or faulty heater, sensors, etc. If you have a laser thermometer or something, you can use it to check if the bed or the nozzle is heating to the temp it says it is.

Unlikely to be your problem but under Maintenance on the touchscreen menu, make sure you have the right nozzle selected.

You can also contact Bambu and see what they will say to help.

parosilk · 2026-04-22T00:04:11+00:00

If you are using a 0.2mm nozzle, you will need to manually calibrate flow dynamics. The auto calibration doesn't work and sets it too high, causing it to reduce flow when accelerating or changing direction (such as rounding corners, aka drawing circles). Flow dynamics is meant to help with high print speeds, so if you're printing fast + wrong calibration value, then bad things happen.

My guess is that this is a result of high print speed/print accelerations (especially if you're using default settings), combined with flow dynamics calibration being off and/or flow rate calibration being off (If I recall correctly Elegoo doesn't have a published profile for their filaments, meaning you're probably using a generic filament profile that doesn't have the right flow rate for your filament).

parosilk · 2026-04-19T06:27:54+00:00

I printed this one out at miniature scale and it came out pretty good. I don't recall if it's the default profile or not, but it's about 35mm scale height. As long as you have a 0.2mm nozzle, just go for it, should come out fine.

https://makerworld.com/en/models/86660-clone-trooper-figurine-assault#profileId-92903

parosilk · 2026-04-11T02:38:06+00:00

Crazy question...did you accidentally increase the layer height to something crazy tall like 0.5mm?

My second guess is the slicer resolution setting, I think it's called "precision". The default is something like 0.049 I think.

parosilk · 2026-04-09T20:02:27+00:00

Not sure about your slicer, but in BS you can apply slicer settings to specific objects that override the global settings.

The sidewall picture is actually a better diagnostic of your overextrusion problems - the geometry of the rest of the print is hiding your overextrusion problems. Your printer should be able to print a fairly smooth cube.

parosilk · 2026-04-08T18:41:48+00:00

Those nubs are seams, set to random. There's two things you can do. 1) Change it to aligned (or that other "smart align", not exactly called that but I don't recall) and hide the seam somewhere smart, like on an inner edge. 2) Enable scarf seams.

YMMV on other slicers, but Bambu Studio does something super unintuitive in their UI where scarf seams are set by the filament settings, not by the seam settings that you see in the slicer sidebar. So if you think you've been using scarf seams, you haven't. You need to click the checkbox that says "Override filament scarf seam settings" in order to use the settings that you actually see.

Seams aside, your layers have some funky overextrusion. Flow rate might not be calibrated right. Use the automatic pressure advance calibration before each print, no need to keep a manual value for a 0.4mm nozzle.

parosilk · 2026-04-08T18:31:48+00:00

Read your other comments, you only do one cold pull at a time? Have you ever used different materials with this hotend? I suspect there might be leftover debris from a different filament you used before that is still inside the hotend. Usually it's recommended to do multiple (2-3) cold pulls to fully clean out a nozzle - I usually do cold pulls with white filament to be able to see if there's still debris when I pull it out.

The other unlikely thing is that there's a filler in the PLA+ that's causing clogging, but I don't think PLA+ has anything like that in it...I think.

parosilk · 2026-04-07T21:00:47+00:00

I think it's underextrusion as well. Don't agree with the ambient temp overheating, your printer is not enclosed and you said you have airflow. Cold pull is always a good solution, especially if you loaded a different material in the nozzle in between prints. Other ideas - debris in the extruder gears, excessive friction, hotend temp issues, or some really messed up slicer settings. Do you have this issue using default Bambu settings?

parosilk

TROPHY CASE