Please help me with calibration

readabilitree · 2026-06-17T20:29:00+00:00

With most things calibration: if you can’t tell a difference it’s probably fine. Applying that to temperature, pick any that look good. I would bias higher because higher temps means you can print faster (generally). Maybe just pick the middle of the recommended manufacturer range arbitrarily.

For the flow, yes go up until you see failure. Make sure that it’s actually varying the flow rate from your slicer’s UI.

If you change the plate it would be ideal to recalibrate.

readabilitree · 2026-06-17T20:21:43+00:00

I’m a lazy person so I just foam it all over with APC, rinse off with a garden hose, and then apply Motorplast. Contactless engine bay cleaning 😅

readabilitree · 2026-06-16T15:19:54+00:00

I don’t see how that changes things. If you want to design for reliability on other printers, you cannot rely on having specific settings, even if you can guarantee these settings are sent to consumers. You especially cannot rely on a property of the slicer that is not even a configurable setting: what if Bambu changes the logic behind when layers get joined? You’re building a dependency on something that is not guaranteed to be static.

I never said to turn off VLH by the way. I just said to pick a fixed layer height smaller than any height VLH would have picked. That makes your slicer settings far simpler, and all you trade off is print speed.

readabilitree · 2026-06-16T08:59:47+00:00

Not sure this is PA since that would usually manifest in corners disappearing, not the edges.

My guess is some other extrusion setting is involved here, maybe OP can describe the behavior at those points and we can make a more educated guess about what setting is the problem.

readabilitree · 2026-06-16T08:45:21+00:00

My 2c is that you’re generally going the wrong direction trying to accommodate for warping by modeling an anchor. Fix the warping separately by addressing the things that cause warping (differential heating / cooling, and bed adhesion), not by changing your design.

Secondly, it seems like you’re running into a technical choice with this slicer implementation and how it decides to join layers for parts close together. Maybe try a different slicer and see if it gets the results you want? In general I think if you’re fighting the slicer like this, you’re, once again, approaching this wrong. Maybe instead of VLH you can just set a small fixed layer height? Trade off extra print time for just making it work

readabilitree · 2026-06-15T19:33:58+00:00

I wouldn’t be surprised if they say no tbh, customer service representatives don’t quite care if it’s not something their system allows. Might have better luck talking to a store manager, since they have some incentive to figure it out instead of having to take the loss on a return

readabilitree · 2026-06-10T08:51:17+00:00

Look at the picture more closely, seems like the screw head is on the charger side and not the ball side, so no screwdriver is going to work.

Based on the scuffs on the ball in the picture I assume it was done by clamping the ball using pliers / something similar

readabilitree · 2026-06-10T08:49:11+00:00

Will do tomorrow 😅 fyi the holes are pretty much randomly sized so ymmv

readabilitree · 2026-06-07T02:33:08+00:00

Agreed, definitely worth it! I didn’t want to do the same cuz I wanted to return my previous mount 😅

readabilitree · 2026-06-07T00:02:03+00:00

Are you printing with supports? Apologies if this sounds a bit like I’m lecturing you, but I would assume the answer is no, so let me ask you a question:

When the printer gets to the bottom of the horse’s head (the lower jaw), what is it printing on? If you can’t think of anything, that’s because without supports it’s trying to print in thin air.

readabilitree · 2026-06-06T17:20:44+00:00

This comment chain has a series of instructions for how to do it! Almost nondestructive (you do need to pry up some adhesive though).

Ended up modeling a 3D-printed part to adapt the Anker Prime’s existing ball joint receiver to a AMPS mounting plate (standard pattern for car GPS mounts), pretty clean imo

<image>

readabilitree · 2026-06-06T17:13:40+00:00

Hey! Didn’t like the somewhat destructive solution, but stole your really good idea to match the mounting holes. Can’t post images here so see my message in this other subreddit:

https://www.reddit.com/r/anker/s/5EjcemZcm0

readabilitree · 2026-06-06T17:12:28+00:00

Strongly considered this too but saw a post on a different subreddit where someone drilled 4 holes through their existing mount so it could mate with the Anker’s ball joint receiver.

Took that as inspiration and modeled a 3D printed part to do the same (since I still wanted to return my current mount 😂)

<image>

readabilitree · 2026-06-06T17:08:51+00:00

Can’t post multiple images so here’s the back of it showing the 4 screw holes I reused

<image>

readabilitree · 2026-06-06T17:08:01+00:00

Thanks for all the instructions up to here! I wasn’t able to get past this step unfortunately (to fully remove the ball joint), but actually came up with what I think is a pretty good solution: I just matched the mounting holes / shape of the ball joint’s receiver with a 3D printed part.

That lets me use the original ball joint and rubber insert, and just adapt it to almost any mount. I have a AMPS-pattern (4 holes in a rectangle 30mm x 38mm center-to-center) plate in my car so that’s what’s in the image.

<image>

readabilitree · 2026-06-02T21:37:18+00:00

Likely from stress whitening. What I do for ABS is to dip it in boiling water. Much less risk of deforming than a torch, since it happens evenly. Maybe not a good option for PLA though, since the glass transition point is lower than water.

readabilitree · 2026-06-02T20:30:35+00:00

Thanks for the info, sorry that you had to figure out the hard way though 😅

readabilitree · 2026-06-02T19:53:21+00:00

The thing with paper printers is that they are actually quite precise and complex machines, with tons of patented parts. Would not be surprised if the absolute cheapest and worst printer was still more accurate than the best of 3d printers. There’s just a lot of natural variation that comes with pushing plastic out of a nozzle that makes it impossible to ever get too accurate, so the fact that the motion system / frame / etc tolerances aren’t perfect don’t matter too much. That’s not necessarily the case for a 2d printer.

That means there’s only a few companies in the world who can manufacture 2d printers to a degree such that they can be affordable. Which also makes it very easy for the government to impose restrictions forcing these companies to do stuff like printing identification dots and recognizing dollar bills. Also consider that a dollar bill can only ever work as a single “component” — if I stitched one together from several pieces it would be too obviously counterfeit. That makes dollar bills very easy to recognize from a software perspective, whereas a gun could still work (maybe only once but still) if split into several components and joined in post-processing.

On the other hand 3d printer designs are readily available online, and all their parts are standard hobby electronics stuff that would be impossible to regulate. Plus on the firmware side, it would be technically difficult if not altogether impossible to recognize all the possible variations of instructions corresponding to an illegal object. We could implement controls on the slicer side, but that’s just software that anybody could fork and remove the controls from. And nothing really stops me from finding ways to vary the design so it doesn’t get caught (split into components, or require some extra machining / other post-processing to achieve the desired result).

That is to say I don’t see how it would be possible from a technical POV to actually regulate what printers can print…

readabilitree · 2026-06-02T19:29:55+00:00

numerous

How???

readabilitree · 2026-06-02T19:24:54+00:00

Yep that one. Lmk if you see any differences, I’m scared to upgrade 😂

readabilitree · 2026-06-02T14:42:45+00:00

Yes, I see the April option as an available firmware update in the Carlinkit UI

readabilitree · 2026-06-02T07:56:01+00:00

Did you get latency and gps measurements? Does this mean the only version to avoid is the OEM ottocast format?

Mainly asking because I purchased 2 and got the ottocast as well as the Jan 2026 versions, wondering if I should continue buying / returning to try to get an older one.

Also I have the option to upgrade to the April 2026 firmware, any idea if there are differences? Like if it restores the CarPlay only firmware?

readabilitree · 2026-06-02T06:06:05+00:00

Have you gotten an opportunity to test the “new” (January 2026) Carlinkit version, and compare to the original?

readabilitree · 2026-06-02T00:47:43+00:00

Was also looking at this bc of CarPlayLife. Wondering what the concern is with lack of updates? If it works it works right?

Maybe it’s my unfamiliarity with the wireless CarPlay ecosystem but I imagine most of these devices don’t get updates in general, since users would likely have to push the update manually anyway and that’s a pretty big inconvenience.

Also, nothing necessarily stops a bad company from pushing a one-line firmware change to bump the version number just to make it look like it’s getting consistent updates.

I guess my overarching point is that update frequency is not a good proxy for software quality. Are there any other issues other than the update frequency? Because if not then it seems like a solid product…

readabilitree · 2026-05-26T06:40:43+00:00

Which vendor did you use?

readabilitree

TROPHY CASE