Tricks of Multicolor Printing on Bambu Lab 3D Printers

Multicolor printing gives us the ability to build colorful objects a single time, no painting, and the results are also better than before. But it still has some issues and limits.

The top issue, multicolor printing is very expensive. Poops means wasted money. The current multicolor printing process generates too many poops, it purges too much, it flushes too much, and it fails too much.

Typically, the printer needs to cut the current filament, purge the rest of filament, pull the filament back to the tube, then send the new filament to the extruder, the filament purges and generates a poop, then printing on the tower to flush the nozzle, then it can print with a new color.  This process can be repeated thousands of times.

It means two things: it has a higher chance to be failure, and some units need to be replaced way much earlier than single-color printing.

Second, it’s way slower than single-color printing. The color switching process also requires many extra steps. Printing with parts will be a lot faster.

Third, the current multicolor printing structure is not very advanced, as it limits multicolor printing.

If the above things do not stop you, the following tricks will help you print multicolor successfully.

Trick 1, Paint properly

When using the paint tool, make sure to paint enough layers. For example, white text on black objects, if you don’t paint the white layer enough, you can see black through white. When using the paint tool in Bambu Lab Studio, zoom in and paint carefully between layers and gaps.

Trick 2, Print Multiple Objects

Print more objects if possible. Add more objects doesn’t increase the color switching time or generates more poops. It means you can get more objects with the same many poops, so the average cost on each objects become less.

You can test it out by checking the printing time. 

Trick 3, Modify the Flushing Volumes

Reduce the flushing volumes will reduce the poops and save materials. It is 1 as the default volume, you can try 0.9 or 0.85. But it may get the color mixed. You better do some test print to check the results.

Trick 4, Flush into Objects’ Infill

Turning on the flush onto objects’ infill option will save more materials. It means some poops are turned into infills. But as we can see from the photo, it might cause a mixed color issue when the infill color is deeper than the surface. So, this option needs a slicing test to confirm. You won’t want to ruin the whole print for saving some materials.

Trick 5, Avoid Poop Jam

Upgrade the wiper and Poop Chute to avoid poop jam, saves your hotends and prints. Best 3D Prints that Make Your Bambu Lab Printers So Much Better Part 1 will help you on the upgrade.

As we know, the Bambu Lab P1S and X1 can print up to 16 colors. But the printer was not a survivor even in 4 colors. And the materials are all PLA, it could be worse on sticky materials like PETG or PLA silk.

The purge chute holds the printer back, becomes the largest design flaw. The P1S, X1S and H2D can do so many colors, but the purge chute cannot even purge poops as it should be.

And the worst thing is that the P series and X series do not have nozzle wipers like A series.

So, in this part, you need to modify the nozzle wiper to make sure the poops are collected and wipped into the purge chute. Otherwise, the poops might stick on the purge tower or ruin your prints. Then choose a good poop chute to make sure no poops are jammed. For A series users, just find a good poop chute, the wiper is already good enough.

Personally, I think Bambu Lab should add a sensor to monitor the purge chute, so that the printer can stop before the poop jam.

Trick 6, Filament Checking

Checking the filament is also an important trick. Just make sure filaments are properly dried and enough for the print. Multicolor printing generates a purge tower, and the nozzle moves more times than single-color printing, it will make the stringing issue much worse, so the filament should be dried.

Trick 7, Check the Printer in Time

Checking the printer is another trick that saves your printer and prints, especially when the print job takes more than 1 day. Most of the poop chutes is not open some of them are even closed, which means the poop chute can be full.

Trick 8, Slice with Original Painting

For prints with complicated painting, we can slice it first, then match the material for printing. In most cases, we will get a 3MF file that gets everything set up. But the filament sequence or colors are different from the printer, sync the AMS color will change the painting totally. In this case, just modify the filament type or printers, merge some colors, if necessary, then slice directly.

After that, choose the target printer, then match on colors to print.

By the way, H2D users please check Best 3D Prints that Make Your Bambu Lab Printers So Much Better Part 3 , see the 12 tool. There is some important information for multicolor printing and multi-material printing. In short, you need 2 AMS/AMS 2 Pro for dual nozzle multicolor printing, and one AMS HT for multi-material printing.

Alright, that’s all the multicolor printing.