Printing with "Supports for PLA" filament using Bambu's AMS

Recently I 3D printed some parts that needed supports.

How you orient the piece and how you do the supports matters a lot.

Attempt #1:

With the finished surface pointed up, I tried enabling supports the default way. I'm using PLA+ which is a bit stiffer and has better layer adhesion than PLA.

It printed fast and produced a high quality top finish:

However removing the support material took me more than an hour and where the supports were ended up looking bad afterwards. Also it was hard to determine where the part ended and the support began, so I accidentally chiseled off some of the actual part:

Attempt #2:

I tried flipping the part over with the front cover outside face on the textured print bed.

I also tried enabling Bambu's Support for PLA filament at the interface layer:

This special filament material is designed to not stick as well to PLA.

Note that we're not printing the entire support with the second filament. We're only using it on the interface. This uses way less of this filament and relies more on the bulk filament I'm already leveraging. After changing the support interface filament, it prompted and I also accepted these changes:

When using support material for the support interface, We recommend the following settings:

• 0 to z distance
• 0 interface spacing
• interlaced rectilinear pattern
• disable independent support layer height

This resulted in a much better experience in removing the supports:

Although the place where the supports were is still a bit rough.  (see middle section)

Unfortunately this is where fingers will be touching when operating the device I'm printing the shell for. So I still need to re-do the print as the front is not satisfactory to the touch.

Followup:

To achieve the result I am looking for, the rough edge of the support interface will be on the inside of the part where nobody has to touch it.  However I will definitely be utilizing the Support for PLA material at the interface layer to make my life easier when removing supports.

Update:

You might also find this article about Support settings in Bambu Studio.

Grocery Store Key Duplication #KeyMe #Kwikset #KW1

For fun I did a web search for locksmiths in my area and most of the results were at grocery stores. So I decided to visit one as you can see below. 

While this was not a proper locksmith (eg for servicing and rekeying locks) it does advertise to be able to duplicate keys.

Many know that Kwikset (KW1) and Schlage (SC1) are the most common residential blanks for North America.

So I thought I would give it a try.  Here you can see me provide a KW1 key to duplicate.  (And no, this does not open my house.)

Imagine my surprise that the machine then tries to upsell the transaction indicating how rare the key is.  "This is a Less Common Key."  And it indicated "most locksmiths" would not carry it.   And yet the machine is perfectly happy to ask for additional money to continue duplication.

For those less familiar every locksmith that provides residential duplication will have KW1 & SC1 blanks. This machine appears simply appears to doing a pure upsell.

If you are a locksmith, please tell me, wouldn't you stock KW1 blanks?

Let me know,

- Aaron