SwatchSURFACE TEST LAB

PRINT A GRID. PICK THE WINNER.

The surface you want,
found on one plate.

Every setting that decides whether a print is accurate and how it looks — dimensions, fit, first layer, top surface, ironing, walls, seams — as little coupons, each carrying its own settings inside one Bambu Studio file. Four sessions in the order that pays best; print a plate, measure or hold it to the light, keep the winner.

Pick a session → Open the 3MF as a project → Print, measure, compare

The plate

Coupons as they will lie on the plate, labelled as they will print. In each test, across is one setting and front to back the other; the first test sits at the front.

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What to look for

BEFORE AND AFTER THE GRIDS

What else a Bambu Lab P2S wants for amazing prints

Swatch finds the settings that decide how a surface looks. The ones below decide whether any of it holds — do them in this order, and the grids get easy to read.

  1. Dry the filament. Most “bad ironing” and “pitted top” is moisture. PLA 4 h at 55 °C, PETG 6 h at 65 °C, in the AMS with desiccant after. A top surface that pops and leaves pinholes will never iron flat.
  2. Let the printer calibrate flow dynamics. The P2S measures pressure advance itself with its eddy-current sensor; leave Flow Dynamics Calibration ticked on the print dialog, or run it from the Calibration tab per filament. Every grid here assumes it has been done.
  3. Flow rate, coarse then fine. Bambu Studio › Calibration › Flow rate. Both passes. The result goes into the filament profile’s flow ratio; the first-layer and top-surface ratios in Swatch multiply it, so set it first.
  4. Max flow rate. Calibration › Max flowrate, once per filament. Where the line breaks up is the ceiling; set the filament’s max volumetric speed a touch below it, and no wall-speed test will fool you with under-extrusion.
  5. Temperature. Calibration › Temperature tower. Cooler for sharper detail and less stringing, hotter for stronger layers and a glossier wall — it changes gloss as much as any setting here.
  6. Then the four sessions, in order: accuracy (dimensions, fit, first layer) → top surfaces (flow, ironing) → walls and seams → finishing touches. Each leans on the one before, and the accuracy session comes first because every later coupon is a part whose size should already be right.
  7. Choose the plate on purpose. Textured PEI gives a matte, grained bottom that hides everything; smooth PEI or the Cool Plate gives a gloss bottom that shows everything, which is where the first-layer grid earns its keep.
  8. Top shells. Five top shell layers over 15 % gyroid or cubic, or set Top shell thickness to 1 mm. Fewer and the infill ghosts through the surface; no setting in this lab can hide it.
  9. Walls. Three loops, Precise wall on, order inner / outer / inner if your version has it. Try Slow down for curled perimeters and keep the outer wall at the speed the walls grid chose.
  10. Judge in good light, at a low angle to a window or a lamp, and in photos: a phone camera at a glancing angle shows ridges your eyes forgive.

The guide

What a session is

One plate, one print, two or three tests that belong together, laid out one block after another from the front of the plate. Quick is three values an axis — the span that matters, nine coupons a test; thorough is five, for a finer answer once the quick plate has shown where to look. The order of the sessions is the order the settings depend on each other: a dimensionally wrong part cannot have its surfaces judged, a pinholed top cannot be ironed flat.

What a grid is

A test is two settings and a list of values for each. Every pair becomes a coupon — a small tile, pillar or cylinder — that prints with that pair, and with its values printed on it so the plate can be read without the legend. The file is a 3MF; inside it, next to the shapes, is the same per-object settings list Bambu Studio writes when you right-click a part and add a setting. Open it as a project and each coupon arrives with its settings already on it.

Opening it

Use File › Open Project, or drop the file on the window and pick open as project. For a Bambu printer the file names the printer’s own presets — the 0.20 mm Standard process, Bambu PLA Basic, the 0.4 mm nozzle machine — and lists nothing as different from them, so Bambu Studio selects its own copies and opens the file with no warning; then pick your real filament and your own process in the dropdowns, and the coupons keep their differences as per-object settings. For other printers the file carries no profile and the slicer says it loaded geometry only, which is fine. Do not use File › Import, which strips settings from objects. To check, click a coupon: its settings appear under it in the object list on the right.

Measuring

The dimensions gauges want calipers: width and depth across the middle of the block, the hole in two directions. Compensation in Bambu Studio is per side, so halve the error: a block 0.10 mm wide wants a contour compensation of −0.05, a hole 0.12 mm small wants +0.06. The calculator under the grid does this. The fit sockets want only your fingers.

Printing it

Print the whole plate at once, with the filament you will use for real prints and the plate you will use. Keep the process profile you normally print with; the test adds its own differences. Expect the time the slicer says, not the rough figure on this page.

Reading it

The label on each coupon is its values in the order across / front-to-back, written short: .42 is 0.42, MLINE is the monotonic-line pattern, SC10 a 10 mm scarf. The first-layer tiles are read from underneath, where the label reads the right way round. The sheet lists every coupon in full.

Keeping the winner

Enter the winning values in your process profile and save it under a new name — one per filament, since flow is a property of the plastic. Ironing settings are under Quality › Ironing; the two flow ratios under Quality › Advanced (they appear in Developer mode: Preferences › Develop mode); the seam settings under Quality › Seam.

Other slicers

OrcaSlicer reads the same file the same way. PrusaSlicer and Cura open the coupons but ignore the Bambu settings list; use the sheet and set each coupon’s settings by hand as per-object overrides.

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