My full-size A1 has printed excellently until a couple of weeks ago. Print quality slowly deteriorated, and now the printer can only produce blobs and spaghetti.
I have tried cleaning the nozzle, cleaning the build plate, updating the firmware, and running maintenance on the XYZ axes, but nothing has worked. My only idea is that the nozzle may need replacing, but I am strapped for cash at the moment, so I would like to avoid buying a new one unless I have reasonable certainty that it will work. Has anybody had a similar issue? If so, what was the solution? Any well-informed advice is greatly appreciated.
Details:
Printer has about 550 print hours
Mainly use eSun and comparable PLA, and Creality PETG
Enviornment is very dry, and only relatively new filament is used
Print decline was slow. First layer lines appeared, then vertically-oriented prints began to fail, then all prints required glue, now not even a Benchy will print
I am hoping that there isn’t something wrong with the sensors or alignment along the Z-axis, but there may be. I have heard the nozzle scrape on the prints before, and I have even seen it rip the print off of the bed once.
For starters: Open a ticket.
Next: Go to Bambu Lab website - Support/Bambu Academy - login and select A1. Picking you information about our printers is one of the fastest ways to get problems solved.
Next: Maintenance
Finally: Grab a rootbeer (because I would never promote the use of alcohol as a sedative), because it will print again, it’s just going to be a few days.
As to the real problem?
Wet Filament: Unless you have not actively dried your filament (PLA: less than 30%, PETG: less than 20%) and left it in a dry box for a week with desiccant, then you should assume that it got dragged behind the boat for a week on it’s way to you. Oh and it can damage things in your machine too. Like sensors and nozzles.
Nozzle is Toast: Stainless nozzles are only good for 500-2,000 hours. But that’s an average and I’m of Irish decent. And if the Irish didn’t have bad luck, they would have no luck at all. So, yah, what can go wrong will go wrong. It might not be getting hot enough or you might not have it set to be hot enough (We didn’t see any settings information, so I’m leaning towards Fudge Cake in a Field here).
Gremlins: Hey, they are real.
Edit: Spelling and grammar because I don’t use AI.
I get you are strapped for cash, but you should always have a spare nozzle (grab a hardened steel one) and a spare build plate (consider a dual sided PEI/smooth).
Nozzles are consumables as are build plates.
My A1 mini has a couple of thousand hours on it and around 1,800 are using a single nozzle (don’t ask what dumb stuff I did to kill the first one). Build plates last for ages if they are treated well, far less if not, even less if cleaning is not performed exactly as the specific type requires.
You say you have been using glue. I am lucky, I never have and I never will. It may be my unwillingness to do so or my climate (the middle of Britain). Adhesion is the cause of too many problems so it is often seen as the most common fault if things are not staying on the build plate.
How things fail is as important to know to help diagnose a solution and photos are a massive tool to help us assist you. Taken at the point of failure from a few angles and not after any cleanup, however well meaning or even necessary.
It could be damp filament, I would always suggest trying a fresh spool, but brand new spools can have moisture in them. Again, I have never dried filaments, despite owning both a four spool and single spool filament dryer. Again, it may be my unwillingness to do so or my climate.
It is worth noting that while I aim to store all filaments in ziplock bags with desiccant and back in their original boxes, I have around 20 spools out on my desk right now, including PEBA, TPU & TPU Air, all very hydroscopic. That is laziness more than anything else.
I didn’t think photos would be helpful given that my last print didn’t really print at all, but maybe seeing the cheeto of death could tell you something. Behold, my Benchy!
Also, I didn’t capture it in the photo, but none of the spaghetti was on the plate when I found it. It was all spewed all over my desk and floor. The blob was on the floor.
In order to make sure I wasn’t messing up the settings, I used the profile for this model from Bambu’s official account. Every setting should be optimized.
I’ve printed decade-old uncovered filament on this machine with no problem, and I live in the desert, so I’m seriously doubtful that my month-old spool is too moist, but maybe that’s what the evil blob means.
Thank you for your reply. Hopefully you or somebody can interpret my blob!
Well I set up my phone to film a timelapse, but it just produced a perfect little Benchy.
My current theory is that I caused a massive clog while doing maintenance on the nozzle, and that lead to a catastrophic first layer failure on the first print after doing the maintenance. Hopefully the issues I was having were caused by the z-axis being gunked up, and hopefully they’re gone now because I cleaned it and applied fresh lube. I probably should have done a second Benchy as a test initially, but I read some horror stories about monster globs in the extruder causing it to break.
I’ll be printing some more things soon, but I am cautiously saying this is resolved (knock on wood).
I do plan on buying another nozzle soon, though. Are there any well-priced quality models you recommend? I live across the pond, so there may not be the same brands here, but I’m curious.
Thank you for the reply. I think it’s resolved now, but for future reference could you link the customer support site where I can open a ticket? I didn’t find anywhere to do it on the customer service site I found from Googling.
@user_3869267112 Sure. Go to Bambu Studio. Upper Left Corner: select the drop down menu:
then “Help/Report issue”. That will take you to the ticket site.
If your a1 was working until recently have you tightened those screws that hold down the nozzle? That or the area that the nozzle sits on its dirty. Tighten the screws and clean off the plan on the nozzle sits on with a pick and some generous helping of acetone. Wipe it clean and retry
