I’m confused. Did you IPA soak something from inside the extruder stepper motor, or are you saying you soaked the gear in IPA that is pressed up against the toothed gear by spring force?
Nothing from inside the motor. Just the gear assembly (the gray part in the image below). In my case, the gear/wheel inside the gray arm was not spinning freely. After soaking and cleaning, the gear spun freely again, and the extruder worked as expected. Hope that helps!
Ah I see. My A1 has a similar part. It’s not spinning freely, but it’s not rough either. It rolls but it doesn’t glide if that makes any sense. It’s not like it’s on a ball bearing smooth. It likewise seems to be pinned in place like yours is.
What ended up stopping my clicking/skipping was turning off tangle detection and dynamic flow calibration. I only have issues while printing and while using a 0.2mm nozzle. Something about my sensors isn’t right.
Anyway, would hurt for me to clean and re-lube my idler gear. I like doing maintenance anyway. 
I’m having a similar issue with my A1-Mini, and after only having it for 3 months. At first I thought it was just a worn nozzle, so I replaced the hot end with a hardened steel. And I made sure to change the settings menu on my machine. It then seemed to work for few days, but then the clicking and skipping started again. I checked for clogs and little bits of filament to no avail. After some more troubleshoot googling I took apart the extruder and the extruder gear did have bits of filament all gummed up. I cleaned it off and put everything back together, but it still wouldn’t extrude so I ordered a new extruder gear assembly. I put that in yesterday, and after some fussing and adjusting the tension screw, I managed to print a few little stencils without issue, but as soon as I tried the next piece of my helmet - clicking and skipping again. The most frustrating thing is that it would extrude fine during filament loading, during flow calibration, and even through the first layer, but once it starts the second layer total failure. I’ve run so many calibration cycles I’ve lost count. I took apart the heater assembly and tightened the 4 screws in back, which were a little loose, and the next print that got to the first layer looked much smoother, but then on the second layer lots of clicking and skipping. I can manually advance the filament through the PTFE tube and the skipping stops, but the machine won’t pull it through smoothly on its own. I took everything apart again to make sure things were seated properly, but no luck on printing. I ran a flow calibration through Bambu Studio and saved the specific k value for the Sunlu filament I’ve been using, thinking it might be a dynamic flow issue. The calibration extruded fine, but the next print failed on the first layer. It seems to be getting progressively worse. I don’t know if I should next try to replace the extruder motor, or check the connections in the circuit board, or just replace the circuit board. Right now it’s little more than a paper weight.
The filament is the same roll as I was using after changing the hot end, and I successfully printed several pieces before it just stopped working right. And now I can’t even get the filament loaded without it getting hung up clicking, so I’m trying to find if there’s a clog somewhere on top of whatever else is going on.
Unspool a couple meters of filament to be sure it is not tangled.
I finally solved my issue. After replacing the hotend, extruder gears, filament sensor & sensor base, AMS lite hub, PTFE tube, and filament, all without solving the issue, I replaced the toolhead circuit board and it’s printing like a brand new machine again. So I think there was a circuit fault, probably caused by heat creep. The heat shielding is practically non existent in the a1-mini, so I expect that replacing the board will likely be a regular part of maintenance on my machine.
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How would you clean the sealed bearings?
In my P1P the bearing in the extruder idler gear (hardened steel version) is catching. Probably will just replace the gear set.
Hopefully I can press out the shaft and replace the bearings, if this happens very often.
I HAD this problem of the extruder skipping like crazy,new hotend,new tubes, took the extruder apart cleaned the ■■■■ out if, dried the filament, etc etc… put it all back together thinking that should fix it,but nope.,wierd thing I put in the old hotend that was basically wore out and it worked not bad,very few skips,but prints were horrible. I took the cover off the hotend and the silcone boot and noticed the hot end was jumping up and down when it skipped. What I found to fix it was the hotend mount 4 little bolts were a half a turn loose, all 4 of them.
I had read thru this on the wiki -A1 series printer extrusion abnormal troubleshooting
I am not familiar with the X1 or P series, but this is what fixed my A1
It wasn’t cause of the extruder at all, it was all in the hotend of it.
You can use alcohol to clean it and then put a drop of lube and spin it. Should work
I’d soak the bearing in brake cleaner to clean out all existing grease, oil or grime, then replace with generous amount of silicone spray. This brake cleaner stuff can also dissolve the adhesive way way better than IPA.
But basically, when the ball-bearing seizes or catches, that is, a steel ball inside got damaged and needed to be replaced.
This helped me bro! I could kiss you! Thanks a ton. I swapped out the hot end and the extruder when I was having the skipping, noticed that I was missing a bearing on the plastic casing that you remove once the four little screws are taken out. I was going through all of the forums trying to solve this issue. I wonder if it was missing to begin with and just never realized it until my printer started messing up.
You are most welcome my friend - I literally changed everything and was seriously giving up hope before noticing this. Happy printing!
Had that with mine and changed out hot end and problem resolved.
Hello guys!
First, I’d like to thank everybody for contributing to the topic - it helped greatly in my own investigation of extruder skipping on A1 mini.
For me, the root cause was… me changing filament in a wrong way. Instead of using routine to change filament or at least recreating the routine manually still via extruder control buttons, I was… pressing disengage button and pulling the filament out. My rationale was that hte lever is called “disengage gear” and I though it’s like a neutral on a car xD The gear is disengaged and you’re free to do anything.
Well, it was until I got extruder skipping when changed more brittle, prone to scratching filament - Kingroon PLA Silk. I found this thread, got into schematics in the wiki and found that “disengage gear” doesn’t actually disengage anything - it merely stops pressing onto the engaged gear from the other side! This mean other side of the filament is still being caught by grooves on the gear, yet not that firmly. You can guess now, I disassembled the gear and found filament filling some of the grooves - that’s exactly why it was skipping!
After gentle cleaning with spare toothbrush they come off easily and the gear is now working fine - extrusion is back to normal.
Hope it helps some of you! Cheers.