Hi folks …
I’ve had my X2D for 2 months now, and clocked up 636 hours of great prints. Then, I got a heat creep issue, causing a leakage of filament into the main nozzle sock and hotend heating plate, which presented as bed adherence issues, as the last few prints failed early into the process.
I raised a ticket with Bambu support and was offered a new hotend plate.
I fitted the new one, along with a new pair of hotends, following the instructions carefully, and then ran a full calibration. During this the printer malfunctioned, with the print head hitting the build plate and bending the flow blocker.
I’ve raised another ticket with this issue and I’m all set for another wait for Bambu tech support advice. But having read here that others have experienced flow blocker damage issues (thanks for reminding me that spares are in the kit box that came with the printer), I feel more confident about replacing the flow blocker and trying the calibration again. I’ll leave the damaged build plate in in case the same thing happens again, to save ruining another.
Has anyone else experienced similar issues to these?
Should I be concerned about the print head hitting the build plate? Or is it ‘just one of those things’ with these printers?
All software and firmware is fully up to date, as I read of other firmware issues causing the print head to crash, and then being resolved.
Update: I replaced the flow blocker and ran a suite of nozzle and bed levelling tests. And I’ve never been so pleased to see this little guy.
I recently had the blobb of death on the main nozzle because one small part detached from the build plate and unlodged all of the other parts. While I was able to mostly clean the hotend, there is still some deeply inside, So want to replace the heater assembly. Only issue is, that the silicone flaps behind the heater are also damaged. From your image above, I assume that they are part of the heating assembly?
If it helps, here’s another view of my heating assembly. I was lucky in that the hotend sock retained most of the molten filament, but it made removing the sock impossible (other photo shows the remainder still attached to the heating assembly. The heating assembly is fixed to the white plastic mount you can see here.
I’m not sure what you mean re. “the silicon flaps” as I didn’t see any.
Hope you get yours fixed OK.
I meant those parts:
Isn’t that black part the same material as the sock?
Yeah, that’s the remainder of the sock, welded to the blob. I had to pick and tear the rest of the sock off.
So everything that you see in the photo (except the remnants of the sock) is part of the hotend heat plate assembly. The guide is pretty good - Hotend Heating Assembly Replacement guide for the X2D | Bambu Lab Wiki . And this photo of the assembly, taken from the guide, is about the best shot I could find of the part.
Bambu are sending me a new one (I couldn’t wait so bought my own), so if it helps, I can photo that one for you, to see if it confirms the parts of the component you’re looking to identify.
The stock shot of the spare on the main web site ( Hotend Heating Assembly - Left - X2D | Bambu Lab US Store - mine was the left assembly) shows the device on the end of a ‘metal’ (?) tube (?). In fact, there was no ‘tube’ and just a set of wires into a connector. Here’s the photo showing those, taken from the above guide.
Hope this helps.
Update: Bambu Lab tech support just confirmed that they will not be offering me a replacement flow blocker or plate, saying:
There is an extra spare Flow Blocker included in your printer accessories box, and we would like you to look for it and replace it by following the wiki guide below.
Flow Blocker Replacement Guide for the X2D | Bambu Lab Wiki
Regarding your print plate, as it is also a component that falls outside of our warranty coverage, and we have already made an exception to replace the hotend heating assembly for you, we hope you can continue using the other side of the print plate for printing, as this will not affect its functionality.
The exception mentioned is because my printer was less than 2 months old when this even happened, and so it is believed that £26.99 is reasonable.
One conclusion I’m drawing from this is that I’m pleased this is a hobby for me (albeit an expensive one, I’ll admit). If I were running a business and depended on these machines for a return on their investment, I would be thinking very seriously about alternatives. I don’t mind being a ‘have-a-go-hero’ with this type of support for a hobby, but if my customers depended on me making parts to order, I would be investing in more build capacity to soak up inevitable machine downtime (breakdowns and maintenance), backed by technicians I could call on when I was out of my depth fixing production faults.
According to Bambu what was the reason for the heat creep in this case?
They didn’t give a reason.
As promised, here’s a couple of shots of a new hotend heat plate, which looks slightly different to the advertised item.
A close-up of that connector.
Thank you very much for the detailed pictures! That is very helpful for me!
So basically they have counted it as a user problem, but replaced the hot end on good will? And all labor and downtime is on your bill + scratched plate?
That’s my understanding. Yup. 
Does not sound right to me, honestly……
I just got one print canceled, one small blob developed on one of the lines exactly on the front of the camera. But seems like AI see no issues, and basically the camera is so oversaturated that it is basically blinded at that spot. Just by chance a took a look and saw the blob. It could have ended as in Alex_vG case.
