I was removing a finished print when I noticed that my P1S was clicking (kind of like a computer mouse) from the back of the printer, somewhere internal where I can’t see.
I powered it down to stop it, but it kept clicking for several minutes.
What would cause this and how can I stop it?
Ptobably the PTFE feeder tube touching the enclosure/lid. Quite normal.
No
The machine was off and the sound was coming from behind the back wall of the printer. Like where the chute and exhaust fan are
The poop chute? The loose lever in there is intended to be activated by the printhead to clear the chute but will repond to wobbles.
Next time it does it, pull the plug from the wall instead of just turning the machine off. If it’s electrical, it should stop immediately.
It’s possible this is just mechanically generated noise from heat. Two parts held together with a screw that heat/cool at a different rates. Like the clicking noise a car’s exhaust system can make as it cools off.
To be clear, I turned off the power switch and unplugged the cable but the clicking continued.
I imagine it is heat related but I suppose my concern is that it suddenly started happening after many months. I’d like to stop it regardless
Screws can loosen up a little due to thermal cycles and vibrations. It doesn’t take a lot of the compression force to back off to let something start to move. But because the screw/nut is still constraining movement, the movement exhibits “sticktion”, periodic sudden motion instead of continuous smooth motion. Different coefficients of thermal expansion or different cooling rates for two parts made from the same material cause stress to build until sufficient to overcome friction and you get a “click” as the system snaps to a new equilibrium point. If there’s more cooling left to be done, it might stick/slip multiple times.
Eliminating it would be no more difficult than tightening a screw or a nut, but of course finding it isn’t going to be easy. I wouldn’t bother to look. I’d just remove the panels and tighten anything that turns and can be reached with a tool and hope I get lucky. 
This sounds like your printer is just cooling down. The clicking can be caused by the simple shrinking of two metal parts coming back to their unexpanded state.
On the other hand, does the clicking sound seem more like the sound an electrical spark might make? The kind of sound that one might hear if one was using a lighter with a piezo arc? If that is the case, it could be something worth investigating, more specifically, see if you can smell something like an ozone-like smell which could indicate arcing of a component such as a capacitor. This is hard to track down as it may be to small to see or hidden. In that case, remove the rear cover, run the printer and then turn off the lights in the room and wait for your eyes to adjust to total darkness. Then turn off the printer and see if you can view any sparks from the electronics. I’d be looking first at the power supply which has the high voltage capacitors and then look at the MC board.
Here’s the wiki page for the X1 on replacing the power supply but it’s the same procedure on the P1. It will show you how to remove the back panel so you can inspect it.
There’s nothing electrical inside the printer that could hold a charge sufficient to make multiple sparks over an extended period of time. After external power is removed, if you’ve still got enough stored energy for a spark, once it’s sparked, there’s not going to be enough energy left for another.
Why I asked about the power cord.
When it comes to switching power supplies with multiple legs, my experience has been the opposite. In fact, the worst cases involved knockoffs of the Mean Well power supplies that Bambu originally used in the P1. I understand they switched from Mean Well sometime after the summer of 2023 to a brand I had not heard of. I’m not disparaging the choice, but Chinese manufacturers often take shortcuts, and issues like improper solder masks and poor-quality electrolytic capacitors, in particular, are exactly the kind of culprits that can lead to latent defects.
One might never notice such noise or arching over the fan noise of, say, a desktop computer—until one day, you take it apart and see the charring on the board from a capacitor arcing. This is especially true of electrolytic capacitors. While it’s generally not dangerous, I’ve repaired too many power supplies where capacitors were the root issue. The trick is to identify a failing power supply before it causes damage to more expensive downstream electronics. This can be tricky, as the symptoms often manifest as blue screens and other intermittent issues that are difficult to trace.
Yeah, if external power is still present. If you remove external power, if the latent energy in the power supply and the circuits it drives is sufficient to arc, it will arc only once. As soon as it starts to arc the energy required for arcing is discharged, it can’t arc again. If there’s a lot of energy to discharge, the duration of the arc will be longer. But once it stops arcing, by definition the energy required to breakdown the dielectric constant of air and arc again simply isn’t there. That’s why it stopped arcing.
Yes. I’d be surprised if it was an electrical problem concidering how long it continued after unplugging it.
Anyway, I took another look and I believe I was wrong about the location. It seems to be coming from the heatbed.
I haven’t tracked down the exact issue but I’m getting closer.
Im getting the same noise and its coming from the bed too. Any more info on it
Same observation with my P1S. Clicking noises in the first couple of minutes while heating up the build plate. Same with cooling down. I am getting used to it.
These noises started after a couple of hours of operation. I didn’t notice it when printer was brand new…
Ok so im not going crazy it is what it is kinda thing not good nor bad
