you mean the board with 1000s of users that haven’t had problems are biased?
Who’d a thunk it.
I’m confused, YOUR opinion isn’t biased, but mine is?
How does that work?
No one has said there aren’t issues, trust me, I am all about shining a light on the problems, and I get into trouble for it.
The question we are trying to answer is WHY someone has had so many issues despite purchasing so many printers or multiple orders and times.
OUR EXPERIENCES show that such massive numbers of failures are unlikely to be a BL issue.
YOUR experience of one printer failure isn’t an indication of the issue or an aid to an answer.
That does NOT mean your contributions, have no validity, but, it would be good if they related in some way to the problem being discussed.
I have over 1200 hours on my A1 and close to half that on my A1mini printing 24/7 with zero problems. The 2 machines have never even been turned off. There is a common denominator but i dont think its the user. It has to be the filament. I run all types of filaments thru my 2 machines and change between them a lot. The mini is my 9 year old daughters and she hasnt had any issues either. I run mostly bambu, polymaker and tinmorry brands. I have never run Sunlu tho. Try a different filament. It has to be that
I would look at:
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The hotend’s heater unit has came loose. The effect is similar to what your photo shows.
Hotend Heating Assembly Replacement Guide - A1 mini | Bambu Lab Wiki -
I’ve also found, IME, that with the A1 series, the chance of clogs increases with the frequency of swaps between PLA and PETG (I only use these two types). So I brought an additional hotend and have one exclusively for each filament type, and so far the occasional clogs are gone. Swapping hotends on A1s is quite easy and less hassle than clearing clogs, making this worth the extra hotend cost IMO.
I have close to 1,000 on my A1 and haven’t even gotten a clog. I purched mine after the recall and the new units came out.
you guys should go to the reddit i posted this in, the bias there is eye opening lol. i love these printers, defintely a cult following haha
thats good to hear, hopefully i can figure out whats going on id love to get those results!
thanks for that, i would think the 12 other p1s in there would show any signs of issues but only the a1s past and present.
bambu support mentioned using approved filament, which had me a tad bit angry at the apple esque respsone, but i get there is only so much someone 1000 miles away can help with. sunlu filament in general is all i use besides specialty filaments, and my room is the other constant variable in all of this. i will say the filament stays in the bag until theyve been moved to the a1s so its clean new filament, but bad rolls do happen. just never with the magical p1s i guess
ill keep the room as cold as possible with the new hotends coming in and report back to fule out heat creep. worst case i will move them to the garage and replce them with p1s. bambu support is allowing a return but ive thrown away the packing material and dont want to disassembl and pay return shipping. ill have to own this mistake, self inflicted or not, most likely lol.
the room before the a1 in the summer weeks here was getting to 107 in san diego for a few days and the p1s didnt give a damn, i wasnt even taking the top lid off just opening the door. ive thrown in recycled filament into those, 12 year old makerbot filament to test and ive used dirty plates and i never clean them or lube them. i am a terrible 3d printer owner in regards to maintenence i will 100% admit. but this a1 issue has defintely left me spinning
Who are you calling a cult?
The 95F ambient is definitely part of the root cause here. While you would think that the other printers would exhibit the same problems, you would be over simplifying the situation. The A1’s might be open air but they don’t have the same physical thermals. The X1-C has multiple larger fans that just simply help it shed the heat just enough more that they don’t get clogged. You’re at that tipping point where PETG just starts to get cranky. Even with the doors closed on the X1, it has enough internal air flow to prevent the buildup at the hot end where the problem manifests. I’ve only printed with a handful of vendors PETG and while Sunlu has a good product, there are certain colors that more susceptible than others as well. Are all of the devices you have a problem on printing the same color Sunlu PETG?
Hopefully farmers take into consideration that filtration and temp control become factors when locating 20+ printers in 1 area.
Extruder issues could be ambient temp heat creep. The mechanism is straight forward so if it’s not working there’s only a couple troubleshooting steps. The one most individuals overlook is the diameter tolerance of filament. There’s a reason for every brand to state the typical “1.75mm +/- 0.03” if it’s anything larger you’ll most certainly have feeding issues.
Could filament path be a difference in the setup between the A1s and the other printers or are you running it from the default spool location? I wonder if twists and bends combined with high ambient temps and/or humidity are accounting for the difference in reliability.
Always consider the small possibility that you could be the unluckiest person in the room when it comes to coincidences (though that’s usually my Dad). Just a few thoughts that don’t seem to have been mentioned…
This is a recent issue and you are a heavy user. It could be you have come across a bad batch of hardware or filament that just has not hit others yet. If you are industrially using just one type of filament and there is something slightly incompatible in your particular situation then a slight problem may quickly compound compared, for example, to someone that is frequently changing filament types through a nozzle. Did you purchase all hardware through normal Bambu sales route? Is the hardware pretty new or has it been sitting around for a long time somewhere? Are you using Bambu suggested software settings?
Are you printing (or trying to) the same thing over and over again? Maybe something with loads of retractions?
Could it be that you did something to damage the nozzles to start with, by using them all in the same way a bit out/edge of spec? Are the fans on the head doing their stuff?
It may be your high ambient temps, or maybe even bed temp is not high enough for the PETG you are using; A1 is not enclosed so cooling is more likely from too low bed temp or air disturbance (is it a big room with lots of movement) compared to the enclosed Bambu models.
Whatever it is, I hope Bambu dedicates some decent support to you. Good luck.
The A1 hot end design is different then the P1’s. For sure its a lower grade product then the P1’s, hence the price difference and the reason for you buying them. Sacrifices must be made to use cheaper products. Can’t expect a fiat to race with a Ferrari. Just my 2 cents
I have had bad, and good experiences with Sunlu filament.
I had the same experience with eSun.
It prints fine on one printer (brand), but not on another.
Try another brand and see what happens.
Why not try printing in the mornings when it’s not 95F?
I agree with Bambu on troubleshooting while you use other brand filaments and don’t understand why when you started having issues you didn’t try the Bambu filament. Filament can arrive with varying moisture contents, etc. It’s not reasonable and you make troubleshooting your issues harder.
Certainly Bambu filaments can have water in them but you could at least tell whoever is helping that you are using their filament. Honestly, if it was my company, I’d just tell you that other filaments are simply not supported on warranty claims. There’s too much other stuff in play and some filaments are just dirty and nasty according to some posts.
And the whole way you have approached this is flawed. You buy multiple printers and want to return them all? And do it multiple times? Maybe I’m not understanding but I’m amazed Bambu is even working with you on this. Maybe they have to legally but why didn’t you just get one printer to make sure it was going to work in your environment and use profile? And you tossed all packaging and are expecting Bambu to take back a number of printers that will likely be damaged in transit?
Last, you seem to almost pride yourself on abusing the printers and printing in an environment that puts them way out of normal operating regimes. If I was Bambu I’d have the printers picked up and cut you a check and just be done with it. This is the kind of situation that no company wants - defiant customers who abuse a product, are surprised when the product doesn’t live up to what it should be capable of were it not being abused, and then post with headlines how you hate their products but want to buy more?
I don’t get it. It’s not my fight by any means but you are the opposite of the companies that abandon customers - you’re the customer that obliterates profits on a product and attacks it publicly when all the problems you are seeing, especially on multiple printers, point to operator error.
Not my place to say any of this but reading your posts is kind of triggering. You seem to think it’s ok to really abuse the company/customer relationship and we will all suffer for it one way or another through higher prices or less accommodating customer service when the rest of us have problems that aren’t of our own doing.
I know it’s a stupid suggestion, but try Orca Slicer and make sure to calibrate bed on it on the first print. I had all sorts of issues on mine with adhesion and filament getting stuck, and I saw someone mention a similar issue with Bambu Studio, while their prints worked 100% fine from Bambu Handy. I switched slicer to Orca and haven’t had a single failure since.
I spoke about this.
Two different brands in the first attempt, two different models both having bad batches would be very unlikely.
Some time afterwards a second bad batch of a large number of one of those printers.
Three bad batches across two different brands and two different time periods.
Bad batches is technically possible, but, a statistically very low likelihood given the points above.
Gentlemen, I had Bambu A1 for 2 weeks or so. I was buying this machine for reliable and almost perfect “out of the box” prints. BUT. Since I opened box I had issues with first layer.
- It looks like nozzle is too far from bad → I did bad tramming.
- not calibrated filament? several attempts for calibration. no results. First layer was still terible.
- I’ve tighten 4 screws behind nozzle - no result
- several factory resets
- different nozzle (same diameter)
What FW version are you running? I had 01.03.01.00 → downgraded to 01.02.02.00 and now I’ve just did filament calibration and result is perfect. Now I’m printing first layer test and it looks like night and day. Completely different machine in terms of print quality with older FW.