Hello community, I face with an interesting issue and didn’t find a solution yet.
Do you see that shiny metal rod holder (next to the red arrow pointing at the bed leveling screw)? Right now, it’s not in the correct position, causing the bed not to rise enough.
On the left side, it’s level with the bed, but on the right side, it’s sitting too high…
Any advice on how to push it down to the correct level?
Calibration keeps failing because of this issue - it keeps dropping to zero every time
It looks like your bearing has slipped out of place. It should be flush with the bed bracket. Also, you’ve overgreased your printer. This can be the root cause why your bearing slipped. The bearing is held in with a friction press-fit. No friction and… well… I think you can see what happens.
There are two posts that discuss this.
I am always impressed with your attention to decently annotated images.
thank you so much! just fixed and calibrations runs great!!!
Thanks for closing the loop and letting the community know what worked. This will help others who may come across this issue.
It’s probably just me but I have an issue with the Bambu P1s maintenance guide.
https://wiki.bambulab.com/en/p1/maintenance/p1p-maintenance
on this, They refer a couple of times to “greasing” the rods and bearings. It’s possible that these bearings are the packed grease type but they don’t look like it to me. Grease on the lead screws, yes but in my experience the rods would use a very light oil (they do mention Super Lube 52004 Synthetic Lightweight Oil. I would use that or a good quality sewing machine type oil, never 3-in-1) and maybe a drop on the bearings, in the race.
I am pretty new to my P1S ownership, so what do most of the long term user do? I really am curious.
Interestingly, this has never happened with my P1P. I bought mine shortly after the P1Ps were released and have ~3500 hours of printing on it.
They seemed to have changed some parts and as a result these bearings seem to not what to stay put.
Lubrication is an interesting topic. If you read through all the so-called “expert” online information and then verify it yourself, you’ll likely reach the same conclusion I did—people overthink this stuff.
The Bambu Wiki is in a class of its own and stands apart as arguably the best documentation ever written for a complex consumer product. Those who know me as a frequent critic of Bambu will understand that I give credit where credit is due.
However, aside from the sound advice it gives you, after owning my P1P for the last two years and having learned what’s important as far as print results go, I can emphatically state that if it is not broken don’t fix it!!! The monthly maintenance as far as cleaning the rods and screws is a sound idea, I have seen the results for myself. Apart from that, anything more is like changing your engine oil every 1,000 miles when the manufacture suggest every 3,000 miles. There’s a point of diminishing returns and one could do more damage than good.
If you can understand who Bambu is then it may help. Bambu’s success stems from ex-DJI(the guys who make drones) robotics engineers who leveraged their mechanical and firmware expertise to develop sensors that enable real-time printer adjustments. Bambu printers became the closest thing to a set-and-forget 3D printing experience, akin to office laser printers, leaving competitors behind in 2023. By 2025, that advantage has been lost as competitors have adopted similar technology—Bambu’s “secret sauce” is no longer unique.
Those who overthink lubrication and other mechanical tweaks, like belt tensioning, are like mechanics stuck tuning carburetors in an era of fuel injection. In the old RepRap days, every printer had to be assembled from parts, and every print required manual tweaks and retuning, much like adjusting engine timing.
If you recognize these biases discussed in my observations, it becomes clear that lubrication is another topic that’s been overanalyzed within the online community.
Bambu’s wiki states in multiple places that lubrication is only needed—let’s say around the pulleys—when squeaking occurs. What does that tell you? Much like how digital fuel injection replaced carburetors, Bambu’s logic control compensates for force disturbances due to a lack of lubrication. In other words, it has to be extremely dirty and dry before lubrication makes a difference.
That said, this doesn’t mean neglecting maintenance—just that in this case, less isn’t only more; more can actually be damaging. Excess lubricant can spill onto belts or build surfaces, causing issues. Excess lubricant also attracts dust which printers create a lot of. So more lubricant can lead to more unnecessary need for cleaning.
When we see problems like ringing or banding, the root cause is usually a dirty filament pathway. Lubrication is almost never the issue—in fact, I can’t recall a single instance where it was although I’m sure someone will chime in and say “It happened to me!!!”. Yes, and even a broke clock is correct twice a day. 
It is my understanding that they moved to using the long version of the bearing. If there is anything (filament debris or user installed covers) in the “bearing well” on the base of the printer and bed is sent all the way down the bearing will be pushed up.
A broken digital clock is never right, it’s just a blank screen… possibly with a crack running across it, or in some case, maybe just parts of the numbers displaying… 
one of the “wellness” checks for older people where I live is … draw a clock face that the hands show 8 o’clock… and I’m thinking, what would they do if I drew a digital clock? There are quite a few people out there who don’t know how to use a rotary phone dialer, and I don’t mean from forgetting how… Analog clocks are falling into the same place… what do you mean this watch doesn’t show my heartbeat, GPS location and where the nearest Sushi-rama is?
Just wondering, why did you say never use 3 in 1 oil?
It’s not a bad product but it has additives that people (not in the 3d print world) have had issues with it getting sticky as time goes on. I have seen certain sewing machine manufacturers specifically say “don’t use 3-in-1 oil”.
What Bambu recomends or what other users have said is good advice.
3-in-1 Oil… ah yes, it brings back many childhood memories—lubricating everything from rusty bicycle chains to the wheels of my red wagon I used on my newspaper route. Then, of course, we all graduated to WD-40 after they said it was developed for the pre-NASA Atlas missile program to displace water. Apparently, water would freeze into ice and make the rocket heavier when subzero liquified propellant was loaded. Hence the name: (W)ater (D)isplacement, formula #40—because formulas 1 through 39 didn’t cut it. Gotta hand it to those early rocket scientists: brilliant minds, no imagination when it came to naming things. 
But then we went to college, took a chemistry class or two, and realized that 3-in-One is just lightweight mineral oil with a splash of fragrance to make it smell “industrial” enough to fool you into thinking you’re doing your bike chain a favor. Anyone who’s inherited a hand-me-down bike as a kid knows what comes next: it evaporates quickly and leaves behind a sticky, grimy mess.
Synthetic lubricants exist for a reason—they’re engineered to solve the problems natural oils can’t. PTFE (better known by the DuPont trademark Teflon®) is a prime example. Whether it’s in the form of plumber’s tape, USDA-certified PTFE spray for meat slicers, or dry lubricant for hinges and gears, it performs without gumming up the works.
So yeah, nostalgia’s fun—but when it comes to lubrication, let’s not stay stuck in 1894.
Love the answer, very good info. I do use the synthetic just was wondering about the 3 in 1. Thanks for the responses they are all good.
