I have been making heavy use of my A1 since I bought it.
The prints started messing up in the last week or so, then the extruder started clicking. A search produced the suggestion to change the nozzle. That did the trick. My A1 is back to printing wonderfully.
A few questions about nozzle wear :
Can the worn nozzle be refurbished or repaired or should I just trash it ?
Is there a way to track print hours so that I might anticipate the next nozzle change ?
My replacement nozzle was purchased from the Bambu Store. Any feedback / information third-party nozzles with the actual nozzle being a separate piece ?
That’s not a symptom of nozzle wear, you have a nozzle clog. A few cold pulls will get that cleared right up.
Now, the stock nozzle in an A1 is not hardened, so it’s entirely possible that your nozzle is worn beyond usability, but if you resolve the clog it would be a good backup.
Assuming you got the same nozzle as before (silver heatsink) then it will wear fastest of all nozzle options, especially if you use abrasive filaments such ad CF or GF filled, or glowing.
You can get hardened nozzles that better stand up to that wear, right up to diamond tipped nozzles that are basically “forever” nozzles. You can also get high flow nozzles that will allow faster printing in some circumstances.
E3D is the only aftermarket supplier that is officially licensed by Bambu, but MicroSwiss is also a reputable manufacturer. Avoid the ebay/aliexpress/amazon random brands, some may be good but you don’t know what you’re really getting. Beyond that, you just need to get the right nozzle for the kind of printing you’re doing.
If it was me, I’d suggest either the Bambu hardened hotend, or if you want to go a bit crazy the E3D diamondback produces excellent surface quality and stays clean - nothing sticks to diamond so it leaves a very smooth surface behind, and is outstanding if you do a lot of top surface ironing.
My A1 was a beast…until it wasn’t and I trashed it after 2500 printing hours. (That’s my anger “un”management flaring up.)
From my experience(s) nozzles can be cleaned up but, especially using different filaments and brands, and like any component they just wear out over time. If the nozzle has only been used for a few hundred hours I’d try to clean it up. If over, say 500 - 1,000 hours, I’d replace it. But that’s my thoughts.On my A1 if I recall I replaced the nozzle after 700-ish hours as it kept clogging on me and some of the filament was burned on the outside of the tip.
As for tracking printing hours, on the touch screen go to “Settings”, then “Device” and you should see the amount of hours your printer has been in use. You will have to remember to write down the hours for that specific nozzle and, when replaced, record the hour count for the start of the new nozzle.
Printing hours is displayed in the maintenance menu.
Don’t bother trying to repair a nozzle, just bin it, they’re so cheap it ’s not worth the risk of getting it wrong.
That will be total time printing as it has no way to detect changing nozzles.
You can’t reset the total, it’s recorded into the motherboard. Only a motherboard change will start a new measurement.