That title is not clickbait.
My Bambu Labs X-1 is BROKEN.
Last week it developed a problem where between filament changes
on a multicolor print, it kept saying that the filament cutter was stuck,
when it wasn't.
And then the following print I went to do it
just said that right off the bat and wouldn't start a print.
Of course, just now I set up the camera and went to film it, doing that yet again
and it worked fine.
So clearly I have an intermittent problem here
and we are going to replace some parts to fix it.
Also, I had a thermal runaway on this machine last week.
Let me show you. I think we're having a thermal runaway.
I can smell it burning.
It says we're only 188 degrees Celsius.
It’s boiling off of the air.
Yeah, this thing is running away
and it is not detecting that temperature
is dropping,
temperatures dropping, but we are absolutely
burning up.
So time to stop this and investigate.
I just got the cover off
the front, moved the printhead to an area where I can actually access it.
This is the thermistor plug and it is seated.
I changed the extruder assembly yesterday and I had to remove the hot end &
then put it back in.
But everything is plugged in and connected.
That is plugged in.
Oh, but it just updated temperature, 280C.
So this thing was pushing 300 plus degrees when it was just thermal runaway.
So that connection
was bad or loose on the thermistor.
This thing did not pick up on it and did not thermal runaway protect.
I did reach out to Bambu support and they assure me this machine does
have thermal runaway protection.
I must have caught it before that it kicked in and shut things down.
In my opinion, Marlin or Klipper would have caught that runaway sooner
then this seemed like it was going to, if at all, but I can't say for sure.
I can't say that it wasn't going to happen.
It could have happened split second after I stopped things.
I don't know.
Either way, the thermistor
and the cutter issues both seem to be related to the toolhead PCB.
So Bambu sent me a new one.
We're going to go ahead
and replace that thing on this machine and do some other maintenance.
This is also going to be a bit of a follow up to my previous video
on the X1 where I talked about it being a RINGING BEAST.
I have improved my results out of this machine
and I am much happier with it at this point.
Still not all the way, but I'm going to show you how
I improved it later on in this video.
So let's get to work on repairing it.
Replacement of this board in this machine is going
to require basically tearing the entire toolhead down.
Bambu did send me a link to a completely silent kind of eerie video
on how to disassemble and work on this.
I don't know why a five minute long silent video makes me uncomfortable,
but it did.
Anyway, I'm going to start by removing the front cover
and the wiring connection to it so I can get it out of the way.
Now I need to disconnect all these connectors
on the daughter board for the hot end and extruder assembly.
Next I’ve got to remove the screw for the cutter assembly.
Pop that aside.
Now I'm going to remove the screws for the daughter
board here and the reverse Bowden tube out of here.
Any time now...
There we go.
Now, there are four screws on this rear housing, two on each side
that I need to remove.
With those out, I can remove this rear cover off of here.
Then I need to remove the drag chain connection.
Just pull up on it.
They show just pulling up on it.
Down here in the corner is Usb-C connection.
That is the power and data for the tool head.
Now there are four more screws around this piece of plastic that I need to remove
so I can pop this off of here and get the board out.
One last important thing before I pull the board out is this
delicate little ribbon connector down here that I need to disconnect.
Now I can disconnect these last couple of electrical connections
and pull the screws out to remove this main toolhead board.
And now we're ready to pull this toolhead pcb out of here
with one more electrical connection on the back, of course.
Oh, two more actually.
And finally, with the toolhead board out,
you can see the actual stepper motor for the extruder.
I think getting this board out of here is a good place
for us to stop and have a quick discussion about the Bambu printers
and something that's been on my mind in the last video.
I think I likened the X-1 to a home appliance in design philosophy.
Now, as I'm taking all the little screws and interlocking plastic pieces and ribbon
cables off, it feels more like a laptop computer versus a desktop computer to me.
And that raises a question in my mind, “Is this machine good for first time
3D printers?”.
I've seen a lot of people say this is their first 3D printer.
I've seen a lot of people recommend it as a first 3D printer
because of the push button and go experience.
Bambu has done a lot to round out the ecosystem
with their own slicer, the AMS, everything the way it's integrated.
They've gone far into creating a machine that's pushbutton and go.
The problem in my mind is, I think these machines are closer
to a CNC milling machine than they are to your home printer.
They can go a long way to making a well rounded push button machine,
but at the end of the day, ALL 3D printers will require maintenance
and replacement of parts eventually.
From what I've seen so far, Bambu support has been excellent about dispatching out
parts to people
and getting them the things they're going to need to repair their machines.
But they're 100% relying on you repairing your machine.
There's a silent video and some guides on the wiki page
about how to handle these replacements and repairs.
But a lot of folks are going to be intimidated by having to do
any of this stuff.
For me, as somebody who does product reviews
and tutorials,
I had to learn a long time ago to step back and stop applying
all of my experience to the task at hand because I have to think
about the concept of somebody who has never done these things
before having to do them, and how they would approach them.
And that's the thing
I think a lot of people will let color their opinion is their own
personal experience
coming into a situation thinking about how this machine would work
and how this would all look as somebody who has never worked on a 3D printer,
a laptop, a gaming console, whatever, in the past.
This would be intimidating, I think.
And don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that anybody else
is really doing it better than Bambu at the moment.
Try getting a hold of Creality to get some replacement parts
for an Ender 3, let alone a guide on how to replace them.
Prusa does have excellent support
and guides on their website about how to replace things.
They also now have the Printed Solid connection on the U.S.
side for sending machines in to get repaired.
But I don't really know
that anybody else in the consumer space is doing as good of a job as Bambu.
I'm just kind of raising some questions here.
I don't know if I have the answers.
Sorry.
Let me know what you think in the comments down below.
Does this seem like something you would have been able
to take on, your very first problem with your very first 3D printer?
Reassembly is the reverse of the disassembly.
It's pretty straightforward.
You just have to be careful
not to pinch any wires, and the Bambu video does cover it.
Also, my mainboard cooling fan doesn't sound too good.
They did send me a replacement, but I'm going to do that in another video
where I'm going to cover the replacement of a fan to make this thing quieter.
For your information, this machine has about 450 hours on it at the moment.
With the repairs out of the way.
Let's get to talking about fixing the ringing on this machine
that I talked about in the previous video a few months ago.
If you had asked me a week ago how exactly I improved the results
out of this machine, I could have told you a straightforward path to doing it.
Today, I have no idea.
For this video I printed 3 more StealthBurner shrouds, the same model
I used in the last video to demonstrate the issues I was running into.
I did each one in a different way.
One I printed with the AMS
sitting on top of the machine at the default .2mm profile.
Another I use the exact same g-code, but I took the AMS off the top of the machine.
Then the third one I used my own .2mm layer, high quality preset that I created
that makes speed changes, extrusion width changes,
a couple of other little tweaks to make strong and high quality parts.
It's what I mostly use to print my Voron 2.4 and Project Re-Animaker.
I printed all 3 of them in different colors, but they are all PolyMaker ASA
and I used a profile for that filament that I've tuned on this machine.
And if I step back and look at all 3of them,
if it wasn't for the difference in color, I couldn't tell you which one is which.
But the thing about it is when I look at the old StealthBurner that I printed
in that previous video months ago, there is a clear difference.
This has more ghosting, more ringing,
more layer inconsistency than these new ones do.
It's possible that they've made firmware or slicer changes
that they haven't really publicized, that have improved things here?
Or that my tuning of this filament and creating a specific profile
tuned for this machine made this drastic of a difference?
It's also entirely possible
that I'm looking at these with kinder eyes than I was a few months ago.
So I went to my Voron 2.4, that I only finished assembling
about a week ago and had not printed anything on yet.
I have only done the bare minimum of tuning on that machine and I printed
a StealthBurner shroud that absolutely looks different than the ones on the X-1.
Now, don't get me wrong, the shroud has some serious issues.
I haven't tuned input shaper on that thing at all yet,
so it has ghosting and ringing on this one as well.
More aggressive than that of the X-1 prints.
It also has some serious layer lines in here where some extrusion
inconsistencies are happening on top infill,
but that's not what I want to focus on.
What I want to look at is the corners on this
print are so much crisper than those of the X-1.
It's so hard to translate this on camera and show you what I'm talking about,
but when I touch them, I feel a drastic difference.
The one printed on the Voron has these sharp corners that are really pronounced.
The one printed on the X-1, the corners are so rounded & soft.
They feel like a
a stone at the bottom of a babbling brook that's been rounded by the edges.
I'm being a little poetic and dramatic there, but
there's just a big difference in the way these two feel in the hand.
Last week
I thought the smoking gun was removing the AMS from the top of this machine
because somebody in one of the Facebook groups had recommended doing that.
And when I did, I saw an improvement in my prints going forward.
But then today, running tests again, I'm not really seeing the difference anymore.
I would say if you're really having ghosting
and ringing issues on this machine, try it.
Try removing the AMS off the top of it.
Rerun the vibration calibration on the machine
and then try again to see what results are getting.
I wish I had better answers for you folks.
I just feel like Bambu is focused too heavily on speed with this machine
and not enough on quality.
And that's not me saying it does bad prints, but I think it really
has better quality capability in it and they're just not focusing on
getting it out of there.
I get that in 3D printing right now, SPEED SELLS, but since I got this machine,
they've only added one pre-setup profile to Bambu Studio and that was a 0.2
millimeters “Strength” profile that all it really did was add
a thicker shell on the print to make a stronger print.
I wish, like Prusa does in PrusaSlicer where they have
for the Mk3 a Quality preset and Speed preset.
I wish Bambu would put that effort into this and give me a Quality preset
that's dialed in, even maybe reduces the vibration
compensation for the slower speeds that's going to be running
and would give me a crisper final result for those times where I just want that.
Some prints I want done fast, some I want the best quality result I can get.
Which for me honestly probably means I need to tune in my Voron 2.4
and get that thing printing a lot better.
I think that'll end my rant for this one.
I do have a video coming out in just a few days
about reducing the sound of this machine by almost 20 decibels,
so get SUBSCRIBED if you're not already so you don't miss that one.
I think that'll be a wrap on this one, folks.
I hope you found this video interesting.
If you did, please drop it a LIKE it really helps out.
Let me know in the COMMENTS did this
help you see inside of this machine and how it's built a little bit better?
Or was it pointless?
Let me know in the Comments down below.
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