You bought a Bambu Lab A1 (or A1 Mini), your friend just bought one or you want to buy one and be prepared for what issues you could face? You’ve come to the right place!
First of all it’s a bit hard to find the right unboxing instructions, there are a lot and some are wrong or are missing steps. I think this is the best one (Also for the normal version without ams): https://wiki.bambulab.com/en/a1/manual/unboxing-a1-combo
Also you might have a bad time following YouTube instructions, as they might be for an older packaging.
Let’s start with a mistake I didn’t make but heard other people make (that could have happened to me if I hadn’t read about it just before getting the printer).
Mistake #1: Not unlocking the Z axis (printer goes brr)
When assembling the printer, you need to remove the plastic parts on the Z axis, or you’ll struggle trying to calibrate your printer. You will hear loud rattling as the printer tries to move the Z axis and then show an error.
If I hadn’t read about this before, I might have fallen in the same trap, as some of the older videos or instructions don’t have this step included from older packaging.
So let’s get to the mistakes I actually made myself:
Mistake #2: Don’t touch the plate (or clean it after)
Don’t touch the build plate with your fingers. Skin oils (grease) are the enemy of the standard plate. I think this video is a great demo showing what happens if you do it, for all the visual learners like me.
If you do touch it the filament adhesion gets really bad and you’ll have fingerprint like markings on the bottom of your print or the print might not stick to the plate at all.
The fix is to clean it regularly with soap. I also use a towel and wipe down my build plate after each print, as I might have touched it in between.
Mistake #3: Close the nozzle belt (the right way)
The next mistake happened after changing the nozzle, which is surprisingly fast (Compared to my old printer the Ultimaker 2+ Extended where it took about 30 minutes), but not idiot-proof. It’s so fast that most videos are really short and don’t show the most important parts slowly.
When changing the nozzle, you need to buckle it correctly and not like I did, because I didn’t put the belt the right way over the new nozzle and wondered why my print came out badly. (The funny thing is the printer still printed, but just a bit warped)
So first put the left part over the nozzle, then put the right part over it. It needs a bit of force, which feels wrong the first time.
It’s not that people can’t figure these things out with some debugging, but it would be nice to put them in a quick-start guide. Anyway, that’s it; thank you for reading.
Send this to a friend who is thinking of buying a Bambu Lab machine or who just bought one to save them from making these mistakes, or keep them in mind in case you want to buy one in the future.
If you want some general tricks about 3d printing I’ve written an article about this as well.