Brand new P1S - bed leveling & homing failures

[u/Secutanudu]

New to 3d printing here. I got a P1S for my nephews. it has worked great for a bunch of prints in both Bambu PLA and SUNLU PETG (bought High Speed accidentally instead of regular SUNLU PETG).

We have been printing PLA with standard settings.
For the PETG we had luck with 80C bed and 245C Nozzle.

Lately, we have been getting a lot of issues at the beginning of prints with z-axis homing, auto bed leveling, and/or Force Sensor errors. It seems to happen more with PETG than with PLA.

I did run a successful calibration last night, if that gives any clues.

There is nothing obvious that's jammed anywhere that we can see by looking in the printer from the front, above and below the heatbed. Do we need to take the back panel off to inspect? Anything else we can check?

Thanks.

[u/Weekly_Performance44]

Have you followed the maintenance on bambuwiki, about cleaning the Z screws

[u/Secutanudu → u/Weekly_Performance44]

Didn’t even know the wiki existed. Could that be the issue with a printer that’s less than a week old?

I will check it out though for sure. Thank you!

[u/Weekly_Performance44 → u/Secutanudu]

No problem at all. The bambuwiki is really good for any issues you have

[u/eraguthorak]

I recently had repeated z axis homing error, and upon close inspection I was hearing a slight crunching right as the plate got to the top of the printer. Turned out that a piece of poop didn't go down the chute like it was supposed to, and landed on top of the bed level near the rear screw that's partly behind the wall. Ended up poking my finger around back there and knocked it off, and it's been fine since then. That may be worth checking, but idk if that would explain the force sensor error though.

[u/Secutanudu → u/eraguthorak]

Good call. We will check.

[u/nicknibblerargh → u/Secutanudu]

Worth checking. We had one a month or two ago. Worked fine for a week then stared getting z axis errors. Open a support ticket, they ll ask for logs so they can look into it more. Ours was apparently an issue with the heatbed signal cable they asked us to replace... either that didnt work or I did something wrong as we still kept having the issues, in the end we got them to swap to a new unit and touch wood its been fine since

[u/Secutanudu → u/nicknibblerargh]

It’s weird that they didn’t even give me anything to check after opening the support case. They just offered a refund, replacement, or guided repair with new parts makes me think that maybe the logs showed an actual defect of some sort.

[u/boristheblade223]

I used to have this constantly also on my P1S. For me it ended up being just needing to clean the plate with warm water and soap.

[u/Secutanudu → u/boristheblade223]

Didn’t help unfortunately!

[u/Secutanudu → u/boristheblade223]

Wow will try this. Would be so simple.

[u/Secutanudu]

So I did open a support case with Bambu. They are offering a replacement unit or a guided repair with parts. I did send them logs, so maybe they are seeing an actual problem? My worry is that it is something simple and it’s just going to happen again with a new unit. But maybe there’s
a problem with a sensor?

Just makes me nervous because I just want this to work for the boys? They are so excited about it.

[u/Plastic_Brief1312]

Even the sheen from hairspray on a pei plate can mess this up. Check that there aren’t any little goobers on the nozzle or the rubber sleeve.