 In this video, we're going to go through the top 10 most important maintenance tips that you must do on your bamboo lab printers to keep them running in tip-top shape. My name's Jim and this is The Edge of Tech. Now before we get started, I want to let you know that most of these maintenance tips will work on all three bamboo lab printers as of the filming of this video. That's the X1, the X1 Carbon and the P1P. Now the P1P and the X1 may not have some of the parts like the camera or the LiDAR, but you can just overlook those and do the parts that the P1P does have. Let's begin by removing our AMS from the top of the machine. You can do that by unplugging the little plug in the back of it and taking out the Bowden coupler here. This little piece here I'll have linked in a description below, but it's super easy to get this coupler out with that piece. After we get the AMS off the top of the machine, we want to take the top glass off as well. The first two things we're going to do today is clean off our rods and check the belt tension on the printer. It's a good idea to do this once a month or if you get this air right here. We're going to start by turning your machine off. We're going to assume right now that the machine will be off for this whole video for any of the steps I do unless I tell you to turn it on specifically. After your machine's off, take a 2mm Allen wrench and loosen these four bolts right here. It's important that you do not remove them completely, just loosen them so they're loose. Now take some isopropyl alcohol in a spray bottle like this and spray down the rods so they're nice and wet. Then you want to move the head back and forth a few times just to make sure it kind of spreads through there. Then take a paper towel and wipe the rods down, moving the head back and forth to make sure everything is dry. If you don't have your IPA in a spray bottle, you can always just put the rubbing alcohol on a paper towel and wipe them down like that. You want to do these steps a couple times until the paper towel comes out clean. Now take the whole gantry and pull it all the way to the front and all the way to the back just a couple times, maybe two or three times and then push it all the way to the back. Then tighten the four screws that we loosened before and make sure you just go till they're tight and then maybe a quarter turn past that. But don't go too tight, you do not want to over tighten these screws. Now turn the printer on and when the screen boots up, press this button right here to go into your self-test. Run that self-test and when it's completely done, press the OK button to finish. Once you get that far, you're done. You successfully have done the first two very important steps on your bamboo lab printer to keep this thing printing great every day. Now we're going to move on to cleaning and lubricating our Z lead screws. This can be done on the X1, the X1 Carbon and the P1P. It's the same across the board and it should be done about every three months to make sure that they're clean and properly lubricated. For this maintenance, we want to make sure that the machine is turned on and that's why we do it right after we do the first two because the machine is already on from those steps. We're going to start with the bed all the way at the bottom of the printer. If your bed is not at the bottom of the printer, you can use the screen on the printer to move the bed all the way down now. Now take a paper towel and put a very thin coat of IPA on it. Then run it up and down the lead screws to make sure all of the loose debris is off and all of that gunk. You don't have to rub this too hard because you don't want the paper towel flaking off everywhere because it'll cause more of a mess than when you started. But just make sure you do it nice and lightly up and down on that lead screw and make sure all of the extra debris is off any filament, any extra dust, that kind of stuff. Now take a couple of drops of this multi-use synthetic oil with PTFE and put it along each of the lead screws. You only need a couple drops on each lead screw and a little goes a long way. You don't want to make a mess. You don't want to use too much of this. Once you do that, hit the home button on the screen of your printer and that will allow the bed to come up, travel through the lead screw and spread the oil nicely through that screw. Now that the bed is at the top, do the same thing for the bottom couple inches of the lead screws. Wipe them down, put a little bit of oil on them, and then run the bed all the way down to the bottom of the printer again. Once you do that, you're done. You've officially cleaned and lubricated the lead screws and they're good to go. There will be a link in the description to the PTFE lube that I like to use. I'll link a couple different ones, but I prefer this one because it's nice and thin and you don't have to use very much. Real quick, if you're getting value out of today's video, please smash that like button now. If you want to see more videos like this about 3D printing, lasers, and CNC, please consider hitting that subscribe button if you haven't done that already. It really helps spread this video farther out into the community and it really helps the channel on the way to 100,000 subscribers this year. Thank you so much for smashing that subscribe button now back to it. I just did that whole thing with the bottle there, dang it. Now we're just going to do a quick cleanup on the extruder. You should do this anytime you see any buildup on the gears that you can see and it's super simple to do. We're going to begin by pulling the front cover of the hot end off just like this. Now we're going to take a can of compressed air and just spray it in the extruder wherever you can get in there and just blow everything right out of there. If you want extra credit, you can actually take the extruder out of the machine and blow it off from all angles that way, but if you do it with the extruder in the machine enough and consistently, you shouldn't have to take that extruder out until it's finally time to replace it. Once you blow it out and it looks clean, you're done and your extruder's good to go. Another super fast maintenance to do on these is cleaning out the fans. If you have an X1 carbon, you have the big fan on the side and your hot end fans, if you have an X1 or a P1P, you have your hot end fans unless you added that big fan on the side. But it's super simple. Grab the canned air we used before and spray out the fans really well. You want to make sure your machine is not on for this like we talked about earlier because it could damage the fans if they're spinning and you hit them with that canned air. But after you blow them all out, you're done. You cleaned out the fans and you're good to go. And I would do this about once a month to keep them nice and clean. If you have the X1 carbon, you want to make sure you keep that LiDAR lens clean as well. You want to do this about once a month unless you're consistently running ABS. If you're doing that, you probably want to do this every three to five days because it can really fog up the lens and you don't want that to happen. Since the cover is already off the hot end from the last step, this is a perfect time to do this if you have the X1 carbon. All you have to do is take a Q-tip, throw some isopropyl alcohol or IPA on it so it's nice and coated. Then what you want to do is just go in and gently clean the lens of the LiDAR, spinning your Q-tip round and round until it's nice and clean. Once it looks clean and there's nothing else coming off onto your Q-tip, then you're done. Your LiDAR is effectively cleaned and at this point, you can put the cover back on the hot end like this. Since we have the Q-tip and the isopropyl alcohol or IPA out, this is a perfect time to do the next step and that's clean the camera. This can be done on the X1, the X1 carbon and the P1P as long as you have the camera so you can do this across all three. It's super easy and we're going to do it the same way we did the LiDAR lens. We're going to flip the Q-tip around to the dry side, get some isopropyl alcohol on there and wipe that lens down so it's nice and clean. Again, I like to rotate that Q-tip around so it's kind of using different parts of the Q-tip to get it clean. Once you're done with that, it's done. That was super fast. It's simple. It takes like five seconds and this should actually be done about once a month. Next on the list is the filament cutter. This needs to be changed periodically but should be checked about once a month to make sure it's in good shape. If you're somebody that prints a ton of multicolor prints, you want to make sure you change this every three to five thousand filament changes because it will deform and get dull after time and that won't be good for your printer. Something that you probably don't think about is that blade actually gets used every single time you print or every single time that there's a filament change so it's actually used a lot more than you think. This step will be the same across all three printers X1, X1 carbon and P1P. To start you want to pull the cover off your hot end and grab a 1.5 millimeter hex or allen wrench and remove the screw that's in the arm of the cutter. Then pull the arm down just like this and the cutter will slide out from that guide. Now carefully take the old cutter off just like this. Take a new one that came with the machine and push it into the guides. Slide the arm back up and push the cutter back into the cutter guide just like this. Put the arm screw back in and tighten it down but not over tight and then you can put the hot end cover back on and that's it. You're done. You've successfully changed the cutter on the hot end and you're good to go for another three to five thousand cuts. A very important piece of these machines is the nozzle wiper. It keeps that nozzle clean and wipes it after it purges. It's that thing that you hear go every time you start a print or every time the filament changes. That means it gets banged around a lot and you want to make sure that's kept in good shape. It's super easy to replace and you want to make sure you check this about once a month. If you're looking from the top down into your machine, you just want to make sure that you pull the hot end away from that poop chute. Once the hot end is pulled away from the poop chute, take a two millimeter wrench, pull out the screw that's holding that wiper in, take the wiper out, put the new wiper in and screw that two millimeter screw back down. It's really that easy and now you have a brand new scraper and you're good to go for a while. And don't forget, most of the printers came with I think two of the cutters and three of the wipers. So you're set for a while on these parts because Bamboo Lab already gave them to you. Another thing you should do if you have the X1 carbon is check the carbon air filter. You should do this about every three months and it's almost the easiest thing you can do. But if your machine is in a production environment like on a farm, you want to make sure you check this once a month. All you have to do to change it is pop the little cover to the left and pull it open and off, pull that filter out, take the new one, push it in and then put that door on from the left to the right and snap it in place. It's that easy. It literally takes 30 seconds to do and you're good to go for like three months in a normal use or one month in production. And you have to get those filters from Bamboo Lab because they don't send one with the machine but that's okay. It's a consumable and it's super easy to order. Last but not least, we're going to replace the desiccant that came in our AMS if you have an AMS. You should be checking this about once a week and if you notice that desiccant has turned colors with the stock packages, I believe they turn yellow, then you want to change it. I like to use the little basket that I showed in this video right here because I can use a loose desiccant and just swap it out when I need to. To do this, all you have to do is take all of the filament rolls that you have in the AMS out, pop the little doors off of where the desiccant goes, take the desiccant out, put the new desiccant in, close those doors and you're done. For extra credit, grab a vacuum and vacuum out the inside of that AMS really good to make sure there's no dust or debris in there and then you're ready to put the rolls of filament back in and start printing. At this time, all you have to do is put your glass back on top of the printer if you have glass and the AMS back on top of that and don't forget to plug your AMS back in and that's it. That was the top 10 most important maintenance tips for your bamboo lab printers to keep them printing like they came out of the box on day one. If you want some really cool upgrades now for your machine, check this video out.