Bambu Lab announced the Bambu Lab A1, a bed slinger 3D printer, on December 14th, 2023, less than three months after announcing the A1 mini. Like the A1 mini, the A1 has been excessively well received by the community. Indeed, the printer was provided at a very affordable price, especially for a multi-colored printer with the AMS Lite, and built upon the innovations brought by the A1 mini while giving a bigger build volume, similar to the one of the X1 and P1 series.
Yet, on January 24th, 2024, roughly a month after everyone got their printers, a user called “Mustangboy” posted a worrisome image on the Bambu Lab forum.
The user says they only had the printer for six days, and that it killed the printer. They opened a ticket with Bambu Lab and were waiting for a reply. After three days, they had not received any answers and started to get really frustrated. Nevertheless, the next day, four days after this image was posted, Bambu Lab announced a recall on the A1 printers for the printers exhibiting “signs of damage”.
For those not impacted, Bambu Lab recommended printing a cable protection or waiting for one that was going to be sent into the mail.
Things pretty much went back to normal for most people but on February 4th, 2024, Bambu Lab published a new blog post “A1 Recall Update” with some new findings. They had found that “less than 0.1% of all the A1 printers sold have electrical malfunctioning problem related to heatbed cable suffering from damage reported to [them]”. To ensure their “customers’ absolute safety”, Bambu Lab extended the recall to all A1 printers. Offering two options:
- Option 1 – Return for Refund (+80$ discount voucher)
- Option 2 – Wait for Heatbed Availability and Replace It (+120$ discount voucher)
In any case, Bambu Lab asked their customer to apply to the option of their choice using an online form.
If you choose to get a refund, Bambu Lab will cover the shipment fees and states that the 80$ voucher can be used on a new printer to get you back to printing as soon as possible. Yet, some have complained that you will only receive that coupon after your return has been processed, which can take up to 15 days. Including all the time you have to wait for Bambu Lab to send you the shipment information to return the printer in the first place.
Several days have passed and many have not heard back from Bambu Lab, while some have. It can be explained by the amount of support tickets they have received regarding this issue and the fact that they are taking a break for the Spring Festival holiday (from February 9th to February 17).
It is also unclear if, in case of a refund, the accessories bought alongside the A1 will be refunded too.
Should you continue to use your A1 printer?
Well, this depends on a lot of things. The most important one is how confident you are with running a potentially defective electrical appliance in your home. We are talking about the possibility of the device catching fire after all.
If you are and you are considering a refund, we don’t know if Bambu Lab will refund a printer that was working at the moment of the recall but not when returning it. So, keep that in mind.
In any case, Bambu has stated in their recall update that “[they] strongly urge all customers to stop using their A1 printers until the issue has been resolved.“. We don’t know how serious this issue actually is but we would recommend not to continue using your printer.