I Told You So - Bambu Lab A1 Fire - PrintFixFriday 245

本站收录: 2026-05-22

[00:00:00]There's not a [ __ ] safety measure when the boards inside of your printer get so [ __ ] hot the components spontaneously combust.

[00:00:20]We all knew this was going to happen eventually and unfortunately that time is now. We've got a Bamboo A1 that has actually caught fire and has caused significant damage to the machine, a machine next to it, and had the user not been home at the time would have likely resulted in catastrophic loss of their home or at least the room that all the equipment is in. I want to break down what actually has been going on, why it matters, and why this was the inevitable result if Bamboo did not get in front of it. Since episode 189, over one year ago, we started covering the NTC thermister issue with the Bamboo A1.

[00:01:07]Bamboo was made aware of this over a year ago. We can see from a message back in February of 2026 from an email directly from Bamboo Lab when a user brought up the concern for these fire hazard boards. their implies to users that your safety is Bamboo's top priority, that the machine uses flame retardant materials, it is equipped with both software and hardware level protection, and it conforms to the IEC 62368 safety standard, which is globally recognized. And while Bamboo states that your machines are safe and it's only happening to a small amount and apparently it's somehow related to lightning and sudden power surges, we have more than enough evidence to state to the contrary. That is not the case.

[00:01:55]So much so that I have burned boards in hand. This is a power distribution board from a Bamboo A1 which has suffered a non-cascading catastrophic failure of the NTC thermister. If you look to the left side of your screen, you'll see those two little wires poking up there that don't look like the spade terminals next to them. Well, that's where that NTC thermister normally is. This is a board from a user in the 110 volt area.

[00:02:24]We have people asking if it is present on machines from the 110 and 240. The answer is yes. It is almost 50/50. In fact, it seems like it's just cropping up randomly based on the reports that we are finding. Bamboo is using the NTC thermister as a means to stop inrush current. When you turn on the heaters of your machine, that causes inrush current. NTC thermister limits that so that it doesn't hit your electronics as hard as possible. Doesn't hit the power supply as hard as possible. It's the best way that I can generally describe it as like think of it as a way to slowly dim a light bulb up rather than smacking it really, really hard. The problem is that in our testing of bamboos from the community that came in for service, this NDC thermostat gets well above 130° C on thermal camera.

[00:03:16]They're rated in theory for upwards of 150 C. But we've seen versions of this exact same NTC rated for only 105 Celsius. And before you say, but Grant thermisters are in the hotends. What are they doing in the power supply? It it is a kind of common thing. Normally we see metal oxide variers and for a while we said that these were as well but they're not because we finally got our hands on boards that aren't actually burned out.

[00:03:44]With the partnership together with Gamers Nexus we are collecting boards and now machines and we are going to cover all the costs associated with it.

[00:03:53]Huge thank you to Steve from Gamers Nexus for stepping up and helping out with this as well given all the recent news regarding Bamboo which we've definitely covered. if you want to take a watch and there will be some update videos coming out on that. Get subscribed if that's the kind of thing you want to see. Steve and I have been in contact and he agrees this this isn't good. We actually reached out to Steve a few months back about this issue and while he was interested, he didn't really have the time. But now with all of the new Bamboo Lab issues coming out, time is being made. So, if you have a Bamboo Lab A1 P1S or other machine that has gone through this failure mode or has caught fire, we would like to buy that from you. We will fully replace the machine. We will pay to have it shipped to us at our expense. The goal here is to get these machines to an independent testing facility that Gamers Nexus is well aware of and has had experience with for many years. They will go through and basically tell us why [ __ ] and what can be done to fix it. But see, the problem is Bamboo already knows why [ __ ] The NTC thermister is [ __ ] and they're continued to be [ __ ] And it is a matter of time before what you are about to see happens to more users.

[00:05:07]Let's take a watch. This is an A1 that has burned. We can see charring. We can see melted plastic. And we can see the A1 next to it also on fire and stopped mid-print. RIP print. But the issue that we have here IS THIS FIRE. There's a lot of fire. Now, according to Bamboo, it is a fire retardant material. And up until this point, I had reason to agree with this. We did see some issues where the NDCs were blowing holes in cases just from the heat, potentially from a small fire inside of the case, but it was what we would consider a non-cascading failure where the NTC does not damage anything else outside of itself. and the casing around it. It damages the board and it damages the plastic that holds the board, but that's it. And we said many times, it is simply a matter of time before somebody is unlucky enough that it burns a hole, has an ember, and actually produces a flame that is enough to start something else on fire. But you might say, "But Grant, the fire is over here and over here. What's going on?"

[00:06:15]Well, if you look at the forbidden cheese pole, you can see they moved the machine at some point during the extinguishing of the fire. The user was thankfully at home when this happened.

[00:06:24]They dealt with it before it got worse.

[00:06:26]But let's be real here, this could have been catastrophic to life and property had the user not been home. Even on the Bamboo Lab subreddit, they ain't holding back. Why haven't these been recalled?

[00:06:42]USS Hammond replied said, "I've been calling them out on Twitter for the past eight months. Nearly 200 documented cases by me. Not once did they respond to my tags. Not a single reaction. I knew this was going to happen. It was just a matter of time. The A1 needs a recall again." You might be saying, "Grant, what do you mean again? This would not be the first time the A1 has been recalled." See, the A1 was initially recalled after Bamboo blamed the users, said they were using it wrong, blamed the users again, released a 3D print that didn't do anything but make the problem worse, and then finally were forced to make a recall for the bed cables. It was found that if you tilted the printer backwards, which a lot of people did during the assembly of the machine, you could kink the wires and that would cause them to wear and end up creating a spark, which could create a fire. Similar to what we've seen recently, Bamboo decided to instead blame the users rather than their own lack of product testing because that's the right way to get things done around here. Just blame the people for not using it correctly. Clearly the rag in this case was using open- source the wrong way and that's why it caught fire.

[00:07:53]Clearly something else was a miss. And I'm sure their PR team is already working on something to blame this on the end user. Bamboo has already tried to blame this on lightning strikes, power surges, and the like. But in our testing, which was done on a battery system with a pure sinewave inverter to ensure that the voltages were clean, if anything, they were going to sag, not go higher. And they didn't sag. Made sure of that. We still found that the NTC's got dangerously hot, well above the temperature that the plastic around it was rated for, the components around it were rated for, and in some cases, the NTC's themselves were rated for. So, if you have a Bamboo A1, and we have seen them on the P1S, significantly lower on the P1S, but we've seen it. What can you do? If you can afford not to turn it off, don't run it. Send these videos to Bamboo. Get rid of those machines. They are fire hazards. Allegedly, because I'm not legal counsel, a 3D printer should have exactly 0% chance of fire. While yes, they use open heating elements.

[00:09:02]They have safety measures in place to ensure that things don't go wrong.

[00:09:07]There's not a [ __ ] safety measure when the boards inside of your printer get so [ __ ] hot the components spontaneously combust. The problem here is not the machine, it's what's around the machine. ABS plastic and even if it is FR rated, is still going to melt.

[00:09:27]It's going to puddle. And while if it is UL94 V0 fire retardant, there's a whole thing for UL94. We'll link to it below.

[00:09:36]There are rules and regs that it should not drip fire. Should not drip like active chunks of burning fire. Did that happen here? We don't know. We need to get this machine in and we need to get it tested by an independent third party that can give us a real result so that we can share it with you rather than getting this machine back to Bamboo where it is going to go lost into Foreverland and we'll never hear about it again. We have been in contact with the user. We are doing our best to get this machine in. So, hi uh Instagram user. I'm sorry for all the views your video has gotten. We would like to buy the machine from you. I know Bamboo has already replaced it. We would like to buy the machine from you for retail costs. I I don't need the AMS. If you want to send it, you can. We would like to buy the machine from you and pay to have it shipped to us. If we need to, we can come up and get it. We want this machine so that we can test it so that we can ensure this doesn't happen to anybody else. You are very lucky. And I hope that we don't have to make this video again. Unfortunately, unless Bamboo gets in front of this, we're going to have to make this video again because this is only going to get worse from here. Now that we've seen it's possible, and sure, we can't guarantee that it happened from the NTC. This board is located right in that area where the fire is clearly concentrated on this machine. Could it have come from the power supply? Maybe. But this machine was purchased February of 2026.

[00:11:07]months after Bamboo said they have solved this issue and are shipping new machines with instead of a actual NTC thermister here, they're just bridging between it. If you have one of these boards with the NTC thermister in it, please get it replaced now. Now you have all the evidence that you could ever need. You have an actual fire. Yes, the rags and things around it were flammable and did likely to my non-professional opinion contribute. But even if the printer is sitting on a pile of dry hay, it shouldn't catch the hay on fire. The fact that we are the only 3D printing content creators talking about this is despicable. The fact that many of you are choosing your paychecks over your community is deplorable and you should be calling out the companies that are [ __ ] up and setting people's houses on fire just like you did for other manufacturers like Chey when we brought it to your attention. Shame on you. But I digress. If you have an A1 that you can't turn off cuz you're running a business with it, whatever, or you're in the middle of parts, what can you do?

[00:12:17]You can go to your local home improvement store. Even Walmart might carry them. And get concrete pavers. 16 by 16 inch is going to be about the minimum that we would recommend. Put the printer on the block of concrete. And while this is not a professional recommendation, I am not your insurance carrier. Do this at your own risk. Don't be a dumb dumbass. Should all apply here. This is as good as we can get other than just like keeping a fire extinguisher trained at these machines 24/7. The other benefit is it's going to put less resonance into whatever your printer is sitting on because the concrete block is a big piece of mass and doesn't like to vibrate. If you didn't know about that and you do like that kind of thing, make sure to leave a like and let us know about it. There is a chance that these rags were used to clean printers. And the vast majority of people clean their printers with alcohol. I think that's dumb. I've used Windex and now we're switching over to Construct 3Ds. All clean links down below. They don't pay me to say that, but they probably should. And if the rag catches fire, it's just a rag. It's no big deal. IF THE RAG HAS alcohol on it, you now have an accelerant in the mix.

[00:13:24]And to be clear, Bamboo is not the only company that we're going after. Now, the Software Freedom Conservancy is involved. And there's going to be a whole update video on this coming soon regarding the AGPL violations. If you are a 3D printer manufacturer, you should probably make sure that your GitHub repos are AGPL compliant because you're next. And I don't care if it's Puscha, Snap Maker, Bamboo, I don't give a [ __ ] If you're not following the rules, we're going to call you out and we're going to make sure that you do. We do this for you, the user. This is consumer advocacy from a albeit smaller channel, but someone that has been doing it for years for you and fighting for you, the user. And now that we have the big swinging, you know what, of Gamers Nexus joining the fight with us, putting their money where their mouth is as well, I look forward to finding out the answers. And look, if this case is not Bamboo's fault, we will do the right thing, which is issue a retraction, delete the video, say that we're sorry, and formally apologize the way that you should be doing rather than doubling down, blaming the user, and then getting called out for it by big channels like Jeff Gearling, Lewis Rossman, Gamers Nexus, Lawful Masses, and I guess 3D Musketeers for, I don't know, street cred. We recognize that we're not always going to be right, but this follows the exact failure mode that we expected. And thankfully, the user was home because otherwise this would have been much worse. Rather than about $1,000 worth of printer damage, plus let's go with another $1,000 of damage to their home with smoke cleanup and everything. They would have been out of a house if they were lucky. And before you say, this is an isolated incident. This isn't a big deal. Again, we've been following this for over a year. We're literally the thumbnail in the first video, Printfix Friday 189. We are on 245. We have never missed a Friday in the history of Print Fix Friday. Okay, think about that. Over a year ago, where the NTC thermister burned through the machine, if it was sitting on something or near something that was flammable, how many of you have yoga mats or soft foam underneath your printers? How many of you have random crap around your machines? What about little bits of plastic that are likely quite flammable sitting around your printers? Yeah, I know. My background's not clean either. Do as I say, not as I do.

[00:15:52]>> There's a there's a little gray area in there and that's where you operate.

[00:15:54]>> Bamboo Lab A1 owners, we're going to extend the exact same offer from Gamers Nexus. If you have a machine that has caught fire, we will cover 100% of the cost to get it to us and the replacement cost for the machine. 100% out of our pockets. Please email us. It'll be tips@3dmusketeers.com.

[00:16:16]And if you have burned boards that you don't want anymore and Bamboo hasn't asked for them back because maybe they did forget that we're still collecting them, please do send them as well. We will cover all costs associated with getting these burn boards in. The more that we can get for testing, the better.

[00:16:31]So that the failure analysis companies that we are going to be hiring to handle this can get as much detailed evidence as possible for them to draw their conclusions from an unbiased perspective. They're experts. I'm not.

[00:16:45]Steve is much closer to being an expert.

[00:16:47]I'm not an expert. I'm just talking head on the internet. And that means you shouldn't trust me. When we do the big reveal with Gamers Nexus and whoever else decides to join in, we will be publishing all of the public failures that we have found over 200 deep. Now, we will be as open and honest as we possibly can, and present you all the data that we have collected, as well as pictures of all the boards, including where they came from. This is a 110 board. I've got some 240 boards in the next room. It's crazy to me that no matter where you live, no matter when you bought the machine, you are susceptible. For some reason, older machines appear to be less susceptible to this, it is machines from right around like late 2024 and newer seem to be susceptible to this. And this one being bought in February should not have been susceptible to this. But for some ungodly [ __ ] reason, Bamboo, instead of recalling all the machines that were out there on store shelves, said, "Ah, [ __ ] it. We'll play Ford's game and see what happens. We'll wait for the lawsuits because it's cheaper to pay out a wrongful death lawsuit than it is to have our second, count them, second, two recalls on the same machine." I've talked to Bamboo about this. I've talked to Bamboo Lab employees about this at Form Next. We brought it to them. They refused us time with Dr. Tao. They refused to let us talk to anybody of substance at the company. And when we talked about the issue, they all said they were aware of it. Some employees off the record said they don't understand why Bamboo isn't taking it more seriously, but they were obviously not wanting to go on record about it.

[00:18:28]But all the ones that were wanting to go on record about it said it's completely safe. There's no fire hazard risk to the machine. You're wrong. and your machines are going to kill people unless you do something about it. You don't know when it's going to happen to you. You don't even know without taking the machine apart if your machine is even susceptible to having it. And if it is susceptible, Bamboo so far has had a lot of push back towards users who are trying to get their boards replaced before they get destroyed. When the NDC thermister fails, your entire printer loses power. So whether it causes a fire or not, your machine is inoperable for the foreseeable future unless you want to get a soldering iron and make the changes yourself, which we would never recommend because you would need to be a licensed electrician to do that kind of thing and not violate insurance policies. So don't be stupid. If you do have a Bamboo A1, please try and not heat up both the hotend and the print bed at the same time. Get the heat bed up to temp. Let it sit for a little bit.

[00:19:29]Let that NTC cool down a little bit, then heat up the hotend. I understand the hotend's not that much more, but the least amount of stress that you can provide that NTC, the safer you will be overall. If this was a machine that actually had opensource firmware, I would tell you to just lower the rate at which it heats itself up. But you can't do that on a Bamboo. And that's really likely all bamboo needed to do. Limit in firmware the PWM frequency of the bed heater. this would have solved it because the NTC's wouldn't have gotten that hot anymore. Do we believe that some of these are likely due to bad or dirty power, lightning strikes, and things like that? Sure, not every one of these is going to be because of faulty components. Some of them could be the components acting exactly how they should, failing to protect the machine.

[00:20:17]I'm not inclined to believe that every single one of these over 200 cases is an absolute fluke. If I was inclined to believe that, I'd be chewing on a boot right now. But I'm not. We are putting our reputation and our wallets on the line. We are not going to make money from videos like this. These videos will lose us money because we are going to end up spending money to help people get answers. But that's what we care about more. Vote with your wallets, people.

[00:20:44]This is a company that you've seen absolutely on open source violate AGPL laws. And that is from the perspective of actual copyright and contract attorneys. And now you're consistently seeing them putting their finances before your safety. I don't know about you, but I don't like the feeling of that. Allegedly, just allegedly all this entire video because at the end of the day, I'm not an expert. We need machines like this in our shop so we can get them to experts and so that we can detail this right next to Gamers Nexus and talk to you about how we are going to solve the problem because Bamboo themselves clearly doesn't want to do it for us.

[00:21:27]We've given them more than enough opportunities, nearly a dozen videos.

[00:21:31]They've been aware of this for over 4 months now. And rather than fixing it, they are rolling the dice that none of you are going to die. That your houses aren't going to burn down. That your pets aren't going to die. And that you're not going to sue them because you're doing things that only a licensed electrician should be doing when you have to replace the boards and you mess with your AC mains. You should read through your uh homeowners or renters's insurance policy one day and see what they cover and what they don't. You're probably not going to like what you find. I do like some things that I find and those names listed right next to me at the $5 here tier and hire. Thank you for what you all do in making videos like this possible. I understand that these are a bit of a step aside from what you all expect from Printfix Friday. Don't worry, we're going to get back to your regularly scheduled program relatively soon and there will be updates regarding the Bamboo AGPL as they happen. So get subscribed if you're looking forward to that. At the $10 tune, you do get to come to our private Discord server where there's no bleeps.

[00:22:27]We don't we don't bleep me, but I do appreciate them because their support and support from people like you that might like, subscribe, leave a comment, that helps get this video out to other people. So, thank you for what you're doing. But that is all we have for you all today. Stay safe out there. Don't forget to call your loved ones. Keep that fire extinguisher on you because you got to always keep that thing on you. And as always, keep making awesome.

[00:22:50]Have a good one.