let's take a look at all of the recommended maintenance from bamboo lab for their 3D printers and their AMS unit we're going to start by removing the AMS system it's not necessary for all these maintenance tasks but it is going to make our life a little bit easier for some of them push on the input to the feeder mechanism and pull the filament out we're going to remove the two middle filament spools so that we can access the connector that's at the back you can leave the outside filament spools in the AMS unit now press the connector that holds the PTFE tube in and pull it out the back of the AMS system followed by pinching the tab to release the six pin electrical connector while we're back here we'll also go ahead and turn off the power to the printer now that the AMS is disconnected we can pull it off and put it to the side if you haven't done in a while now's a good time to clean that top glass I'm just using a generic window cleaner here you may arguably want to do this at the end when you're reassembling the printer because this has a good chance of getting dirty while you're handling it once that glass is clean you can pull it off and set it aside in a safe place now on to the real maintenance bamboo Labs recommends blowing out your fans with compressed air once a week that might be Overkill I think you could probably go once a month but you'll catch little things like these feathers stuck in your fans and blow them out they recommend compressed air I bought this electric blower off of Amazon I think it did the trick but you're still going to be better off with some compressed air the three fans that they're concerned with are the auxiliary cooling fan the front cover fan and then the hot end fan which you can find by taking off the cover of the hot end the last part that you'll want to blow out is the extruder gear you can see that mine's pretty clean but it can get gunked up with a bunch of filament this is a part where you'll probably benefit the most from having Compressed Air instead of an air gun now on to the cleaning I'm using 99.9 isopropyl alcohol here I'm going to be wearing gloves because isopropyl alcohol can dry out your hands but it's not necessary to wear gloves during this operation but they do come in handy for some of the future maintenance tests I'm also going to use a microfiber cloth starting with the camera which if you're printing with abs they recommend to clean every week or whenever the image gets blurry they also recommend that you clean the lidar once every three to five days if you're printing with abs or ASA you could also turn this into a weekly task and do both the camera and the lidar on the same schedule the next part that needs cleaning is the carbon rods they should be checked once a month for dust or build up and if you're using ASA or ABS these need to be cleaned every five rolls or 5 kgs that you put through your printer I did this part after the camera and the lidar because you can end up with particulates on the microfiber cloth that you don't want to be wiping over the lidar or the camera now let's take a look at the parts that require lubrication and greasing it's recommended that the linear rods be cleaned and then anti-rust coated I think the cleaning step is a bit unnecessary in applying the anti-rest coating you're going to be wiping away any debris that might be there anyways it's recommended that the speed done every 5 kgs or five rolls of ABS or ASA and that the anti-rust be applied once every six months for this I'm using the 52004 from Super Lube and I'll put a link in the description to everything that I use in this video I'm going to transfer the lubricant into a needle nose bottle so that I can lubricate The Idler pulleys on the back of the printer the needle tip allows me to avoid getting lubricant on the timing belt as much as possible and only putting it on the actual bearing it's recommended that this only be done if there's noise present from those bearings and those idler pulleys otherwise you don't want to add any lubricant at all to avoid dust buildup you can now move the printhead by hand so you distribute that lubricant across the bearing and a quick note is that you should fill the needle nose bottle almost all the way full so you can squeeze and push that lubricant into the top portion of the bearing if it's empty you'll have a really hard time getting it into the top portion the z-axis lead screws require greasing and I'm using this Lucas white lithium grease you'll want to turn your printer's power back on and perform a homing operation and then send the bed all the way to the bottom of the printer I'm going to apply little dabs of Grease all along the lead screw and then I'm going to send the print bed all the way to the top position followed by applying grease in the same way again and then sending the bed all the way to the bottom you're also going to want to wipe away any excess grease that builds up on the lead screw nut it's keep in mind there are three lead screws that need to be lubricated here with the grease there's one on either side and one all the way at the back the nozzle of the grease tube can't quite reach the back lead screw and so this is where wearing gloves comes in handy you can just put a dab on your finger and run that along the entire lead screw this grease should be applied every three months or if you're like me you'll get a notification on the printer saying that the lead screws may require greasing and you can check them to see if they look like they're pretty bare or not now let's take a look at parts that need to be replaced on a regular basis first let's take a look at the activated charcoal filter bamboo Labs recommends replacing this once every three months if you're running eight hours a day and if you're running it as a production machine which I assume to be 24 hours a day they recommend replacing it once every month I'll put a link to the bamboo store in the description for these replacement cartridges but I'll also put a link to stls for refillable versions of this part so that you can fill it with your own activated carbon instead of buying the entire filter from bamboo lab next we have the silicone sock for the hot end you can simply pull this off and then press it back on just remember that the notch goes on the side where the cables are it's recommended that this be changed when the sock starts to show signs of wear that just means cracking or if the sock won't stay on the hot end on its own another good time to do this is when you have the hot end completely removed from the printer when you're doing hot end swaps now we can take a look at replacing the filament cutter it's pretty straightforward just press the lever and then unscrew the bolt using a 1.5 millimeter Allen key this should be checked every three to five rolls if using non-abrasive materials and if using abrasive materials such as carbon fiber you should check this every one to two rolls bamboo lab says that these last for about five to seven thousand filament Cuts but if you start to have AMS filament retraction issues then maybe you should check your blade to remove the blade just pull it out of the lever and check it to see if the edge is still straight and shiny and that there's no divots in the actual blade and just check that it's still sharp to install the new blade just do the actions in Reverse click the new blade into the lever insert the blade into its slot and then press the lever and screw the bolt all the way in another part that we have to look at is the nozzle wiper you can check this by eye and just make sure that it's not damaged unscrew it using a two millimeter Allen key and drop it down the filament Poop Shoot but make sure to put your hand on the other end to catch it and replace it with one of the wipers that came with your printer finally we can look at parts that need to be replaced in the AMS system the PTFE tubes can be replaced when they show signs of wear bamboo Labs recommends to check it every 5 to 10 rolls they can be accessed by unscrewing the two screws and then tilting the insides of the AMS unit towards yourself and you can access the four tubes that are underneath the AMS system PTFE tubes are also present on the printer and to undo all of these connections it's all pretty much the same you press on the connector and pull the tube at the same time to reinsert the PTFE Tube You Can Let Go of the connector and just hold it by the body and push the tube in and give it a little tug to make sure that it's secured to cut the PTFE tube you have a couple options you can use a utility knife and just try to make as clean of a cut as possible if you push all the way through in one go that's usually the best way to get the cleanest cut alternatively you can use a dedicated tubing cutter these are a little bit easier to get a consistently flush cut on these pieces of tubing and I'll put a link to one of those in the description and finally we have the desiccant packs you can find them behind these little trap doors in the AMS unit that you can just pry open the desiccant that comes with the AMS unit starts off white and then ends up being this gross yellow color and kind of jelly so if it looks like this then it needs to be replaced I picked up some reusable desiccant packets that start off orange and then end up a dark green when they need to be recharged I dunked these in water for the sake of the video and when you put them under water the beads actually start to crack so that's what you can hear now the indicator beads have definitely changed color and are now a dark green so you can see that with the light they are definitely indicating that they are fully saturated with water we're going to go ahead and throw these in the microwave it says two minutes per side for two bags but I had to use a lot more time in the microwave because I did drench these in water but as you can see here these are the results after microwaving and the colors do change back so it's kind of nice to be able to use a reusable product to get these specific bags to fit back into those AMS compartments I did have to empty the beads slightly but I also was able to put two extra ones in the front just to add a little bit of extra drying power in there those are all of the periodic maintenance recommendations for your bamboo Labs printer and AMS unit I hope this video was useful and I'll see you in the next one