You sure are having ALOT of problems with such a “reliable” printer…. Good thing all that trouble was offset by the shear value proposition huh? Oh wait, that’s right, those are almost 5 GRAND aren’t they? What a colossal pile is shit. I’m curious what your plan is when it breaks down again? Kind of challenging for it to make you any money when all the money you could have saved is spent on fixing it…

First tip - do not store anything in the floor of the printer. If you do you will regret it one day. Second tip - do not put cardboard spools in the AMS they can jam and the rubber wheels can be damaged. Respool onto Bambu spools or just use Elegoo and rip the sides of the cardboard spool off and it fits perfectly in a reusable bambu spool. Third tip - keep the AMS closed and the spools will not jump as the lid will stop them.

Do you recommend this printer? I really want a toolchanger

Holy hell that XL first layer expansion you have there... or even a raft.... so overkill and waste of everything... XL do not need that

Thank you for pointing me in the right direction on this issue. My XL is 100% working on all five extruders!

PR was warned about stuff like this a long, long time ago. They could have solved this and taken an industry lead. Not only did they ignore that, they clearly don't have enough diagnostics in their products to troubleshoot such an obvious thing.

have the same exact issue and as of right now as requested by support to run without the connector covers, performance reliability is slightly better. but anyone also observing the flickering tool head LED?

I own a Prusa XL 5 head. It has worked flawlessly. First layer prints amazing. Great print quality. It really is a joy to use.

Thanks keep posting on your results. I have had many problems with jams in the extruder/hot end. Seem to have solved it by switching all of my nozzles to the Phateus ones, they seem to work much better.

So glad to see progress!!!

How do you keep the nozzles clean without brushing!? 😅

That's what I never understood about the Bambu, yes it's a super fast machine... But it has to be with color changes and purges like that. An idex or multi tool head with those speeds is so much better.

In general it has been a lemon. Compared to the other stuff I have in the fleet the Prusa XL has been garbage. It doesn’t just work, it’s always something. Prusa has abandoned this platform already. No software upgrades since the summer. The enclosure is a total afterthought. The multicolor printing works 1 out of 10 times because no matter how much you calibrate it the heads are references to each other and it just doesn’t work well. And all the promised features, like different nozzle sizes per head.. never going to happen. Can’t print high temp stuff with it out of the box and the fact it can’t print at 300 and will never do 350 means a lot of more technical filaments it can’t do. Sorry to be blunt but I have over 5k into this piece of garbage. It’s down again as it just decides to stop layer adhesion and trashed a nozzle and a fan. That’s right because it’s not smart enough to know because it lacks any type of AI detection that was also promised. You look at an x1 or a k2 and you think Prusa is so far behind. I know the fan boys hate hearing this but the printers aren’t good. I just replaced someone’s mk4 that wasn’t working with an A1 and the response was where has this been all my life. Prusa needs to do better.

In a month I'm going to buy an XL, might be a coin toss but i see a larger appeal for toolchangers than AMS. Here's hoping...

15 hours jesus, no wonder these printers have to be so fast

Its like sportcars. For daily ride, you rather pick a toyota.

Bambu needs to rethink their purge code. they can speed the process up to be at least 2x faster

Your issue is legit. Keep making videos on the bad and the good.

Hope you get your issues figured out. Mines been working great for almost a year now.

I'm done replacing, I'm done hoping a praying; my P1S is the best decision I've made in the past five years of 3D printing other than selling everything else before the value completely dropped.

Damn even Prusa company cant help?

Do u have a second XL?

It's like a BMW. Perfect driving car when it works.

My XL 5T semi assembled arrived 4 days ago. I took 2 days to assemble. All heads work flawlessly. A two color 14 hour print came out perfect. No tuning, and all my test prints are better than on my MK3S+.

Buy something that works like a bambu.

Damn

TMC driver for extruder is possibly over-temp. Safely shuts itself down. Can resume again after reset. Until hot again. The driver is on the PCB on the extruder. Little black square saying 2130. Give it more cooling or a heatsink and try again. If no change, that's not the issue.

Dang I really want this printer to work for you. It has been months.

The fact that this thing is missing features that an X1C has or P1S for the price of a used pickup truck (where I live anyway), uses 3D printed parts AND still has this many issues... Unbelievable. Taxes and everything included this printer with the 5 tool heads where I live would come out to around $5700 Canadian dollars, an X1C with AMS is like $2000 taxes in. I wish Prusa would get their act together.

The gap between the gear looks big!(?) Check the inside washer and the geear assebly. I think ther is thension on the gear.

great, nice to have it up and running again i bet👍

I was considering buying a prusa xl5 and asked, via chat, if they would send out a new unit with pccf parts instead of petg and they said, "no, it comes with petg". Really? That doesn't sound very customer focused. Sounds like the only way to get it that way is to order it with the enclosure. Also, through their contact tool on their website, I asked them some questions about some of the things I had seen about this machine in reviews, and I never received a response. If this is any indication of what "great customer service" is, I wonder what bad customer service looks like?

I have the same thing on mine. 5 tool heads and only two toolheads work. Very disappointed!

I just replaced the same PCB’s. First print on tool 2 failed just like your tool1. I did push the tool 2 reset button and 2 short prints were good. Still hoping.

Thank you. Please keep documenting.

Had also problems with at the end a TMC blue screen of death. Got new sandwich and u buddy board, also a new connector cable for a tool head which is spare now. Prusa support rocks though.

You’ll love it. Mine took months to get working right and had so many more problems but it’s my favorite now. I’m even thinking about getting a second one even though Prusa is the worst company I’ve ever dealt with. I bought fried chicken from a homeless guy one time and got better customer service.

very nice that it's working again. The Prusa service is really great

I had the same problem with a mk4, replace that extruder motor

I have a few Prusa machines now... One thing I can definitely say with experience... They don't ground their machines for shit. I have gone through two main boards, 3 love boards, and half a dozen thermistors on my MK4S. Literally if my Texas office gets below 40% humidity, I need to ground myself to the table my printer sits on, before I can ever touch it. I've learned that static electricity, can devastate Prusa machines, and their unbelievably sensitive electronics. Only electronic thing in my entire life, that I've had this problem with. I know they incorporate a few fuses in their machines. They don't protect squat. I've learned that I just need to ground out the machine better, as well... as myself. Keep that in mind. It appears that you've probably shorted out your extruder drive motor, and now the VFD control for that motor is shot. You most likely will need to replace a board. Possibly the Nema motor as well.

Bought two single tool head XL's at work. One works great the other has this exact same issue. Prusa already sent us a new extruder stepper and tool board. That did not seem to fix it.

I commented about this issue on another of your videos. On that one I suggested that you reprint the idler-lever parts. That fixed the problem for me. In this video I noticed two things, first, it appears that the toolhead in this video may already be using the PC-CF idler-lever, which is a good thing. Second, it seemed that the problem was with whatever toolhead was in position 1. With my issue, the problem followed the toolhead to whatever position I moved it to. With the information from both videos, it does seem that the problem is either with one of the control boards on the back of the printer, or the communication cable going to toolhead position 1. If the toolhead in position 1 works fine in any/all other positions, and other toolheads that work fine in other positions fail in position 1, then I think it has to be the cable, control board, or possibly the power supply that handles toolhead position 1. Sorry about the rabbit hole with the idler lever, my issue was different. As far as the firmware, I am currently using 6.2.0-alpha2. Normally, I prefer to use the most current Release version, rather than playing around with alphas and betas, but I was having some problems with the current Release version 6.1.3. I was having issues where if it was trying to home the carriage with or without a toolhead present. When it was trying to locate the left most X position it would slam into the Y axis so hard that it sounded like it was skipping a tooth on the belt. I don't recall if I still had that problem with 6.2.0-alpha1, but I have not noticed any problems with 6.2.0-alpha2. If you haven't tried that yet, it may be worth a try. You can always switch back if you need to. Good luck! As far as the ongoing issue with BambuLab vs Prusa, you can always find a similar argument between Chevy and Ford owners, sometimes just as heated.

I have an XL5 and my 5th extrude has a very similar issue. I too switched it to spot 1 and it will print a few layers and say either stuck filament or filament change. I'm trouble shooting it too but seeing this video im going to check out the gear to see if it's that issue.

Although I have the 5 toolhead XL, I have not had this problem. First thing I noticed was that you don't use the silicone sock. I have one installed on all 5 toolheads. That won't stop the oozing, but it should make cleanup a little easier. It sounded like you said that this wasn't even the toolhead that was supposed to be printing. There is a small pad that rests under where the nozzle is located when the toolhead is parked. That can be adjusted up and down and is intended to help with oozing when the toolhead is idle. I would check to see if there was a change to the nozzle temp when idle. The default is for the toolhead to cool down a little bit when not in use, but this can be changed. I would also check to see if retraction has been changed from it's default setting. I haven't had this problem, but I also haven't changed either of these settings from their default. Another possible problem could be a hardware issue that is still causing filament to be fed when the toolhead is supposed to be idle. That appeared to be a lot more filament then what I would expect from oozing. I'm not an expert, so these are just some thoughts that I had. Good luck!

Have you tested a small purge tower? It's probably difficult to get honest help online due to the cult-like following around Prusa right now.

I also have the 5TH XL and I had a similar problem. I was able to confirm that the gear could spin by telling the toolhead to purge more filament and leave the idler lever open so that I could visually see it move. I still wasn't clear after watching the video again if the problem followed the toolhead when you moved it, or if it was whichever toolhead that you had in the first position. If it is the later, then my suggestion probably won't help. My problem was that I started having one, then another, and then another toolhead that would print like crap, usually only for a few layers, and then generally stop extruding altogether. It looks like the gear in toolhead 1 is spinning because you do get some filament extruded, and then it eventually stops. On mine, it looked like the filament was very wet (it wasn't) but I could move the same filament to a working toolhead and it would print perfectly. I later figured out that the genesis of my problem was when I tried to print with ABS. The higher temp required caused very minor deformation of the idler lever, which in turn caused it to not apply the necessary amount of pressure against the filament to press it against the extruder gear. In my case, it did not chew up the filament either, but I was able to see the gear moving during a purge attempt. The idler levers that were shipped with my toolheads were printed using PETG. In February 2024 Prusa updated the material listed for the idler lever and additional parts, to be printed with PC-CF. Prior to getting some PC-CF I reprinted a set of idler lever parts using my best remaining toolhead. I installed them into the worst performing toolhead and it was an instant fix that put it back to printing like new. Although I had never successfully printed anything with ABS, all previous attempts had been larger items (which looked great for the first few layers), I decided to try and print a set of idler lever parts in ABS. I figured the toolhead could finish those parts before the heat deformed the PETG parts. It worked. I installed the ABS pair and set out to print a new set for all of the toolheads. Once complete, all toolheads were back to working like new. Note: There was no visible deformation to the original idler levers and I could not feel any imperfection. I'm guessing that the tolerance is very tight. I have since then purchased a spool of PC-CF and reprinted all of the idler levers again and those too are working great. I also reprinted the idler nut for each with the PC-CF, but I found that due to the design and the way they printed, that I was experiencing failures on that part. I reprinted the idler-nut and idler-swivel parts in ABS and have had very good luck using that material for those parts. Although I never had a problem with the ABS idler-lever parts, I have switched to the PC-CF idler-lever parts. I have saved the ABS idler-lever parts, just in case. My printer now prints PLA, PETG, and TPU like it did when it was new (very nicely). It now also prints ABS and PC-CF great too. In my opinion, your problem looks very similar to the problem I had. I hope that this information is helpful, if not to you, then someone else that reads this. Good luck!

Really sucks how much people who have trouble with Prusa printers feel like they are walking on eggshells because of the toxic positivity sorrounding the brand. With every other brand people would just state the problems they have without needing to first pledge fealty to the brand and talk about how good it is. There are so many user issues with the XL being fickle and support being slow at figuring out its issues in particular that I think its reasonable to say maybe it's just not as perfect a company as people keep saying it is. Maybe, it's just another printer company, perhaps better than some others but not in a magical tier of its own.

I had this very same issue the other day and it turned out the filament was brittle/ stale. Did you try another head or filament?

i would try double checking that the g code is actually telling it to spin the motor and if its not that its almost certainly the board. you probably got a lemon which unfortunately seems to be a bit of a trend for the xls.

Sounds like you just need a new extruder stepper. Swap stepper motors with the other tool heads and see if thats the issue. If the gear isn't spinning at all then its probable the stepper, or like you said, the board that goes too it. Could always try swapping boards.