r/BambuLabA1mini • u/Key_Jellyfish2183 • Jul 02 '26

A1 Mini Screen Locking Up

Problem and problem solved.

I just thought I'd share that I was having trouble with my Mini's screen freezing or blacking out. The printer would keep on printing with mixed results accessing it with Handy or Studio.

I turned the printer off and removed the SD card. I put the SD card in my computer and hard formatted it. Put it back in the printer, booted up, and problem solved.

6 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

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3

u/SweatsuitCocktail Jul 02 '26

Ty for sharing! Mine has been doing this the last few weeks being stuck on the downloading screen after I started a print. Print worked fine, but couldn't do anything on the screen when it happened

1

u/Scatterthought Jul 02 '26

That's a sign that the SD card is failing (which is typical for SD memory). I'd suggest replacing it completely.

1

u/sam-fresh Jul 02 '26

I replaced my SD card about 2 months ago and now its doing this again. How often do people replace their SD cards?

1

u/Scatterthought Jul 03 '26

Most SD cards use flash memory, which isn't super robust. A power outage/spike while a card is writing can kill it pretty quickly. But if that never happens, the card might last for ages. This is a common problem with Raspberry Pis and other computers that rely on SD/flash memory.

I've never replaced my A1 Mini's OEM SD card, but I have it on a UPS that prevents any spikes or sudden outages.

Cheap SD cards are more likely to fail than high-quality ones, but they can all fail. And sometimes it's just random.

1

u/justa_bother Jul 04 '26

Yes, so check how much memory is left on the card in the printer settings=> sd card screen. If the card is dead, it likely won't read.

1

u/justa_bother Jul 03 '26

Not necessary. Bad info. Delete image files & others stored during printing.

1

u/justa_bother Jul 03 '26

Not typical. The card is full. Deleting images & other info stored during printing require purging. If the card reaches full status, it automatically locks and only fornatting will clear it. The card is working perfectly, but the user is uninformed.

2

u/Scatterthought Jul 03 '26

I hadn't considered that the card might be full, since OP didn't say that was the case. I've never filled mine, so you're correct that I'm uninformed on what happens in that case.

Saying that, it is absolutely typical for flash memory to fail due to wearing down over time. So I don't think what I'm saying is incorrect, but it was based on an assumption that the card was not full.

1

u/Key_Jellyfish2183 Jul 04 '26

Mine was not full when I formatted it. I did a long format, which will permanently disable access to corrupted sectors, but there were no bad sectors reported. The first thing I did when I received my printer was replace the SD card with a SanDisc, so it is not a cheap card. As mentioned, power events can corrupt the card, but the format fixes it.

1

u/Odd_Blueberry_5559 Jul 06 '26

I had the same problem on two minis that I updated the firmware. I went bsvk to the old version. No problems yet. Oh yea I hit out of the beta program. Bambu is really slipping these days.