Bed leveling, z home, dual extruder setup

General LulzBot TAZ
1

Greetings,

I have a Taz 5 that’s been knocked around a bit, so I just rebuilt its v2 dual extruder (with a new flex plate and with a Flexystruder hotend, since the original Hexagon hotends are no longer available) and replaced one of the print bed corner mounts that had been lost. So my bed is probably not level, the tips of my nozzles on the extruders are probably not level, and the Z stop may not be anywhere near where it should be for all the pieces that have changed.

So my question is this: what steps should I take in what order to get everything adjusted and level and happy? I started with the out-of-the-box guide on the Lulzbot site, attempted to home the Z axis, and promptly drove one print nozzle deep into the Geckotek surface on my print bed, so before I do anymore damage I thought I should ask.

Thanks!

2

Sounds like you have quite the fun printer, due to its unique nature you might want to look into setting up your own firmware configuration. To prevent further damage I would investigate any gcode before you run it to understand what it is doing and if that makes sense for your printer. Going forward I would treat your printer as a new printer that needs a full calibration. There are quite a few smart people out there who have written up guides on how to do this. Ohai.lulzbot.com may be a good base for you to start your tests, but since it is a custom build of the TAZ 5 be careful to make the appropriate adjustments for your build.

3

Thank you for the reply, but, a week later, this isn’t particularly helpful.

“Sounds like you have quite the fun printer”: after hours of sourcing and ordering replacements for fragile extruder parts, disassembling, reassembling, and attempting to get things aligned, “fun” is exactly the wrong word for this experience.

“Due to its unique nature”: it’s a standard Taz 5 with a Lulzbot Dual Extruder, which was once a supported upgrade. The only thing unique about it is that I had to cannibalize a hotend from a Flexystruder because your hotend provider went out of business and you didn’t keep sufficient inventory to support existing owners or identify another source of compatible hotends.

“Treat your printer as a new printer that needs a full calibration”: I was literally following the Taz 5 setup guide for new printers when the nozzle plunged into the print bed.

“There are quite a few smart people out there who have written up guides on how to do this”: hours of searching did not produce a specific guide, but it would have been helpful to have a link if you were aware of one.

“Ohai.lulzbot.com may be a good base…”: that’s where I found the somewhat helpful Dual Extruder installation guide, but the documentation hasn’t been updated and references an ancient version of Cura, adding lots of “fun” trying to figure out where they hid the menu item or printer setting described in the docs.

“custom build of the TAZ 5…”: again, just standard off-the-shelf-parts all bought from Lulzbot.

In the end, I cobbled together enough information from the Dual Extruder installation guide on OHAI, the out-of-the-box setup instructions, and a 3rd party troubleshooting guide that helped me identify a misaligned x-axis. I get that this isn’t the latest-and-greatest Taz product, but when FAME 3D bought Aleph there was a promise that they would invest in better support and an improved customer experience. If it takes a week to get a well-intentioned but unhelpful response on a somewhat older product, why would I buy a new one?

4

“Sounds like you have quite the fun printer”: after hours of sourcing and ordering replacements for fragile extruder parts, disassembling, reassembling, and attempting to get things aligned, “fun” is exactly the wrong word for this experience.

Yes 3D Printing is time intensive

“Due to its unique nature”: it’s a standard Taz 5 with a Lulzbot Dual Extruder, which was once a supported upgrade. The only thing unique about it is that I had to cannibalize a hotend from a Flexystruder because your hotend provider went out of business and you didn’t keep sufficient inventory to support existing owners or identify another source of compatible hotends.

Your tool head is unique, therefore firmware will likely need to be modified

“Treat your printer as a new printer that needs a full calibration”: I was literally following the Taz 5 setup guide for new printers when the nozzle plunged into the print bed.

guide was not linked

“There are quite a few smart people out there who have written up guides on how to do this”: hours of searching did not produce a specific guide, but it would have been helpful to have a link if you were aware of one.

https://teachingtechyt.github.io/calibration.html (found Layer Misalignment with Workhorse -- Need Help - #4 by rhenderson) not specific but certainly helpful

“Ohai.lulzbot.com may be a good base…”: that’s where I found the somewhat helpful Dual Extruder installation guide, but the documentation hasn’t been updated and references an ancient version of Cura, adding lots of “fun” trying to figure out where they hid the menu item or printer setting described in the docs.

guide was not linked

“custom build of the TAZ 5…”: again, just standard off-the-shelf-parts all bought from Lulzbot.

Parts that were not original to the printer have been added

In the end, I cobbled together enough information from the Dual Extruder installation guide on OHAI, the out-of-the-box setup instructions, and a 3rd party troubleshooting guide that helped me identify a misaligned x-axis. I get that this isn’t the latest-and-greatest Taz product, but when FAME 3D bought Aleph there was a promise that they would invest in better support and an improved customer experience.

Support is available during business hours ( Support | LulzBot ) if you are expecting support rather than discussion and some helpful people on the forum