I have a TAZ Workhorse+. Generally speaking, it works fine. Recently I’m working on a print that is a flat base with several upward growing rectangular legs. Each leg is about 7mm square separated by about 50mm in a grid. What I’m seeing is as the printhead completes one leg and moves on to the next, the filament doesn’t shut off, so I get a lot of “mess” in what should be the open space between the legs. I’m guessing this means I’m running too hot for the PLA I’m using? Is that true? If not, any suggestions?
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Sounds like potential adhesion difficulties something commonly recommended is a bottle of IPA alcohol & just wipe it I personally am against alcohol swabs because you can use cotton balls just like doctors used to do for medical injections to clean off dirt & dust same idea
Typically when I see that it is due to the filament being too wet. The extruder isn’t actually pushing the plastic out but the steam in the plastic is. Of course you didn’t mention the temp of the extruder but I would guess 210 or so would be good. Anyway dry the filament and test with a small model with a couple legs.
Could be too hot, could be wet filament, not enough retraction, could just be stringy filament.
There’s also the factor of 2.85mm filament vs 1.75mm. If you are using 2.85mm filament, the volume of your pool of melted filament is going to be 160% the size of 1.75mm. That’s more filament pushing to ooze out of the nozzle.
Beyond that, keep in mind that the toolhead movement speed on any Taz machine is much slower than most machines these days. That slower speed gives more time for oozing and stringing - also the default nozzle size for Lulzbot machines (.5mm) is also more ooze-prone than .4mm nozzles.
Maybe I’ve just been lucky, but I’ve never had to dry the filament before.
Is this more common with PLA vs ABS? Until recently, I primarily used ABS, so it would make sense if this is more likely to occur with PLA…
I ordered a dryer… Will post back the results.
Thanks for the replies!