Working with my Taz 5 that I inherited awhile back and running into issues. I replaced the PEI sheet and had good success with prints. I haven’t used the printer in a few months and just tried using it again. I got one good print using PLA then the next print won’t even start printing. It looks like the first layer is almost clear then if there’s color it starts to drag it around. How can it change between one print to the next?
i read somewhere here about sanding the PEI. Is this a possible solution? I’m printing PLA at 230 with the bed at 60 I believe. Should I change my temps?
Another update. Cleaned out the nozzle and dish soaped the bed. Adhesion looks good, it is just uneven. How can the corners be level but not the middle?
Nozzle looks too close. increase z offset by like .15mm. It’s barely clearing the bed if at all, so nothing is coming out.
The bed may be heating unevenly to cause the center to be a bit higher than the edges. Allow it to heatsoak at like 50c for about 10min before a print. The bed might level back out.
PLA with that toolhead is a bad match. 2.85mm with a hard, brittle filament. Single hobbed bolt for a drive gear with a brittle filament. Bad part cooling with that single axial fan. Bad heatbreak cooling with the small blower fan…
The Taz 5 in stock configuration works pretty good with ABS, it was not designed for PLA (which wasn’t even that common that long ago).
Ah…. That makes sense then why there was a bunch of ABS with it and not PLA. I will try to print some ABS instead and see if that is part of the problem.
Also, I was checking the esteps with the PLA and only 20mm extruded when I commanded 100mm. Would that be because of the single drive extruder and PLA combo?
You should still have 100mm of filament go through when trying to do 100mm. Single drive gear doesn’t affect that unless it’s malfunctioning due to heat creep, or the gears fill of chewed up filament from heatcreep jams.
Hi. Did anyone ask how old the pla was and how long it had been exposed to the air? Moisture is very bad for filament. If this was the same filament as before, that’s probably the issue.
In case you’re interested, I upgraded to the magnetic PEI bed and the BLTouch leveling system, and am having much better results with my Taz Pro.
People use food dehydrators and even ovens to dry their filament. Google might be best there. I’ve not done it, but filament that old may easily be the problem.
I checked, and darn it, the Taz 5 didn’t seem to have the magnetic bed upgrade. Reach out to Lulzbot tech support. Maybe they have a suggestion or two for upgrades.
I upgrade my print head to a meteor, which I think they use on the Taz 8. My gosh that’s much simpler than the head from 2020 I was using. But it was expensive.
The BLTouch device was cheap and easy to install (though you then reinstall your printer into Cura so it reflects the change). Ask customer service if they have a mount to install that to the Taz 5 like they did for my Taz Pro.
