TAZ 6 RAMBo(ard) Dead

General LulzBot TAZ
1

TLDR: Shorted Taz6 wiring, tested fuses for continuity (good), tried&failed to connect.

Hello Friends!

Just picked up my first printer, a legacy Taz 6, with tons of extras. Had it printing great, and killed it promptly after. :man_shrugging:

On purchasing the printer, it had an E3D Revo XS installed. I added a contact wire to in order to enable bed leveling and configured it well and ran through a spool of prints.

Then, I wanted to try out the company refurbished dual extruder to use up the 3mm filament that came with the printer and try printing text on my models. What a hellish experience. Truly frustrating. Tore apart the entire assembly for parts. Hate to think that thing cost the original buyer half a grand.

[Sidenote: Anyone want to make an open source 3mm>1.75mm filament converter with me? I think it’s crazy I haven’t seen a small-scale 1.75 bored extruder to recycle outdated 3mm spools.]

Before hooking the Revo XS back up, I decided I wanted to rewire the assembly for looks and to remake the temporary contact wire I added.

Failing at my first attempt to wire the connectors properly, I broke out my tiny breadboard to help solve the wiring. Immediately after getting the wiring correct, I absent-mindedly shorted two of the wires with a pair of pliers.

Tested the SMD fuses and their continuity is good. Saw a suggestion on the boards for the 12v version to remove all connectors but the power and the USB and tried that to no avail. I think I done killed it.

Any advice or tips that I may not have tried? I could splurge for a new RAMBo v1.4, but would also consider other options that may require a little more configuration. Not trying to spend more money on a replacement board than I did for the entirety of the used lot.

Keep on tinkerin’, friends,

h3lmh0lt

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So there’s the big automotive-style fuses and the little nano polyfuses.

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Check the 15 amp, and the nano fuses. If all three are good, make sure your power supply is still supplying.

If it truly is dead, used or new Rambo boards aren’t worth it. It sounds like you’re plenty capable of dropping a SKR or Octopus board in there and doing the minor wire extensions to use the better board. I did it for mine, and love the possibilities.

And as for the 2.85/3mm filament? I slapped a toolhead with a 2.85mm Orbiter extruder on my Hexagon hot end and a 5015 blower for part cooling, and it works fantastically. I run everything from 65A hardness flexible filament to PC through it with zero issues. So long as I keep getting awesome clearance deals on 2.85mm filament, I’ll keep using it.

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Sweeeeet. Thank you, @Wrathernaut! I was secretly hoping I would get a response from you.

Yes, I visibly checked the auto fuse and put the micro fuses to a multimeter and all had continuity.

I’ll definitely grab an aftermarket board and an orbiter extruder. I see a lot of SKR boards and hexagon hotends; any specific recommendations?

I’d hate to bench the Revo XS. Looks like I’ll need another machine. I might just end up buying 2 boards!

Thanks again for the assistance.

4

How much do you want to invest in the machine at this point?

You can go my route and do the SKR or Octopus board, and combine it with the Biqu Hermit Crab toolhead changer system (sponsored link). It’s $120, but it makes putting an aftermarket board and some upgrades much easier. Between the SKR, hermit crab, BLTouch clone ($10 and easier to set up than the washer-based leveling), you’d be in about $200.

If you have the dual extruder, no need to buy any 2.85mm hot ends, you’ve got some to play with.

If you want to just get the Taz 6 back up, there’s a few places to get used Rambo boards from people who have upgraded.

5

Wowza, that Hermit Crab looks decent. I like the idea of having it to swap out other CNC heads.

Have you ever tried any other CNC style heads for cutting, etching or lasering or only ever done additive manufacturing with your printers?

I also don’t mind the washer leveling so much. It’s only empty pin slot 13 on the E1 harness that needs connected to a conductive area on the hotend nozzle. If I build another machine, I’ll end up throwing a BLTouch on it I assume.

6

I already have a dedicated laser and (small) CNC machine, so I have no reason to do double-duty with the printer. I definitely don’t want the fine dust around the linear rails and such on my printer. I just have a 1.75mm head w/.4mm nozzle, 2.85mm w/1.0mm nozzle for flexible materials and 2.85 w/.6mm for rigid plastics. A couple seconds to swap, and I just put the change in nozzle offsets in the startup GCODE.

If you do the hermit crab route, there’s no reason not to do the BLTouch.

7

Parts arriving Friday. Got the Hermit and a SKR E3 Mini V3.

Looking to build a single extruder, multiple filament setup.

I have been searching for an STL or retail item I came across recently on someone’s build and was wondering if you knew where I could find it.

It was a triple filament feeder, shaped like a tornado (not a cone but had curves), it fed three filaments to the hotend to presumably retract and purge between layers. Not a carrot feeder, not a splice welder, just a three filament to single filament reducer.

It looked something like this and it looked like the poster printed the part themselves. Still looking for the post…

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Fairly easily found on Amazon - Three into one (non-mixing):
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or 3-into-1 Mixing:
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It’s going to be a strange bowden setup that won’t really be taking advantage of the hermit crab as anything but a mount for the hot end with either. The mixing hot end requires you to slowly extrude from the “idle” colors, while the three into one requires some very good tuning with retraction (probably a decent amount of “ramming” too). The mixing has a unique hot end, but looks like the more fun option for doing co-extrusion with all three colors moving at the same rate.

The SKR Mini v3 won’t do you much good with that either, since it would require three separate extruder drivers, and the SKR Mini v3 only does one. The Octopus could handle it.

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I have a working Rambo 1.4 board after upgrading to Archim 2. Your for $25 with USPS priority shipping of $15. Let me know. The Archim 2 is far superior but does take some careful wiring and programming.

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@hgrinolds, I am actually all-set, but thank you. Got in an SKR EV V3 today!

@Wrathernaut, okay, now I definitely need a picture of your hermit crab mount. Does your Taz still have the original single belt, double round bar X axis rail?

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Great, sounds like you’re on a good path.

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I’m using a linear rail.

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Here’s the hermit crab attached with my frankenstein Orbiter/Hexagon hot end, kinda hard to see:

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Hey Bro, I hear you like quick change plates, so we hooked you up with a quick change plate on your quick change plate

:rofl:

Unfortunately, this will be the quickest way to get me back up printing. Probably won’t bother printing a new plate until I drop the ~$40 for some MGN9H rails.

Now on to wiring it all up!

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I had a replacement modeled up to attach the Hermit Crab directly to the linear rods. This should work. I can’t remember if I ever used it, or ended up skipping straight to the linear rail version.
Rod-X carriage for Hermit Crab.stl (759.0 KB)

It eliminates the whole “wedged in and held with a single screw” jankiness.

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Nice, thank you. Got my direct drive Revo wired up with a BLTouch and I am working on the SKR board now.

Not sure about the Octopus, but the SKR only has a single 2pin input for X,Y,Z endstops. Unlike the RAMBo that had pin outs for MIN and MAX stops.

All the schematics I have seen for the board only show a single switch for X and Y and no Z limit switch used. Not sure how current machines calculate their axis limits

I’m assuming that I can wire both MIN and MAX switches for each axis into the single 2 pin on the board. I just need to have them wired in a loop and in closed state by wiring first and third terminals.

Sound right?

.

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Taz 6 hasn’t used both min and max switches for quite some time. They just use a minimum (or maximum) stop and soft endstops for the other side.

I saved the wiring and just used sensorless homing for X and Y on mine and BLTouch for the Z.

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I’m finally pulling the trigger on the Hermit Crab system and see there are a couple options re CAN-bus, etc. Which device did you go with? I’m feeling the v.2 w/o CAN, but don’t want to short myself later on down the road…

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v2 wasn’t available for my build, but I’d go with it now. can-bus is great, but I haven’t done anything with that yet.

But it’d be worth the learning curve, I believe.

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Thanks! Will update when I finally make a decision lol