I was running production on my Taz 6, everything was going fine, then in the middle of the night I had a layer shift happen. I stopped the print, cleared the plate and stared it again. The second time the layer shift happened much earlier. I was a able to run a simple test print without problem. After that test print though it decided to get worse and now it will heat up, wipe the nozzle, then it levels on the front two leveling washers, but when it moves to try and hit the back two it makes it about 2/3 of the way down the table and then it stops and tries to level in the middle of nowhere.
Has anyone run into this? Is there any way I can fix it? I need to get back to production. Right now I am considering buying another platform.
If your belts are tight and the X axis is level, look at your control box cooling fan. A failed or failing fan can let the stepper drivers get to hot and cause stalling and offsets. If the fan is good the problem could be a failing stepper driver on the Rambo. Y axis offsets can also be a broken wire or bad connection in the wiring harness.
Give it a good inspection.
If you are using the machine as a production unit, running it most of the day every day, you will have maintenance to do. It won’t matter if you run Lulzbots or some other platform. I run Lulzbots, gMax, Prusa and CR10 S5 machines. I have to replace parts on all of them.
Belt tension is good, fans are all working, no broken wires or burnt out connections. I clean and maintain the printer regularly. On top of that the rambo board was replaced by lulzbot less than a year ago. I have no problem with maintenance and do my best to keep up with it, but if this printer is going to need to have the board replaced every year then I need to find another printer.
The Rambo does have a tendency to fail. If everything looks good, I would suspect the board. I have 16 Taz. I have replaced around 20 boards in the last four years or so.
You also have the option of replacing the Rambo with an Archim 2. It has different stepper drivers. Maybe they will be more reliable.
I appreciate the input. At this point the idea of spending any more money or time on this printer would be a loss. For the cost of getting a new board, and the time I would spend replacing it, I could easily get a printer from a competitor and dispose of the Lulzbot. Again, thank you for the input.