TAZ 6 - Z Offset & Level Issue

Hey guys, looking for some advice here. I own two Taz 6’s that I use nearly 12 hours a day, every day. I find myself constantly fighting the leveling & having to adjust the z-offset. Every time I start a new print, it’s either too low or too high. It is never as level as I’d like. I print on most of the bed area so a level bed is crucial. Both of the printers do this, so I don’t think it’s an isolated issue. Does anyone else have this problem, and if so, have you found a way to fix it? I clean the print head after every finished print and it doesn’t really help. Why Lulzbot decided to use the print head as the leveling sensor is beyond me. Why not use a standalone probe that doesn’t get plastic all over it??

For starters, check that the leveling disks are tight to the bed plate. If even one of them is slightly loose it will throw things off.

The leveling decision to go that route was mainly due to a couple of reasons: nozzles expand and get longer when at temperature, and the hotend can reach print temperature before it reaches full expansion, capacitive leveling sensors don’t work great, and inductive sensors require a metal bed.

I am very new to the TAZ6…have only ran about 20 prints through the machine with no issues, then out of the blue, while auto leveling it made a strange noise…the next print, it wouldn’t auto level, kept trying to clean the nozzle, and would make the noise while going down and up to touch the corner pad. Almost like the motor was binding up. I finally noticed that the two motors that control the Z height were not level! somehow they were off, so with the unit off, i manual turned the spindle and measured them so they were level. Turned the machine back on, and it auto leveled first time and is printing perfectly. I am going to keep an eye on it.

As a reminder, you can also contact our support team for further assistance. Email us at Support@LulzBot.com.

From your description I understand, and please correct me if I’m wrong, that your problem is not an uneven bed level but a different first layer thickness. If this is the case, does it happen with the same filament type? Or only when you switch material types?
All I’m asking this, is because I have found out that different material, many times, require from me to adjust the first layer thickness. For some reasons, unknown to me, when I switch between ABS, PLA, PETG, PETT, nGen, Nylon and some others, I need to adjust in the slicer the first layer thickness, otherwise I come across the same problems you describe. Added to that, the fact that I have an E3D and I’m constantly swapping nozzle sizes :unamused:

So, if that’s your case (different materials) then I think you only need to check and mark in your slicer the desired first layer thickness for each type of filament…