We’ve been running our Taz5 for about 5 months now and have had a for the most part a pretty trouble-free experience printing countless parts of PLA. That is until recently when we started to notice some problems where longer (5+ hour) prints failed to complete. All the parts seem to show the same symptoms, the filament seems to become stuck in the hot end and the hobbed bolt just chews through the filament and fails the print. Here is a quick rundown of the actions we’ve taken so far:
- Updated firmware (no change)
- Measured resistance from thermistor (114 ohms) and heater cartridge (18.4 ohms)
- Performed several cold pulls, disassembled and cleaned nozzle (worked for one print, then problem reappeared)
- Updated to latest version of Cura (no change)
- Changed from Gizmodorks PLA to Village Plastics (no change)
- Replaced the “snail” fan with a 40mm fan and air duct, inspired by Taz6, see pic attached (no change)
- Mailed the whole printer back to Lulzbot who said there wasn’t a problem
- Tried printing parts in HIPS (success!)
- Bought and installed a new printer head (so far 8 hours into a 14 hour print it’s still going strong)
So it appears that the problem might be linked to our original print head and PLA - but how could this be, and why would it work fine for 5 months and then all the sudden appear on every long print? We really enjoy the PLA material so we’d hate to abandon it completely. Any help would be greatly appreciated!