TAZ 5 and 1.75mm Filament

NOTE: I am pretty sure the following is not going to be supported by lulzbot.

I recently received my new TAZ 5 and have been very pleased with it, but like others I have a buttload of 1.75mm PLA filament from my previous printer. I figured that the new Hexagon hotend on the TAZ 5 was all metal and did not have the PTFE tube what would be the problem with just sending some 1.75 filament through it. I figured that the main issue would be with retraction, but I am happy to say it worked perfectly.

I took my standard PLA profile and just changed the filament diameter from 2.89 to 1.75, then print a calibration cube. When loading the filament I did not adjust the extruder tension at all. It was dead perfect, wall thickness was dead on, dimensions were dead on, no blobbing, no holes.

Since I tried this I have run full print plates with 1.75mm PLA through the TAZ 5 with zero issues. So for all those out there that have some 1.75mm PLA sitting around, don’t be scared to run it through.

I have not tried this with ABS or any other material as I primarily had PLA.

Steven


Hmm, interesting… I’ll have to give my 1.75mm ABS a try.

Thanks for experimenting and sharing.

For those that are interested, here is the Roctopus print at 0.075mm layer height in 1.75mm orange PLA. I made no changes to the TAZ 5 or the hexagon hotend. I only updated my standard PLA profile to set the filament diameter to 1.75.

Cool, thanks for letting us know.

Nice print… Interesting that the thinner filament puts enough pressure on the heat chamber to push filament through accurately without overflowing. Do you have retraction on when slicing?

Yes, retraction is on, 1.70mm. I do notice it takes a little longer on the skirt to get a full width line, maybe it needs to fill up the chamber a bit more.

Wow! what a really awesome advantage this is for the hexagon hot end! I never thought about it!

FWIW, we tested this on a couple parts in R&D and were able to print fine with 1.75mm filament on a 3mm setup. Results may vary.

-Jeff

I’m gonna have to test this, and I’ll be very happy if it works :smiley: I kind of got obsessed with 3d printing when I purchased the davinci 1.0 in november, and bought a massive amount of 1.75mm filament. I think I have 13 rolls :laughing:

You’ll be impressed :sunglasses:

We’ve been running all sorts of 1.75mm filament in R&D and marketing and it’s truly impressive. Softer filaments like nylon and PET can buckle and jam occasionally, but PLA, HIPS, ABS parts are virtually indistinguishable from 3mm printed ones. So that’s pretty awesome :slight_smile:

So far we’ve been able to get great prints in cura turning the filament size down to 1.75, but no other changes are needed. If you’ve got some 1.75mm filament around, give it a shot and let us know how it goes

Cheers
-Bam

Wow this is great news. I have a makerbot r2 and a ton of 1.75 in different colors. I thought when I got the Taz 5 I would need to replace all those colors in 3mm, but apparently I don’t! Awesome find.

Let us know in this thread how it works for you, plz. :slight_smile:

This is what 1.75mm looks like printed on my Taz5, just using the “standard” profile for PLA and moving the FR knob to 120%

Did you change the filament diameter in the settings?

Sorry, should have made things clearer. I did change the setting to 1.75mm diameter, but I was also on Slic3r (via Repetier). I am trying again using Cura set to 1.75mm.

That’s great news! I have a Dimension SST1200ES and every cartridge of material there is probably 15 feet or more of extra filiment that just goes to waist when you the take the cartridge out of the machine. I was actually hoping I would be able to use this extra filiment in the Taz5. It is 1.75mm

Here is a shocker for all if you who don’t know anything about Dimension machines. A cartridge of material (ABS) is $260.00 and a cartridge of support material is $250.00 and by the time you add shipping and tax it’s about $280.00.

LulzBot Mini Users: I started a thread on printing 1.75 mm filament with a LulzBot Mini using (mostly) default software configurations and hardware here: https://forum.lulzbot.com/t/1-75-mm-filament-with-a-lulzbot-mini/1534/1

So I’ve started getting some issues with 1.75mm filament. Sometimes it works perfectly. No issues at all. Other time it’ll print for about 3-4 minutes then strip on me and stop extruding. Pretty frustrating as I cant figure out why sometimes it works perfectly and other times it jams. Just seems to stop extruding for a brief second and then I get a half moon cutout. Will have to experiment more and see whats going on.

I’ve managed to print about 15 little storage capsules using some pretty shoddy 1.75mm filament. It’s very brittle, and that caused some problems for me during my tests. Prints would go smooth until the filament would crackand result in some clogging. I had one major clog and decided to hold off on trying anymore.

I’m pretty confident that some of the better quality filament will work with little problems :slight_smile:

I have a TAZ 4 and I’m considering upgrading the print head to the hexagon. I currently only print in PLA and ABS, but would like the option to print some of the other hotter filaments. I also have a ton of 1.75 filament.
Question:

  1. Do you think the upgrade to the hexagon hot end is a good idea, do you think it will make overall better prints than the hot end currently on the TAZ4, using PLA and ABS.
  2. Is the TAZ 4 close enough to the TAZ 5 that I can do the hexagon upgrade and get all the same benefits the TAZ 5 is getting?