Taz 6 - Mandatory Bed Leveling?

I’d like to save time by not probing every print. Is there an option or workflow to remember bed leveling details for next print?

I’m interested to see the responses that people post regarding this question.

But from what i’ve seen i don’t think there really is. You can manually edit your g-code to remove the bed leveling if you want (but i would make sure to still home it every time). I’ve played around with trying that on few that i was impatient to wait for the bed leveling sequence on my mini when i was testing things. But there have been a few times the distance has changed by a few millimeters, enough that when the print starts it is suddenly slightly too close or slightly too far away from the bed that the first layer does not stick or even extrude. In those cases i’ve had to cancel the print and try again, so in all honesty the bed leveling sequence is probably more helpful than it may first appear. You could experiment with changing the speed that it homes at if you so wish though in an attempt to speed it up (something i have also tried). But again that’s all up to how much risk your willing to do and live with. If something goes wrong suddenly your printer is moving at a much faster speed than before.

I want to say that the probing itself can be reduced from the “fast touch and the slow touch” routine by changing the G29 command to G30 which should only touch it once instead, but i’m not sure. If that is true and works that is another potential way to speed up your bed probing.

Here are a few topics that were created around the same question, but for the mini. I think there are more, but these are the first two i found.
https://forum.lulzbot.com/t/skip-auto-leveling-between-multiple-prints/3030/1
https://forum.lulzbot.com/t/bypass-self-leveling/2397/1

Even with bed leveling I’m seeing inconsistent levels because of some leftover filament on the nozzle post-wipe. In a perfect world it’s metal on metal and the nozzle doesn’t move the bed, but I’ve seen the nozzle push the washer down until it closes the electrical circuit. If I let it finish probing in this way the first layer is severely squished. I think one problem could be that the wiping runway (what is that called?) has some debris and as it wipes on top of that debris, it melts a little bit of filament back on the nozzle.

Sure, Taz 6 has automatic bed-leveling, but it has introduced another job of manually polishing the nozzle with a scotchbrite pad. I’m not a big fan of the nozzle being the electrical contact. I wish there was a secondary metal probe near the nozzle that could be used - free of all filament contamination.

I agree completely. Take a look at how Datron does probing on thier CNC (http://www.datron.com/cnc-machines/m7.php). I wish the TAZ 6 leveled with a separate probe similar to the Datron probe. In the meantime to help remedy the irregular leveling on the TAZ 6, I completely revamped the g-code for the cleaning routine, and my leveling has been much more consistent.

BTW: On the mini, I have only seen irregular leveling when using PLA. I’ve never had issues with ABS. I haven’t run PLA on the TAZ yet.

Care to share the g-code?

I actually did more than just the g-code. I also increased the length of the wiper pad to give the flexydually more wiper area and I put a notch in the pad so the front nozzle doesn’t decrease the pressure into the pad. I’ll try to post a write-up of the full mod this evening.

My cleaning improvements are located here:
https://forum.lulzbot.com/t/improving-the-flexydually-cleaning-and-leveling/3603/2

Just thinking out loud… Add a second TAZ6 to Cura, rename the new machine to TAZ6 (no autolevel). Comment out (";") the auto-probe (G29)… and the wipe commands. There might be more, so do a little more research.

Slice with this machine profile for prints which you don’t want auto-level or wipe…

I would think disabling the auto level on a bed that doesn’t have any way to adjust the level of the bed would lead to highly variable first layer thickness and possibly damage to the printer from the nozzle contacting the bed.

I tried removing the auto-level commands from the Mini start script. The results was that the printer started up off the bed by about 1cm, with obvious results. Reading around, it looks like what happens is that the auto-leveling data is cleared from the controller on a home command, so it doesn’t know where the bed is anymore unless you do the sequence every time. There was an experimental mod in the mini forum, I think, that stored that data and let you recheck it whenever you preferred. I didn’t ever try it, but something like that seems like it would work reasonably well.

At first, it bugged me, but really, it’s about 5min to run it, including the pre-heat, wipe, cool, level steps.

Yeah… while skimming articles, I recall coming across one about how the Z plane is reset. There are no apparent commands to do this in the start or end scripts, so it could be through turning the printer off.

I don’t have a machine with auto-level to try… just brainstorming. :slight_smile: