Questions about printing replacement parts for TAZ 6.

General LulzBot TAZ
1
  1. is there a way to download all the files at once? It is pretty tedious to download them one at a time.
  2. I was unable to find any information about what type of plastic to use for the various parts. Are there instructions somewhere I did not find?
  3. Some of the parts on the printer were rather coarsely printed. Any reason not to use a higher resolution?
  4. What is the “Mini” directory inside the various part directories for? There is gcode in those directories, Is that for LulzBot Mini parts?
2
  1. Not really, you could probably grab the entire directory with some ft software, but that would get you a bunch of extra stuff. That being said you really don’t need spates of every part, just the wear ones.
  2. ABS plastic at 85% infil. Specifically village plastics abs.
  3. Manufacturing time and whatnot. Printing them at a higher resolution won’t hurt anything.
  4. Lulzbot uses a combination of taz and mini printers to manufacture their printers. The minis took over from the AO-101’s. They print the parts in those directories for production, the taz fleet prints the larger ones. The parts are taz parts.
3

So I really shouldn’t use the gcode in the mini directories since I have a TAZ 6 and the gcode is for the mini.
Is there any particular reason some of the parts are green?

4

Some of the parts are made of ninjaflex which is flexible (bed corners, anti wobble disk) , but most of the green abs ones are green for aesthetic reasons.

5

Is there a document somewhere that indicates which ones are ninja flex, and which ones are ABS?

6

The ninjaflex parts are the bed corners, the flexy feet on the y axis, and the two anti wobble disks. You can see the parts and assembly order here
https://ohai.lulzbot.com/group/taz-6/

7

Thanks

8

I printed parts in alphabetical order using ABS medium profile modified to 85% fill up to the z stage, but the z stage parts were suffering layer separation.
A bit of googling suggested that the temperature of the print head used was too low. To confirm this I went looking at the gcode that was posted for the mini, and sure enough, the temperature used there was 10 degrees hotter. On top of that the fill density was only 60%.
I think the suggestion of 85% fill was a bit simplistic.

I went through all the parts, and found that not a single one used 85% fill, the densest fill was 78%, and varied all the way down to 20%
Print head temperature also varied from 235 to 250 degrees C.
I made a spread sheet that picked out the primary settings for all of the parts.

I need to go through the list and see which parts I’ve printed are weaker than they should be. It could be all of them since they were all printed with a print head temperature of 240 degrees C.

I’m on my 4th attempt to print the Z- stage parts. Turning up the temperature to 250 degrees C was insufficient to get a good print. It still suffered from layer separation, but a lot less that previous attempts. This 4th attempt has turned off the cooling fans.

I’m mostly annoyed that I wasted about 1kG of plastic and several weeks of time learning this.
Taz_6_Part_Parameters.ods (15.7 KB)

9

The more infil, the stronger the part. I usually print at 240c with no fan.

10

Strength also comes from the thickness of the parts shell. More perimeters equal thicker shells, which will result in a stronger part using less infill.

Higher print temps and little cooling will mitigate splitting in taller parts. A hotter ambient temperature from an enclosure will also help wtih tall prints. For ABS, I start at 245C with no fan, then ease to 243C with 50% fan after 3mm… it works will for my my print environment (no enclosure, ambient temp of 83F).

There’s no silver bullet for printing. Everyone’s print environment is different. Learning is always a component to getting good prints. You’re on the right track to find your sweetspot. :slight_smile:

11

Last nights attempt to print the Z idler mount was a failure. The layer separation is much smaller than my previous attempts, but there are still about 6 splits in the part.
I set the nozzle temperature to 250 degrees, turned off the fans, fill was 60%, and wall thickness was 1.5mm.
about the only thing I can think of to try next (aside from building an enclosure) is to half the speed that the shell is printed at.

12

Well… tuning the printer for your print environment is always a challenge.

I like to use a little fan past 3-4mm. My theory is the heat gets compounded as deposited layers cool. If you’re getting a good bond with previous layers, you want to lock that form in with a little cooling. Try 40 - 50% fan. Above 60-70% seems to cool the layer and part to quickly which promotes contractions and splitting.

Once you have things dialed in, you’ll be able to print a million of these parts with no problems. :slight_smile: