Taz 6 Bed leveling fail.

Taz 6.

It’s about a month old. Bed leveling process starts normally. It does the “double touch” on the first two (front) washers. Goes to the third washer. The head starts down but it does NOT touch, maybe 4 mm (?) from touching the washer and then goes straight over to do a rewipe.

At first I assumed it was a dirty head but I got it nice and shiny clean and changed the wiper pad. Still no joy so then I lightly buffed the washer up with 220 sand paper and made it nice and shiny then cleaned with IPA.

Only then did I realize it the print head does not make it down the washer. It is not failing to ‘sense’ contact it simply is NOT making contact.

Youtube vid. The vid starts on washer 2. you can see the double tap. I get a little out of frame getting out of the way of the moving bed but at the 19 second mark pause it then go frame by frame… It never touches washer 3…It does not even come close!

https://youtu.be/liLXtKgBP-g

Wow, I haven’t ever seen that on mine. I’m sorry that I don’t have a suggestion for you.

Hello,
The issue that you are having is due to your X gantry being out of level. You will want to first raise the tool head up and measure from the top of the smooth guide rail (that the tool head slides across) to the extrusion on the top of the frame. Measure the left side first and then measure the right side. Then you will want to adjust the right side by turning the silver coupler that attaches the Z axis motor to the lead screw. Once you get the measurements to be within a millimeter of each other then the auto leveling should work properly. If you have any further issues after that, then let Tech support know and they will help you out.
I hope this will help!

AHA! Thank you so much! That makes perfect sense and I think I even know how I got into this situation.

EDIT – an hour later! – David, you are DA MAN! (because I am totally on the cutting edge of new pop slang) The two sides were off by 4 mm!

it is printing now!

So much panic over my beautiful brand new printer being broken and it was THAT easy to fix! Thank you so much!

At work I am used to writing up “RCA’s” or Root Cause Analyses.

So for anyone who cares or gets into this bind in the future here is my RCA:

I had a ABS print not stick to the bed and I was just printing a solid ball. :slight_smile: So from the LCD I aborted the print then again from the LCD I did a ‘move axis’ to lift the print head up high enough to clean up all the balled up filament. Well I spun the knob too enthusiastically and the Z bar went all the up to the top and hit the frame. There is a limit switch on top of the Z bar so I was not worried but I did heard a couple of clicks before it stopped moving!

Then I got engrossed in cleaning up the gob of filament and naturally when the print head went to re-wipe I assumed I had not cleaned well enough. In short, enough time passed that I forgot about the “clicking noise” I heard when the Z bar went all the way to the stop.

Since the front two washers leveled fine but the back one would not I thought I had problem with the Y axis. Only with David’s answer did I go, “AHA! The clicking Noise!” (on the Z axis)

So when I did re-level the Z bar I did it with bar all the way up and the limit switch engaged. Hopefully, if I get to exuberant with the knob again that will prevent a recurrence of the problem.

Bored yet? I generally only put dates to sleep but if I helped you sleep without having to feed you too that is a bonus! :wink:

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Very interesting. I guess I thought of that, but dismissed it because you said the front right corner touched down ok. I figured that if both the front left and front right touched ok, then it couldn’t be the X axis. I guess I learned something today. :slight_smile:

Talking about the Z-axis, I’ll mention this just in case you encounter it at some point as well: I too had to do the re-leveling of the X-axis at one point…but after a different type of event than what you experienced. My Z home pad button (that the nozzle touches prior to wiping) failed, and so it continued to drive itself down, trying to shove the bed into the table. It twisted quite a bit. The Z steppers were grinding pretty good as I flipped the power switch off. I found the Bill of Materials for the TAZ 6, which listed the part number and supplier of the switch, and I bought a replacement myself instead of bothering Support. I think it was $3. Not sure if that is a common problem or not, but it was definitely in the switch and not the wiring to the switch. It become very intermittent and then finally failed as I tested it out of the machine.

OH! That is a good one to know.

I have gotten lazy and I stick the card in and start the print then walk away! I guess I should be more patient and wait for the first layer to stick before I walk away to catch a problem like this!

The self level was routine was fascinating the first 39 times now it is too boring to bear! :wink:

The x gantry very frequently goes out of level for my taz 6 w dual extruder. Anyone knows what’s up?

One of your z motors has a loose coupler setscrew, or the x axis rod’s are binding the zip axis leadscrews. It could also be a motor mount out of alignment. To check for that look at the bearings on top of the leadscrew and see if the leadscrew ends appear to be at the same height.

My bed leveling is failing and I believe I’ve tried all the suggestions. The X-axis carriage is level, I cleaned the contacts with alcohol, and the extruder is actually new. I was having intermittent failures before I replaced the single extruder with a dual extruder. Now it’s failing every time, which means the problem is not a junked up extruder. Cura is updated, firmware is updated, red wires are in tact.

Other suggestions?

When it fails can you send M119 to the printer and verify the status of the endstops?

Just got my Taz Pro (used to use a Taz 4 I upgraded mostly to a 5)… and it fails the autolevel on each print. This looks pretty similar in symptoms, which is why I’m posting here. In my case, it appears to touch the first washer, gets close enough that I think it may touch the 2nd… and resets 3 times, then fails. In addition, in wiping the first nozzle, the whole tool head is moving around like it’s driving on a dirt road (perhaps driving too hard into the felt?). It leaves a mess on the plate of torn up felt. The second nozzle might not even be making contact with the felt from what I’m seeing. This leads me to believe that the X axis gantry is possibly not level… but I don’t see how. The Pro has homing sensors on both sides of the Z axis.

When I unpacked it, the X axis gantry was visibly crooked (probably off by more than an inch), but on Z-homing, it corrected itself and (visibly, at least) looks straight.

One last symptom - on moving from the first washer to the second, the X axis appears to “jump” when it hits the end, like it’s trying to over-extend itself.

I’d try to take what I see here to my Pro… but I can’t make heads or tails of the parts you guys are listing. Coupler? Lead screw? Nothing seems to obviously fit those descriptions when I look at it.

I’m excited to use my new Taz Pro… but I’m mystified here. I haven’t been able to print anything on it just yet.

The Taz pro uses belts, so you won’t see the coupler or lead screws of a Taz 6.

It sounds like your print bed is not attached correctly, or just not squared up correctly. The Pro uses the two zero switches at the top of the frame to set the gantry level to the top of the frame, but that doesn’t mean that the bed is parallel to the frame. It’s fairly simple to check if the bed and gantry and parallel. Get a small spirit level and throw it on the top of the frame, and compare with the bed. If they’re not close to being equal, you probably should just remove the y-axis and re-install according to the guide. Verifying step #10 should probably be about right, followed by step #20 of the final installation.

Once you’ve verified the axis is correctly installed and parallel according to a small level, wire it up and turn it on. Move the bed to the rear, move the x axis to the left, and lower the nozzle until it just barely touches a small object that is on the bed. Slide the object out, move the x axis to the right, and check that the object barely touches there as well. Do the same at the rear without lifting the gantry and you should know if you’re level enough that the bed leveling will complete.

Got it - I actually had several problems before it would print:

  1. First thing I fixed, the X-Axis carriage could not go all the way right because the wiring for the second extruder was hitting the frame on the right side, preventing it from reaching the last inch of printable area. Had to re-route the wiring. Fixing this by itself fixed the bed leveling (sometimes). On a related note, the wiring leading down to the extruder 2 heater was also out of place, moving the bottom “sled” around every time the extruder was lowered into place.
  2. The Y-Axis mounting was improperly secured. I believe this was what #Wrathernaut was trying to get me to do. Apparently the frame screws came loose during shipping and ended up lodging under the mounting hardware for the y axis. Unscrewing the hardware, recovering the screws (and finding out which things were missing screws) fixed the Y axis mounting. Also verified that the frame was still squared, as apparently two screws were missing from the frame :confused: . This occasionally caused the bed leveling to fail, and always caused the wiping to either be too harsh (on the left) or not wipe at all (on the right).
  3. The filament runout sensor for the second extruder was then also out of whack… it would print for a time with the second extruder, then it would pause the print with a “filament error” message. Eventually narrowed it down to the runout sensor because when I disabled it entirely, it printed just fine. In case anyone else is running into similar, I found that the bearing was not moving for that sensor, so I had to loosen it until it moved similar to the way it did for the runout sensor on extruder 1. I also found the washer above the visible bearing was intermittent about moving, and fixing that alone didn’t resolve it, so I loosened the screw on the washer that was intermittently moving, so it behaved similar to the one on extruder one. After these two loosenings, I was able to get a successful dual printout going with the sensor enabled.

That’s a lot to have to deal with with a new unit, but it sounds like it’s working. Big reason to buy a taz is that you actually can fix them too this level. I wish other manufacturers were so open.