Ditched my skirt for this Prusa i3 Mk2 style wipe feature I made for the TAZ 6

Not sure if anyone else runs into this but when I print skirts there is a decent chance they get pulled into the print. After I saw how the Prusa i3 Mk2 primed its nozzle by printing a line at the front of the bed where the printer never usually prints I got jealous.

Then I saw Makers Muse talk about replicating this feature in his startup script https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6csbJ5965Bk and though how hard can it be to tell the TAZ 6 to do the same thing. So I gave it a shot and I think I got it and even added an improvement to the process!

My version will print the line in the front outside of the normal printing parameters like the Mk2 but once it hits the end of the line I add a 5 second pause with the nozzle still in the extruded filament creating a small pool and cooling it off around the edge of the pool. Then I jerk the head to the center of the bed and in the process minimizing/eliminating any stringing or pulling any part of the extruded line onto a printable part of the bed.

Here is my gcode to add to the end of your startup script:

;Prime the nozzel stage
G1 Z0.4 E0 F1000 ; extrude filament back into nozzle
G1 Y-8.0 F500.0 ; move out of the print volume
G1 X0.0 F1000.0 ; start purge line
G1 X250.0 E40 F1000.0 ; finish purge line
G4 P5000 ; Wait to let the plastic cool a little
G1 X125.0 Y125.0 F15000 ; Move to middle to rip plastic off tip
G92 E0 ; set reset extruder position to 0
M117 TAZ Printing… ; LCD status message

In the Cura profile I have it retracts the filament while the head parks to heat up after probing the bed so I had to adjust it to put to put the filament back in the nozzle after it gets up to temperature. If you use the same startup script that comes out of the box with Lulzbot Cura then you may not have to adjust that part but just an FYI.

With this at the end of the start up a script the nozzle is ready to go so I recommend to go into the settings of whatever slicer you use and disable all skirt settings. In Lulzbot Cura on Windows all you need to do is press Ctrl+e to get to the advanced settings and set all the skirt settings to 0.

Awesome! I hated the skirts! Like you said they get drug around, then on big parts and a full bed I spent 10 minutes printing the skirts and on small parts I have to do multiple passes to get the nozzle primed!

This is just awesome. Oh wait, I said that!

Rob

Mr. Shawnbot!

Since we dont have a like button or anything like that I want to take a second and thank you! I have been using this for a bit now and I can’t tell you how much I love it.

Thank you for posting it!

Rob

Thank you, this is working great for me!

I like this much more than skirts. Thank you, OP.

Great idea. I have a prusa mk2s, with mk3 on the way. I too was jealous of the prusa prime method.
For one thing the blob at beginning didn’t always stick to bed, and it would get caught in your skirt or model.
Another thing the blob wasnt always enough filament extruded, especially if you cancelled a print before doing a new print.


Line works awesome, thanks for sharing.