I’ve owned an Ultimaker 2+ Extended for about a year. When business got busy enough to necessitate a second printer I decided to try a Taz 6 based on it’s overwhelmingly positive reviews and larger X/Y print area dimensions. I’ve owned it for 4 months now and it has been a near constant disappointment despite all troubleshooting and diagnostic checks indicating it is functioning properly in every way. In my experience (and perhaps specific to the kind of work I do) there has been nothing the Taz has done better than the Ultimaker and surprisingly few things it has even done as well. I have relied on the knowledge base within this forum to troubleshoot through some of the issues I’ve had (thank you all) and I’ve made some of the common modifications that help to enable the printer to do what it should have been engineered to do out of the box. Sadly it is still infinitely finicky and unreliable as compared to the bone stock Ultimaker.
As I said, I understand this may be specific to the kind of work I am doing with the two printers and I’m not here to hate on the Taz 6 but at this point I am thoroughly fed up with it and wish very badly I had two Ultimakers instead.
I think you have been through enough already! In fact I feel so bad I volunteer to come haul that lousy 'ol taz 6 away for you at absolutely no charge!
No no! No thanks needed. That is just the kind of guy I am!
I am confused - I see where you have only done 4 total posts to the forums here (including this one)… I have found the group here to be a huge help. I have only had my taz6 for 3 weeks and already have 37 posts here. Have you only been reading instead of asking? I bet this group could get you where you need to be with it if you gave it a shot.
Is that really the right analogy? I certainly don’t see the difference between the UM2+ and Taz6 to be analogous to Toyota vs Lexus. Both are priced similarly at $2500, and I consider the build quality and reliability to be similar. I own neither, but have printed on both – and both do a great job. My personal preference would be the Taz6 for a few reasons, but that’s just me.
Looking at the OP’s other posts, there were pictures of a problem with initial layers deforming. There wasn’t a lot of back-and-forth, so it isn’t clear if that’s still the issue, but that looked like something easily solved with a little more fan, and perhaps some termperature or esteps tweaking.
Nevertheless, I also understand the OP’s position here. He isn’t in this as a hobby, he is doing production work – and just wanted to add capacity with a second printer. In that situation, he arguably would have been better off with a second identical printer. Now he has two different printers, which will require slightly different slicing parameters – and an associated time investment in learning the best settings and processes for the Taz6 – to get the same results he could have gotten with no effort had he bought a second UM2+. It sounds like he would just rather invest his time in design and production work, rather than in dealing with differences.
To the OP: It might be better to just post the Taz6 for sale, maybe here or on ebay/craigslist. A refurbished Taz6 with warranty (from ITworks3d, for example) goes for about $2,000. If you can get close to that, you’ll have most the price of another UM2+ (or perhaps the full price of a used UM2+).
Well he said “extended” and Google told me that that is $3,000. So it runs 1/6th more than taz 6 so yes, Lexus was stretching it but Like I said, I was trying to keep it simple.
ScottW,
You hit the nail square on the head and I appreciate your feedback very much.
I may very well end up trying to sell my Taz 6 when I can afford to supplement the return enough too purchase another UM.
In retrospect, we certainly would be better off with two UMs. The reason we bought the Taz instead was because we saw it as an opportunity to potentially increase our capabilities. For instance, while the UM prints taller, the Taz prints substantially larger in X/Y. We also purchased it before the UM3 had been released and we were enticed by the factory dual extruder head available for the Taz 6 as opposed to 3rd party add-ons required for the UM2+. There were a number of other reasons we arrived at the decision and we thought at the time we had researched it sufficiently enough to considerate it an educated one. Apparently we were wrong and the blame lies squarely on us. I’m not trying to pass the buck but I am frustrated with the machine and I am comfortable asserting that at least some of it’s shortfalls are inexcusable and should have been remedied in R&D before going to market.
In response to my sparse post history, this is primarily because I’ve been able to find solutions by reading through other’s posts (which is how I know the problems I’ve had aren’t unique to my machine). In my experience on other forums this is usually the fastest path to a solution and something people deride other’s for not doing. In some cases I’ve found solutions on my own. With respect to the issue I was having with lower layer deformation I WAS able to improve it by making some tweaks but wasn’t able to achieve the same result as with the UM and in the interest of expediency (production environment) I elected to execute that print on the UM permanently going forward.
