Have issues and been fiddling with it for 3 weeks

Hello. I am new to the 3d printer world, and have been fiddling with my Taz6 trying to get it to work properly, and I am close.
I am finally close to have X and Y being printed the same on a test cube, currently 20.24mm and 20.17mm. Still would like to get it closer. I have a bad elephant foot problem, and when I adjust the base layer, it seems to screw the rest of the print up. And when I do a print of the test cube, it has layers going out of place. The belt is tight, but does not bind the travel of the print bed. I built the adjustable belt tensioner for it as my X and Y were way more off. Any ideas? Thank you.



Right stop fiddling!
Check your E-Steps on your extruder- you might be over extruding filament- sounds complicated, is in fact very easy to fix- there is a how to do it on this website. (took me ten minutes to do, oh you’ll need a felt tip marker for that one)
Recheck your STL file by going to Netfabb online service (there is a free version of it without having to download anything- search for it on these forums- my old messages about it have an exact link to it directly)
Sometimes when you move a file from Cura to the printer- some of the information is lost or just not there- Netfabb is able to replace it and correct small mistakes- useful tool.
Check that the profile for the material your using is correct- look correct by the photo’s- how ever you might have to tweak the parameters slightly, the bed/extruder temperature a degree or two lower or higher.
If its a mechanical problem- don’t touch it until you have spoken to the help line/email contact address at Lulzbot, they where very useful for me when i first started.

I think olantigh may have forgotten to add the link he mentioned, but here is the link I think he was referring to: https://ohai.lulzbot.com/project/fine-tune-mini-extruder/calibration/

Following the steps in the link, I was at 100mm, so spot on with that. no corrections to the esteps would be necessary then would it?

Reduce the flow rate / multiplier by 3-5%. That could help with the dimensional accuracy.

Lowering extrusion temps and increasing fan by a few percentage will help “lock-in” the form.

Thank you. What about removing the elephant’s foot on this. I have tried to print a thinner first layer and still has not resolved it. Have tried 6 different thicknesses.

Is it all around the part or just one side?

Elephant’s foot is usually because the auto-level isn’t working properly. A thin film of filament on the discs or nozzle can affect the continuity… causing the nozzle press farther than necessary on the discs, which skews the print plane.

Clean the discs and the nozzle of leftover filament. Flip or replace the wiper sponge. Heat the nozzle up to extrusion temp and wipe with a paper towel. Watch the auto-level process, the nozzle should just touch the discs and not depress.

If all is clean and the auto-level seems to be working properly, then adjust the Z-offset… easiest would be testing through with the z-offset gcode setting in slicing software, then saving it to the eeprom.

Hope that helps.

+1 for the Z offset adjustment, it should fix your elephants foot problem right up. You can find our step by step guide here: https://ohai.lulzbot.com/project/z-axis-offset-adjustment-LulzBot-Mini/maintenance-repairs/

any luck yet