I’ve been having a lot of trouble with printing off larger prints (anything taller than 6 cm). Something always happens to go wrong towards the middle-end of the print. For example, last night, halfway into a 10cm cylindrical print, my TAZ malfunctioned and I woke up to half of my print and a giant birdsnest of plastic. Other times it just stops midway through a print, and yet other times it shifts in the x-axis and continues the print in mid-air. Could anybody provide some insight please? Is this a software or a hardware problem?
those sound like possible issues caused by the host machine.
what kind of machine is running the printer?
I had all kinds of problems for a while, and it turns out windows update was installing while it was trying to print. Anything running in the background could be a problem.
Im having the same problem with large prints, ~2hr stuff that I have no patience to watch over.
I find the printer printing in mid air without any plastic extruding so i pause it and try to manually extrude, the motor and gears are working but nothing or very little comes out. The temperature is good(185), I have tried 5C higher and 5C lower but same problem.
Im fairly new to this but I tried most of the default configurations from Lulzbot in slicer, still the PLA suddenly jams. To “fix it” I have to take out the filament and cut of 1-2cm and it works perfectly again.
I have printed some really nice smaller things including useable threads and the layers look great(Until they dont) so I think the settings do work. I suspect that it has something to do with how it retracts the filament when it jumps to a new area in larger prints that causes it to suddenly jam, but im not sure…
I was printing this disc last weekend, kind of gave up after 4 fails and lots of trying.
Any ideas? Thanks
what is the measured diameter of your filament. I have had jamming problems with filament that is just over 3.05mm.
It was very tight going into the cold budaschnozzle by hand. I ended up taking it apart and reaming the teflon sleeve to 3.175 and no problems since.
I also used to overtighten the extruder roler clamp screws, which can deform the filament and create jams. I think I might have turned down the extruder retract speed at one time too.
I bought the filament from Lulzbot so they should be okay. But you may be on to something with the clamp screws, I had some trouble earlier with the extrusion and tightened them to the max. When the filament moves slowly and is being retracted i can imagine it has time to heat up, becoming soft and may deform from too much pressure as you said. I will loosen it a little and give it a try later in the week. Thanks, good tip!
Orias, yeap for sure, i attach them as a zip. Those three are the configurations i have tried the most and they seem to work well with smaller prints. This gcode is the failed print on the printer in the picture. Thanks! TAZ files.zip (1.51 MB)
I’m following with great interest; same problems: pla, larger prints, tried all lulzbot configs, jammed extruder, tried tightening clamp screws, hot end will extrude manually after jamming
Try upping the extrusion multiplier, or just simply the flowrate as a print is running.
I have been playing with printing HIPS, and it looks very similar to these prints. But it just was not flowing enough material on each layer for the next layer to adhere. If you notice in the pictures there are gaps between the lines of the prints, like the software is expecting wider lines, that are not there.
I am at an extrusion multiplier of 1.1 on the HIPS…so far so good.
We do recommend that users printing with PLA mount a fan on the carriage. More information can be found here: https://www.lulzbot.com/support/3d-printing-pla-plastic-filament. This mount will work for the stock batch 1 TAZ 3D printers. Printing with a fan has improved my PLA prints.
I just directed a 5V usb fan at the print and it finished nicely. The side that was close to the fan printed perfectly so i will get a second fan on the other side as well.
If it seems like the printer isn’t extruding enough, a good first step is to check the teeth of the hobbed bolt for embedded plastic. Even if only a few teeth are clogged, it’ll extrude quite a bit less than it should and create the kinds of parts that you’re seeing. Over-tightening the extruder screws will also cause issues - the teeth will sink farther into the plastic which decreases the effective diameter of the bolt so too little plastic will be extruded.
A good rule of thumb is to tighten both screws until the springs are compressed to 15mm (washer to washer).
