TAZ 6 with e3d v6 - plenty of issues

Hey people

I’ve owned Taz 6 for slightly over a year and I’ve used it daily, printing stuff for my prop-shop etc.

Last 3 months I’ve had massive issues with print quality, clogging of the nozzle and so on. It got to a point, where I’d come to work day after day to see failed prints, where the filament has been getting stuck in the nozzle. I tried all sorts of tricks, googling forums to clean and empty the nozzle but the issues just kept getting worse and worse.

I’ve also had enclosure for it for good while, the filament is covered from dust and there’s a few different soft foams etc. to wipe the filament on it’s way down to the extruder.

I finally got so fed up with the nozzle that I decided I’d get a new one and see if it helped. After googling a million work hours, it seemed to me like e3d v6 nozzle would be a fit for the printer and would work with the printer as is. So I ordered one.

The nozzle doesn’t screw all the way in, which I was worried about, but the various forum posts seemed to indicate that this is ok and normal - you’d only need to tighten it a little once it is warm. So we did this.

The first test print looked amazing - the quality was pretty damn nice and consistent with default settings, compared to what we used to get before. So I threw in another product test for printing, observed it for abut 4 hours, then went home feeling happy.

Next day I got back and after 17 hours of printing, the print had failed - there was a lot of tiny specks of filament all over the print, some bigger blobs and the filament had been ground again.

I’ve now spent past 3 working days searching the forums, testing different things. I’ve bought Simplify 3D (hey, it could help they said), tested different flow rates and settings on both Cura TAZ edition and Simplify 3D etc. But I can’t get a print to print, I can’t get a clean print.

The filament I’ve been using is Colorfabb HT, which used to print easily at 260 degrees, I could push it through smoothly. With the new nozzle though, it takes an effort. If I heat the nozzle to 275-280, it gets easier. Heating issue maybe? The filament doesn’t come out straight either, it quickly curls to one side before falling - often hitting the nozzle side and then making a mess. Clogged nozzle again…?

At this point this is really starting to eat at my profits. I can’t finish stuff on it for customers I’ve supposed to finish. Trying to search the internet for answers wastes hour after hour of my time, since apparently nobody is having these issues - or I just can’t find the right answers.

What I am really asking here are these few things:

  1. Is the e3D v6 nozzle supposed to fit the standard heating element and work with it?
  2. Could the problem be that the nozzle doesn’t heat properly?
  3. How can I really clean the nozzle so that there would be absolutely nothing in there anymore? Pull out -method doesn’t work.
  4. Is there a custom solution I could throw money at and just forget all these issues? Like a completely new tool head or something?

Ask me questions if you need more details, I’d be happy to share. Right now I’m just too exhausted and tired of this issue to think through properly.

Thank you everyone for help.

You might want to make sure your cura settings match your new nozzle. I had issues when I replaced my (then stock) .4 nozzle with a (now stock) .5 nozzle.

Next, if you got the hardened steel nozzle it will not heat nearly as well as the brass one, but will be less sticky. The plated brass nozzles from Micro-Swiss seem to rate well. I bought one but require more parts for that print head (I damaged it getting the old nozzle out).

If you modify the Dual V3 print head it can print pretty well.

Hey, thanks for your answer!

I’ve been playing around with Cura now a lot for the past few days.

I’ve gotten to a point where I can print “ok” quality stuff, but there are still random errors in the prints.

The biggest issue I seem to have is that the filament doesn’t seem to feed through the nozzle as fast as previously. Usually after 5-6 layers the filament just stops feeding and gets ground and jams. I managed to get rid of this by lowering the feedrate and increasing the temperature.

This however causes oozing (massive balls of filament gather in various places). Also at some points, such as the edges of square holes and the top layer don’t receive enough material, but still suffer from oozing and balls of material. I am quite confused right now as which settings to change to combat this. Am I to take the print speed down…?

Here’s my workhorse E3Dv6 Taz carriage and extruder body if you want to swap out the parts https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1538341 . I’d recommend coupling that with the newer beefy idler as well.

That or just increase your idler tension a bunch.

Can you confirm you purchased a 3mm E3D nozzle? They sell a different version of the nozzle for different sizes of filament.

Have you tried clearing the nozzle orifice with a small drill bit or acupuncture needle or even swapping in a fresh nozzle?