Lulzbot Mini Awful Print Quality?

So I have had a Lulzbot Mini v1.04 for a little over a month now and love it. I have had really great print quality which I really needed for my Robotics team that this 3D Printer is for. We use it to make our own custom parts for our competition robot. However, we had to move it in a car the other week and we put all the foam back on the rails and put it back in the box just like it came. We moved it over another building in a car but when we started using again the first few prints were fine but then we noticed the auto bed calibration was slightly off in all directions when calibrating. I edited the calibration code so that the nozzle would hit all the washers, which worked. Then, as soon as we fixed that the hotend got jammed and we fixed that. We think it ran into the bed for a bit before we noticed it was jammed. Now when we print things we get awful print quality. The first 2 pictures are parts we made when we still had good print quality and the next two are of a part we just printed. What is the problem and what should I change?

My first thought on missing the washers after moving the printer… A loose belt, loose pulley, or loose z-rod coupler. Check belt tensions, and make sure the pulley and coupler set screws are tight.

You said you “edited the calibration code so that the nozzle would hit all the washers.” Do you mean you recompiled and re-flashed the firmware with new probe positions? The new prints exhibit significant Z-banding compared to the earlier prints. If you reflashed the firmware, and you had previously tuned E-steps to lower value, that value may (as part of reflash) be back to the firmware defaults. Check/adjust E-steps – and your slicer settings – to make sure you aren’t over-extruding.

That increased Z-banding could also be missed steps on Z axis. Are the newer parts slightly “shorter” than the old parts? That could be loose couplers (checked above) or Z-axis binding. Check that the X-carriage is parallel to the bed, as being “tilted” left-to-right can sometimes cause binding or other issues with the washer-probing. Check that the Z-screws are free of any dirt/debris. Run Z up/down manually and make sure it moves smoothly without any binding.

The 1.03 mini (not sure about 1.04) was delivered with a small aluminum heatsink on the controller board’s z-stepper-driver. When that heat-sink fell off my z-stepper-driver (it was held only with double-sided adhesive), I started seeing missed z-steps. I opened the controller box and found the heatsink laying loose. After replacing it (I used thermal epoxy), I had no further problems. Based on what I see of the print, I doubt this is your issue – but if you rule out everything else, it may be worth checking.

My Mini’s prints turned looking somewhat like yours all of the sudden 6 moths ago. I went through several maintenance steps without any improvement in quality. Then once I caught my printer making a weird noise during the print. The intermittent noise was coming close to the left side z motor so I decided to renew it. The quality turned back to normal instantly.

Check to make sure you do not have broken/cracked parts on the X/Y idlers and the motor mounts for the Z axis.

If your print quality changed after moving the printer you should look for something physical, like the other posters are suggesting. Reach out to the support team at LulzBot.com/Support after you look over the components used to secure each axis. You’ll also want to mention what you changed in the start gcode, and return that back to stock after working with our support team.

What do you mean by renew it? Did you replace the motor mounting bracket?