For our cart, we decided we wanted to use the Taz 2.1 3D printer. It is quite an older version of commercial 3D printers, so you could imagine it needs some fixing up.

One thing we notice after using it a few times was that the extruded plastic lines were not coming out smooth, but jagged. Upon looking at it closely while it was printing, it seemed the back gears were “skipping a step.” It would also make a distinct sound, a combination of clicking and grinding plastic. I made an educated guess and determined that the stepper motor was broken, so we replaced it, leveled the bed again, and tried another print.

Yesterday was the first time we tried extruding some plastic we recycled ourselves! It actually went better than expected. The printer head was able to extrude this plastic as well with little to no trouble. I was also able to run it for a little on the bed and it made clean lines once again. The only problem we have right now is that the heat bed is not getting past 68 degrees (which is fine for PLA but not hot enough for ABS). This will cause problems with our prints sticking to the heat bed. By replacing the heat bed, we will have to convert the whole machine to operate on 24V instead of 12V since Lulzbot only sells heatbeds that operate at 24V. This would require a change in power supply as well. Another option would be to change the heat sensors on the heat bed, or in this case I guess they are called thermistors, and see if those are just broken. I felt that the bed was getting past 68 but the machine just couldn’t register anything past that number, but I guess we will see with more tests!