Maintenance items on the Mini and Taz

To keep your LulzBot Mini and Taz performing at their best, it’s important to check for wear and loose parts periodically.
A few items you can check quickly and easily:

Loose bed mount screws
If you can spin any of the washers that hold down the corners of the bed on the TAZ 6 and Mini, they are too loose. Snug them up with a 2mm hex wrench
No “hulk hands” here though, be careful not to strip out the hole.

Play in the bed plate
Try to wiggle the bed in all directions checking for excessive play that may be caused by loose screws or worn bearings.

If you find more play than you’d expect, it may just be loose screws that secure the bed plate to the double bearing holders. Using a 2mm hex wrench, remove the screws that secure the heat bed washers. Being careful not to lose the screws washers, or spacers below the washers, remove the screws and washers, lift up the heat bed and set it off to the side, and check that the screws underneath the heat bed that secure the bed plate are all snug.

Check play again. If you’ve taken out the play, great! If not, it’s probably time to replace the bearings under the bed plate in the double bearing holders

Play in the X carriage
Wiggle the tool head in all directions to check for excessive play that may be caused by loose screws or worn bearings.

Culprits for play include looseness in the screw/s that secure the toolhead to the X carriage

Loose screws that secure the extruder and hotend to the toolhead mount, cracks in the extruder body and toolhead mount, and worn bearings in the X carriage and x carriage upper bearing holder.

Squeaky smooth rods
Wipe down the smooth rods with a lint free cloth to remove dust and residue. This will often remedy squeaks when the carriages are moving.

If you need to replace worn bearings, the old bearings need to be pressed out, and new bearings pressed in, which can be a bit of a challenge without the right tools.
We have factory made parts for the 1.03 “Foxglove” Mini that include the bearings and heat inserts already installed, so you can conveniently replace the entire bearings housing assembly instead!
All our Mini parts are conveniently organized with pictures here: https://itworks3d.com/product-category/parts/mini-parts/
Here are the parts that contain the bearings that you may want to replace:

x carriage 

One thought on “Maintenance items on the Mini and Taz

No “hulk hands” here thought <– should be "though"

November 11, 2017 at 12:44 pm

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