Lulzbot TAZ Anti-Banding

Last crawled date: 4 years, 2 months ago

This is a take on the classic fork anti-Z-banding solution. Specifically, this device is for Lulzbot TAZ 3D printers, which suffer from imperfectly-straight lead screws. The default printer assembly is such that, as the extruder ascends or descends, it is pulled around by cyclical forces from the minutely-bowed lead screws. The result is a pattern of misaligned layers that mar a part's appearance at best. This device mostly eliminates this pattern, often called "Z-banding," by separating the extruder from the Z nuts with a layer of 6 mm ball bearings. The separation effectively isolates the extruder from the Z nuts' inevitable movement on the X and Y axes.
The second image in the gallery is an example of before-and-after print quality. From this image, you can see that the device did not completely eliminate Z-banding, but did improve print quality.
A PDF containing assembly instructions is available to download under Thing Files. The SolidWorks assembly used in those instructions is by Jonathan Brazeau.