Lulzbot Taz 5

I got one. I decided to not wait for the Taz 6 for two reasons. It's about 6 months out and a friend has a Taz 5 so we can make tweaks together and support one another. And I have some stuff I wanted to print. Plus Lulzbot, and the community, supports their old printers so well I don't think it'll be out of date any time soon. Some recommendations for first time owners of a 3D printer and specifically a Taz 5. 1. Throw away the knife tool and buy a paint spatula like this: I bought a Liquitex free style. It was about $12 at the local art supply store. The key things you are looking for is the angle holding the spatula part so you can get the spatula flat on the bed without your hand interfering. You also want it to be fairly sharp but strong. This one has variable thicknesses for each protrusion on the spatula. 2. I changed the factory settings on the printer. The factory settings are: Vmax-x: 800 Vmax-y: 800 Vmax-z: 8 Amax-x: 9000 Amax-y: 9000 Amax-e: 10000 Aretract: 3000 I changed these to the following: Configuration->Advanced Vmax-x: 192 Vmax-y: 208 Vmax-z: 3 Amax-x: 2000 Amax-y: 2000 Amax-e: 400 Aretract: 2000 Make sure to store the settings. -> Store Settings 3. The Cura settings change depending on the filament. I've been having great experience with Verbatim 3mm filament using the following settings: Basic: Layer height: .15 Shell thickness: 1 Enable retraction: true Bottom/Top thickness: 1 Fill Density %: 20 Perimeters before Infill: true Print speed: 60 Printing temperature: 0 Bed temperature: 0 Diamter: 2.85 Flow: 100 Advanced: Nozzle size: .5 Speed: 10 Distance: 4 Initial layer thickness: .15 Initial layer line width: 100 Cut off object bottom: 0.0 Travel speed: 100 Bottom layer speed: 30 Infill speed: 75 Top/bottom speed: 40 Outer shell speed: 40 Inner shell speed: 60 Minimal layer time: 5 Enable cooling fan: true The reason I set the temperatures to zero is I turn them on on the printer itself first. This allows gcode to print PLA or ABS. However, the other settings need to match as well. This doesn't work when switching between other brands of filaments that need different settings. For instance IC3D filament is 2.9mm rather than the standard 3mm filament of 2.85 (yeah, that doesn't make sense). However, IC3D filament has been impossible to print with. I had an impossible time on the Type A Machine Series 1 as well. Same problems actually. IC3D filament requires 115 degrees and a slightly hotter bed of 70 degrees, while Verbatim is 105/60. But the IC3D is so chalky if there is any retraction the filament stepper eats through the filament resulting in a failed print. Verbatim is a little more difficult to get though since Amazon won't ship it to me. It's an Amazon bug that we've been going back and forth on for some time. eSun is also good filament. A bit more stringy though.