Tag Archives: Lulzbot Mini

Extruder gear tension: the overlooked adjustment

I used to think that 3D Printer extruder tension – how much pressure the extruder hobbed gear exerts on the filament to move it forward – was a pretty forgiving thing. At one extreme, there’s “so loose the filament doesn’t feed” and on the other, there’s “so tight the extruder motor binds”. I thought everything in between was ok.

My assumption was confirmed each time I read advice on how to tune a misbehaving printer: people rarely mentioned extruder tension.

My recent fight to fix a bad print taught me that incorrect extruder tension can make a huge difference in your print quality after all.

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Testing Your 3D Printer’s First Layer Height Calibration

One of the last steps of assembling a Prusa i3 MK3 3d printer is to manually adjust the Z height. As I adjusted my printer’s Z height, I began to wonder what the Z height calibration looked like on my older printer, a Lulzbot Mini. At the same time, I became curious about what size that Lulzbot Mini can print. A simple test print answered both questions.

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