The block design can have holes in the bottom, side, or a plate can slide in between motor and “gear head” block to have vertical mount on top bottom or sides. The later could be a simple universal plate.
I have been using the printrbot designs since there kickstarter and i have always loved there designs. while other printers hotends are clogging the ubis will print with anything. and the extruders that i have on both my beta simple and kickstarter have never skipped. I cant wait to get that new ubis and extruder on my next printer. It is a right of passage to build your own 3d printer and since i have only used predesigned printers i am going to incorporate it into my design. Cant wait.
A bit of topic but I’m going to ask anyway, with my good old wade extruder if I have a clog it will push the Bowden tube right out of pushfit lock. Any ideas what to do about that?
“Gear head” 
@Shachar_Weis I know what you mean, I have been testing several different push-fit connectors but everyone has failed to withstand the force, the only solution so-far has been securing the bowden with an M4 nut, the important thing when threading the nut onto the bowden is to have a 2 mm drill or similar inside the tube during the threading, otherwise the tube will collapse and will require the inside to be drilled out but it also leads to weaker threads. This design has a pocket for the nut between the front and back housing.
I’m stubborn and not into super fast printing speed, so I have never spent time pursuing bowden tube setups. I admit it. I can’t deal with more variables… I want less. simple at the expense of speed is fine with me. I’ve always said: “3d printing has 2 speeds - slow and ridiculously slow!” I’m happy to play in the later speed column… since its great for (ridiculously) high resolution!
BrookThis looks very nice. It seems similar to the excellent Bulldog extruders. What about the filament path on both sides of the hobbed bolt? In an ideal world, the filament would be guided as close as possible to the bolt so that soft filament can be handled with Bowden extrusion.
@Dan_Kirkpatrick the design does hold the filament as close as possible to the hobbs without hitting them. The teflon tube does stop before the housing does, but only so we could fillet the guide hole so it helps align into the tube. If you don’t have this fillet/flair loading filament can be tricky because you are trying to “thread the needle” so to speak when loading filament.
Replace the set screws with a servo or even a solenoid, put a gear on the opposite side - you are now dual extrusion ready.
@Martin_Bondeus An excellent design, is there any chance of getting step files so I can incorporate it in the design of my printer which only exists in software at the moment?
@Brook_Drumm
It’s monday overhere, where can I order?
We need to tweak for bushings instead of expensive bearings, testing today… We should go up for sale later this week. Not worth selling the bearing version and switching two days later-- too much confusion with the printable files.
@Brook_Drumm are you worried about bushing wear at all since the force is always against the back surface of the bushing opposite the filament? Nice thing is bushings are cheap and replacement would be easy. Martin and I were torn about which way to go and decided to go with bearing since wear distributes as the bearing rotates.
We are testing bushings that cost pennies. The bearings we tested were $6 each (mcmastercarr isn’t exactly budget priced though). You can buy a lot of bushings with those dollars. My decisions are always influenced by cost rib the end user. Time will tell. If money is no object, bearings are awesome. But bushings are used in much higher stress machinery and they can work for decades. Bearings have moving parts too, bushings don’t. We want to go with lower cost. To be fair, that is why we want to release the test units immediately and get that data.
Ah, there’s video of a real one.
NB @ OP: I scroll past renderings without bothering to read much. There’s a lot of “I just made the best ever ${thing}, here’s a rendering.” And half the time it’s never been built or tested.
Hi @Bracken_Dawson , I am sorry if I let you think that this was only a product in the computer, this was not my intention. For sure there are working prototypes so the concept is verified. To make the design easier to see I choosed to do renderings, wich I understand could make you think that this is not a working concept. Hope that you still find this interesting.
@Martin_Bondeus It is interesting, just worth remembering that this community is one where a product photo is going to go a lot further than a rendering.