My plastic extruder arrived today courtesy of @Brook_Drumm , and I thought I’d document my first impressions/issues here.
In terms of construction, it looks very good. Incredibly light, as you’d imagine, but feels very strong and I have no doubt it’s structurally sound. In my case all of the screws, nuts, and washers were lose in the box (the extruder body itself was bagged, however), but presumably that’s something to do with the rush to get these test units out.
Putting it together, I immediately had a problem with the tension adjustment screw. Rather than the beefy screw with #2 Phillips head as on the aluminum extruder, the plastic extruder comes with a much smaller screw. I had to use my precision screwdriver set, and of course those are hardly meant for serious torque. I feel like the smaller head on this screw is going to lead to stripped heads/tools with repeated adjustment.
Which came up rather quickly for me due to the fact that the threads seemed buggered up on my screw. It almost looks like the screw was cut down for length, damaging the threads in the process. If the screws are being cut for length (which seems strange) then the nuts should be getting threaded on beforehand.
So it seems like the hardware pack could use some fine tuning.
I do agree the screw was a little cheap but first of all you don’t need to turn the screw all the time and second it is a $0.45 upgrade to a socket head from any hardware store.
Nice little review. Mine is coming in Thursday so I’ll have a similar short comment up soon. The screw thing is something that bothers me. I feel like it should be a metric hex screw on all their extruders. Love the alu extruder it is a freaking dream to use but the screw bothers me. I’m a firm believer that if you’re gonna go metric, go all metric. And the same thing with standard. Minor design disliking but it’s not the end of the world by any means. Still wouldn’t switch to a different extruder.
America is a hodgepodge of metric and imperial. I know Brook likes to source locally or American, so that means inches, but the NEMA standard is metric, and so are LMUU linear bearings.
If you go to a local big box hardware store here, metric is amazingly overpriced, and limited selection. Too bad it screws over anyone overseas when looking for replacement parts.
We are 100% metric. Ok, those little plastite screws are only Phillips. I honestly haven’t considered the long Philips as an annoyance, so that was good feedback. I will see if I can find an Allen head for that one.
A few did go out all in one bag, but I took over and the last 70 or so were assembled by me. So they were assembled but the three 22mm screws could fall out. I need to consider that too.
I’m listening to feedback, folks. It works great on all our test bots. I’m most excited about the $19 price it will sell at. I still love the Alu v2, but man! It’s expensive to make (here locally) and is definitely a premium product at a premium price.
I wouldn’t really consider this an upgrade if you’ve already got the aluminum extruder, or even a downgrade for that matter. This is essentially an experiment in maintaining performance while reducing cost and complexity.
The way I see it, right now the biggest goals in desktop 3D printing are reducing costs and increasing reliability. Mass produced injection molded components are an excellent way to achieve those goals, and it makes sense to find ways to apply the concept to our printers.
Agreed. It’s a cheaper option if wanting to upgrade from the v1 Alu extruder. It’s a good option if building your own or moving to replace e siting extruder/hotend w our Ubis 13s hotend. It’s cheaper than the aluminum w same performance. Only downside is the aluminum does draw heat away from the hotend where the plastic doesn’t. But if you heat up then print immediately them immediately turn off, you are good. W/o a fan, we don’t recommend you leave the Ubis 13s hotend there for hours while hot. The ceramic doesn’t need the heat sink nor does a Ubis 13s with fan. Just being clear.
