So, here are few pics of extruder and hotend for printer I’m building.
I wanted to design small and rather lightweight extruder. I decided to go with 3.15:1 gearing(which was sourced from highly geared DC-motor) and very short nema 17 stepper motor(http://www.ebay.com/itm/331394458350). I also made watercooled hotend for it since my previous design was also that kind and it worked well. Designing of nozzle and heatbreak is similar to E3D V6 and rest of it is my own work.
This whole package weights just under 300 gramms which are about same as normal sized stepper motor. Altough weight isn’t so important thing in my printer because there is no printed parts in strucutre, so moving mass is higher than usual in any case. But many little weight savings makes a big difference in the end!
I have printed couple test prints and it seems promising. It can easily achieve 30mm/s retractions and print over 150mm/s. I’ll upload video on youtube when it is ready!
This is excellent. Great work
Neat. Is that water cooling on extruder? Also look like the gaps between feed holes and hobbed drive are small enough for flex PLAs.
I see a lot of nice stuff going on. Did you machine your own gears, find or buy them?
Thanks for all!
@Alan_McNeil No. Water cooling is only for hotend. Though it will be easy to implement cooling for stepper if there is need! And yes, I think it can print flexibles! There is PTFE-Liner going to half way of heat break, so I can adjust it closer to pulleys if needed.
@Jeff_DeMaagd Gears are from old oil seperator which was in lathe I’m working with! They needed pretty much modification.
you might reconsider the screw on thermistor for a thermocouple. Those are only rated to 260C
@Mike_Kelly_Mike_Make I used these: http://m.ebay.com/itm/261864058883?_mwBanner=1 and it says that their max temp is 280C. But you are right, it won’t be enough! Can you recommend something that would work better?
I’d suggest a screw in thermocouple to eliminate the issues with ultra high temp printing that thermistors induce. They’re a bit more expensive but worth it imo. Especially on a machine like that which could handle polycarbonates: http://www.p3-d.com/replicator-2-thermocouple.html (just an example there’s probably cheaper options)
@Mike_Kelly_Mike_Make Thanks for the link. That seems to be the way to go! I need to get that kind of thermocouple when I’m going to print high-temp plastics. I bet with that price, there is no problem with weak wires etc.
