This started as another quick little help for a customer. He asked if we could make a sideways Nimble for him. 2 hours later we showed him, yes we can.
But then it became a little more time consuming as we realised that it is a nice little product. So now we are in full prototyping stage and think we can deliver the first customer prototype next week. He is building a CoreXY around this idea.
For sure, the Sidewinder (working title) will be not as universally usable as the original Nimble, but it is nice to have a solution for those who might find it useful. The one thing I do not like about the Sidewinder (working title) is that it is heavy. It is a little over 30 grams and that is not good enough. Sure, weight is a little bit less a concern in these types of printers, but still.
The fun thing about this one is that when the customer asked, I said, “No of course not” and Brian said, “Yes of course we can.” Light bulb moment, all that stuff. delightful!
Sorry, the Zesty Nimble is an extruder. A remote direct drive extruder. So the stepper is mounted on the frame somewhere and the Nimble sits on the print head or effector, weighing less that 27 grams for the original Nimble.
@Lykle_Schepers gotcha. That’s interesting. What was his reasoning for wanting it to come out the side? This setup seems like going up would be the best as it seems easy to keep all the wires out of the way.
I agree, but as I said, it was a question of a customer. He is building a CoreXY printer and wanted to combine the drive cable with the rest of the wires going to the print head in a chain, as I gather.
The thing is, it was a quick question, a quick answer and if it is useful for others remains to be seen. As mentioned before, I can see some use in certain situations. Even though, the filament still does straight up.
U-loops get awkward in large XY gantry printers. They need to be about, oh, maybe pi*sqrt(2)/2~=2.2 times longer than the length of the side for a square gantry and stick up quite a bit too. You can mount a filament spool overhead but wiring has to get back to the main frame somehow.
What’s the minimum bend radius on the Zesty drive cable?
