Yeah, Bondtech is awesome. I tested the new BMG (Bondtech Mini Geared) which is a phenomenal plastic pusher (I have it running my machine with a volcano and I have bricked an E3D by accidentally extruding cold - but it never stopped pushing!)
I will add that it’s a phenomenal device at an all time low price of $80, and if you print a lot this works out cheaper than the plastic lost from jams/ feed failures/ poor quality from the cheap $3 Chinese extruders.
Eric says it pretty well:
Originally shared by Eric Lien
Great to see Tom talking with @Martin_Bondeus from Bondtech at the 3D Printing meetup in Sweden last weekend. I have a Bondtech on every one of my five(5) 3D printers and couldn’t image using anything else at this point. It is difficult to explain the satisfaction of the improved surface finish when the filament extrusion is just that precise, and the confidence to hit print and walk away even if your settings are less than perfect because the print will complete 100% of the time. I will admit I am probably biased since Martin is a great friend. But I like to think I am impartial enough that if they weren’t the best I wouldn’t state that it is like I do.
Luckily I had the pleasure of load cell testing his extruders compression force curves and failure modes at full stall against every other major competitor with a ton of different filaments recently. So I now have the data that I am not JUST biased
@raykholo recently had a great quote after having the pleasure of beta testing the BMG. “In jam conditions a normal extruder will strip the filament. A Bondtech will strip the printer.”
Thanks Ray. @Martin_Bondeus was smart to choose you as a Beta Tester for the BMG. At #MRRF (since you were at the table right behind me) I heard you extolling the benefits of the BMG based on your testing. I wish Martin would have been able to hear your excitement about the product. Hopefully next year the Sweden show won’t choose to overlap with #MRRF so Martin doesn’t have to choose between the motherland and the best darn 3DP meetup of the year
I’ve never seen a bondtech in person, but I’m curious since we sell a dual gear “Gear Head v2” extruder. Maybe it’s because I use our hotends and have never used a volcano, but I’ve never needed more power to extrude. I know what you are thinking: your tiny .4mm nozzle doesn’t compare. But I run the Big-E printer w a tip drilled out to 1.45mm with a regular nema17 and run it w 1.75 filament at around 50-60mm/sec. Is this anywhere near a bondtech+volcano? I should buy one to compare.
We are making a 3mm 12v and 24V Ubis 13HF (“high flow”) to go faster with ninjaflex for the Prosthetic Printer I designed. According to Carl, it will kick butt and in bench tests exceeds 100mm/sec extrusion. It also does high temp and includes a ct1000 (it’s actually custom so it’s a drop in replacement.). I guess the Big E will be able to print faster now
Anyone out there with both setups I mentioned? I’ll send some of these out for reviews if people can compare our stuff to a bondtech and volcano.
Did I mention we are about to get some “diamond-like” costed tips that should last “forever” even when using carbon fiber?
@Brook_Drumm happy to test, consider me a full time guinea pig.
You may also want to talk to @Joe_Spanier as he had the ceiling height printer with a volcano drilled to 2mm. I think that was running a titan or aero or something E3D.
And you did see a Bondtech in person, when you stopped by my table. And Eric was right next door with about 5 more.
@Brook_Drumm I will admit I didn’t do a printerbot dual gear on the load cell test bench. I will buy one to test (I try not to ask for freebies, This is how people make their living). Once the new hotend is out I will have to give it a whirl. I like playing with everything out there. And I will say I was impressed with the motion on your new bot out at #MRRF. I have always been of fan of what printerbot does. You make printing affordable, and are pushing hard to lower the barrier to entry in cost and technical background. Tell everyone at Printerbot to keep up the good work.
I would be interested in testing. We can throw it on the big-e that was sitting next to the Mazzzzzzive at mrrf. It’s currently running the dual gear you included last year with a 1.2 volcano.
The Mazzzzzzive is currently running an E3d titan with a 2mm drilled volcano. It really needs a longer melt zone than the current volcano though.
There are two basic issues for high-flow printing, melt rate and nozzle back-pressure.
Melt rate: the longer the hot zone, the faster you can print, because you get more residence time for the filament to come up to melt temp before hitting the nozzle. PTFE liners are a huge disadvantage because they insulate the filament from the hot block. Thermal conductivity and heat capacity of the filament also makes a huge difference – for example ABS can be printed WAY faster than PLA with the same hot end. At extremely high flow rates, heater power and hot block size (for PID stability) becomes relevant, too. (Note: you need to talk in terms of mm^3/sec flow rate =[speed * layer height * extrusion width] when discussing print speed, not nozzle velocity.)
Nozzle back-pressure: Big nozzle = easier extrusion. Small nozzle is much harder. The taper going into the tip makes a surprisingly big difference (longer taper is better – NO 120 degree drill tips!) and the length of the actual nozzle orifice makes a big difference.
@Brook_Drumm I haven’t tried it, so take this with a grain of salt, but I’m not the only one who thinks this… the hob grip of your dual-gear extruder doesn’t LOOK like it grips very well. Pictures make it look like just a smooth groove cut in a spur gear – how does it bite? Looks like the old QU-BD Raptor drive gear, which wasn’t very good. Some better photos or grip demonstrations might help. In comparison, the Bondtech has opposing traditional sharp-tooth hob profiles.
Great points! You know your stuff. With the arrival of more big printers, we are responding. Mostly, my early start w the Big-E has given me an education.
That said, the new hotend will be all metal- no ptfe. With the new temp sensor it will be more accurate than existing and stay accurate to about 400C. The melt zone is much longer, say around 2x. It will have a 60 watt heater- hand wound around a custom bobbin like all the Ubis 13s - and protected w a ceramic insulator and fiberglass and silicone sock. Aluminum cold zone like the rest, but anodized. Everything can be disassembled.
What I will be looking for is settling on a standard nozzle size. We need to find the sweet spot for pressure andvretraction that yields the best trade off in speed / performance and print quality. This will likely be a little different across different layer heights.
Printing with these large tips is surprising. I’ve gone all the way down to .1mm layer height and there is very little sacrificed in terms of quality assuming details aren’t smaller than the tip or extrusion width size. The wall surfaces can be very nice and the overhang ability far far exceeds what a .3 or .4 nozzle can dream of doing.
Cooling is hard, but big parts do fine w/ o much fuss. Fast moves can string if you don’t take the time to dial in retraction w ridiculous settings. Overall speed is just sooo worth it. Parts are so unbelievably strong even almost hollow. Couple it with s hardened nozzle and big chop carbon fiber and you should get parts that exceed all other setups easily.
As far as the gear head teeth- I totally get what you are saying but it just works. We fiddled a lot w it to find the sweet spot. With so much pressure, you don’t want to bite into the filament too much or it will deform. I just don’t know any better and do what’s easiest first (and cheaper) so I’ve not seriously considered sharp teeth. Obviously we can do that so it’s just a pragmatic decision. I’m open to testing it though
@Brook_Drumm People have crazy misconceptions about layer heights with big nozzles… there’s this whole myth about aspect ratios needing to be in a certain range. Wide doesn’t need thick! Thin layers are great! They look nicer and overhang better. Perhaps more importantly, they cool a helluvalot faster, which is one of the biggest challenges with large-format printers. Printing at 20mm/s with 0.6mm layer height is silly if your printer can do 40mm/s with 0.3mm layer height! It’s the same flow rate to the hot end, but you get better print resolution.
My personal opinion… you should always run your printer at the fastest speed it can run with the quality you want (whether that’s 40mm/s on a Mendel or 120mm/s on a CoreXY or whatever) and then adjust layer height to keep your melt flow rate to an appropriate level for your extruder and hot end. You get pretty optimal results that way. I blame slicers for making people think in terms of nozzle speed instead of flow rate.
@Brook_Drumm I would be glad to test it out on our Big-e at RCL. I know you mentioned that hotend at MRRF when we talked. We are currently using a volcano with the printrbot geared extruder. I switched it to the e3d from the Ubis 13 for more throughput.
I have seen both the bondtech and printrbot geared extruder in action. In my opinion if you put a geared stepper motor onto the printrbot extruder, it would have the exact same strength and performance. If I were to create a geared extruder, I am not sure I would spend the extra machining cost creating the geared tooth profile from scratch. I would just use some pinon stock like the printrbot. The bondtech extruders are gorgeous though!
