Micron All Metal Extruder Upgrade

[sthone]

MicronExtruder036.jpg (85.59 KiB) Viewed 10952 times

Besides making a new fan brackets I have to fix a few other issues. With the hot end just touching the edge of the glass in what should be the home position the stop on the belt clamp is to far away from the end stop switch to activate it so this will have to be redesigned and reprinted.

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The extruder is a little bigger now with the door for the bearing and thumb screw so I will have to make a smaller Z knob also.

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This is what I came up with for a fan bracket. I didn't feel like taking the new extruder mount back off to drill holes in the front for a fan bracket so I just designed around one of the holes that were all ready on the side of the extruder. This will probably change anyway because I want to try one of those ducted fan shrouds because the fan seems a little far away from the hot end now.

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Here is the printed mount, I had to hold the fan by hand while I printed this one, glad it only took about 10 minutes to print.

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Things started to go down hill when I tried to print a new belt clamp with an extended striker. I decided to give ABS one more try because I wanted it to be strong but once again after a few layers it clogged and I had to stop printing. I tried switching spools of ABS but couldn't get that to work either. As you can see from the above picture I started to have problems with the extruder too. I even tried switching to a PETG sample I had but I couldn't get that to feed either.

[sthone]

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The bottom of the extruder as a recess cut into it (which I think is meant for the V3B) and I think this is allowing the filament to bend and kink up.
(To bad the pocket doesn't have a straight cut to it though so the V3B could slide in and out like the stock mount. I'll have to see if it actually fits when my other printer shows up this week.)

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I machined up a quick spacer to fill in the gap. After installing this though I still couldn't get the PETG to feed as I think the nozzle is just too clogged.

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It took all of a minute to change nozzles (love the V4 setup) after that I was able to print the belt clamp without any problems. (Yay! for my first PETG print too) I might not need that spacer after all but then again for flexiable stuff (like Ninja flex) it might be required, I'll have to test that out next.

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Here is the new Belt Clamp installed and it activates the end stop perfect now.

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While I was on the lathe making the gap spacer I decide to make a new low profile Z Knob too to clear the thumb screw on the extruder door. I always forget which way is which so I marked it with Up and Down to make life easier.

So far everything is working out well. I still have the other fan to mount but not sure if it's really needed up front, I though of using to to cool the extruder motor but that might not be necessary either... Thoughts on that?
I even kicked around the idea of replacing it with some 12 volt LEDS just to keep everything balanced with the other fan but I'm kind of scare to go that route.

I'm still not sure if it was worth the price just yet but at least I won't be cracking any more motor mounts.

-Steve

[sthone]

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Tried my hand at making a fan duct today. I was a little worried with the thin single point screw attachment so of the last mount so I made the mount separate this time and used a couple of neodymium magnets to hold the fan duct to this mount. This way if I happen to hit the fan it should flex and won't just break the mount. I thought I might be able to remove it to use a quick mounting dial gauge too but I'm not sure if the little magnets would be strong enough for that purpose.

MicronExtruder047.jpg (73.92 KiB) Viewed 10919 times

Here it is mounted to the new extruder. I'm not sure how well it will work yet but it looks pretty good so far.

-Steve

[jsc]

Steve, when I was playing around with my fan shroud model, I went through several iterations and found it most effective to have the air being forced down to the extrusion point as much as possible. Your vertical offset looks lower than what I attempted, so it may be fine, but you still may want to consider closing off the top of the circular cutout at least.

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:724933

[thecadman99]

Looks like some really nice work, thanks for sharing!

[Jules]

I'll say. Fascinating to watch the development on this.

[sthone]

Thanks guys, hopefully this thread will make things easier if anyone else tries to go down the same route. (plus if I do my second printer it will help me remember what I actually did. )

jcs - thanks for that tip.... it seems to be working so far. The duct is as low as I could go and still clear the bed clips, that picture is a little deceiving though it is angled a bit so it is pointed right at the nozzle but what you said makes perfect sense so I'll give it a quick redesign as adding a top can only make it better.

-Steve

[sthone]

MicronExtruder048.jpg (84.32 KiB) Viewed 10867 times

I took jsc's advice and closed off the top of the shroud tip and I also angled the entire thing so it points directly at the hot end more, I think this version is going to work even better now. The magnets mount is working good though, now I just have to convert it so it fits the stock V4 setup too. I still haven't figured out what to do with the smaller extruder fan yet.

-Steve

[jferguson]

Steve,
I'm very impressed with your handiwork and certainly with the metal extruder. Obviously it's very nice and certainly more substantial, but beyond these somewhat aesthetic considerations, are there any real advantages to this change?

I should add that it is my nature to do things like this, but I do worry about overkill once in a while.

Thanks much for showing all of this,

John

[sthone]

Thanks John, you sound just like me, I do a lot of things just to see if I can.

I was interested mainly in this after having a few issues of cracking the printed type mounts. The spring loaded bearing and flip up door are a nice feature and I've had zero feed issues with PLA (that's what I run the most) I don't even make that little 45° cut on the filament anymore I just shove it in there and the stuff feeds straight through. With the flip up door I can even clean off the drive gear a bit at a time through the trap door which is nice.

Those good points being said.... I was also hopping to eliminate the problems of flexible filament wrapping around the extruder gear during printing... I tried it this weekend and well I couldn't even get the flex stuff to feed through this extruder at all. The gap between the gear/bearing and the bottom feed hole of the extruder is just to larger (see picture below) and it just bunches up in the extruder. (much like in the picture but worse and at the bottom of the gear) I didn't play with the tension of the bearing yet so I don't know if that would help.


(that isn't the flex stuff shown.)

Overall I can't say if it's really an advantage over the stock setup (especially if you don't have any problems) It was a fun little project though and I love trying to figure things out like this so I don't regret buying it and I love the good features but if you ever plan on trying flex I'd have to say - stay away from this one.

-Steve