Micron All Metal Extruder Upgrade

[sthone]

EDIT - For anyone who finds and reads this thread in the future..... I can honestly say do not waste your money on one of these Micron extruders they are just not worth the money/effort and DO NOT WORK any better then the stock Makergear extruder setups.

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My new upgrade showed up today, this is Micron's All Metal Extruder Upgrade that I found on Ebay. It's not listed as a direct bolt on upgrade for the M2 but there's pictures of it on an M2 so how hard could it be. It ran me $125 dollars to my door and took 22 days to get here from Israel. It might be a bit pricey seeing as it's not an absolutely necessary upgrade but I like modifying things so we'll see if it's worth it.

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It's milled from billet aluminum and is anodized black. My initial impressions are it is very well designed and the machining is top notch, there not a milling mark on this thing.

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The bearing is spring loaded and flips up to help clear any feeding problems that may arise.

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The ebay auction is only for the extruder itself so while waiting the 22 day for it to arrive I designed a new mount based off the new V4 hot end with some help of some dimensions that were listed on the auction page.

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Before milling out a new mount I decided to print a prototype first to make sure my design is correct. Gotta love 3D printers, I only printed the prototype at half the thickness the mount will be.

[sthone]

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It won't have the separation between the mount and the actual hot end that the stock V4 setup has but you can still see the filament between the two, then again everything is metal now so it shouldn't matter.

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Here is a mock up of the new mount compared to the stock V4 one. It will hang out a little farther hopefully there won't be any issues with the added 5oz of weight it adds to the slide.

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While this thing is listed as not being directly for the M2 the bolt pattern is a perfect match width wise so it will bolt through the new mount right to the slide just like the stock one.

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The motor mounts at an angle to the new extruder but bolts up fine, I may have to move the gear out a bit though.

[sthone]

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I'll have to design/print a quick L bracket to mount the fans to the extruder but that should be pretty easy.

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Micron all ready posted a Link to a guy who has all ready done one of these on his M2 and he was nice enough to give me a copy of his wire stay. (No point in reinventing the wheel here.) I'll just have to drill and tap the extruder to mount this piece.

That's it for now... I actually have to make the mount now but I only have 1/2" aluminum plate stock and I don't feel like milling it down so I'm waiting on Mc Master to drop off some 1/4" stuff tomorrow.

-Steve

[sthone]

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Finished up my mount today, if any one is interested the process I went through to make it a quick run down can be seen HERE.

Before I take my printer out of commission though to mount this thing up and give it a try I need a little help with an issue I noticed. The way the motor mounts to the new extruder it puts the bearing on the other side so I need to figure out how to tell S3D to reverse the extrude and retract commands. Anyone know how to change that?

-Steve

[PcS]

Would it not be easier to reverse the wires to the motor ?

[sthone]

I'm not sure stepper motors work like that but I hoping a can just change a setting instead of cutting and soldering wires.

-Steve

[insta]

You can flip the E header around in your electronics. Just pop the sucker off and spin it 180, then reinstall. Make sure the power supply is off AND the USB is unplugged. No other changes are necessary.

[sthone]

Well I guess it is that easy then Thanks guys hopefully I can get it working tonight, and if I screw something up I just got notification my second printer just shipped.

-Steve

[sthone]

(These posts might be helpful if you try the same thing but are more for myself to remember if I do my second machine.)

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I had to make a few modifications to the actual extruder. Using a transfer punch I marked the two holes for the new cable box. (found Here)

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Then I drilled the holes to a depth of .365 using a #39 drill bit and taped them for a M3 x 12 screw.

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I also had to drill out two (one front, one back) of the mounting holes in the extruder as two of them were tapped to fit a m4 screw.

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The new mount bolts to the belt clamp with the same screws but, I switched to M3 x 12's (with a few washers) to mount it to the X carriage. (M3 x 10's would be a perfect fit I think.)

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The extruder mounts with two M3 x 18 screw into the rear holes right to the X carriage, and two M4 x 12's (that came with the extruder) to the holes a tapped in the new mount. (M4 x 14's would be a better fit here.)

[sthone]

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I had to move the gear out to be flush with the end of the shaft so it aligned better with the bearing in the extruder.

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Here the motor has been mounted and the cable box installed. (sorry for the blurry pic.)

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I cut the cable box a little shorter to leave slack in the fan wires until I figure out where they will mount. I may reprint it later on.

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After switching the E0 plug around.... (thanks for the tip guys.)

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... I have extrusion.