Pleasant Hardware

I finally finished a first prototype of an extruder, using a NEMA 17 stepper motor.

I cannibalized the stepper motor from an old scanner lately (see “Schlachtfest“). As replacement for a pinch wheel, I build a “pinch spindle” out of a M6 threaded rod by cutting parallel paths into the threads as seen here.

To bring it all together, I designed a housing for the pinch spindle, the gear and the NEMA17 motor:

This was probably the largest single object I built on my MakerBot so far. I still don’t really know, how I managed to build this big piece with almost no warping. I definitely didn’t use any heated build chamber. I guess it was a very strong raft and a bunch of luck…

On the bottom of the motor housing, I added a “standard printruder mount” for the heater unit. I.e. I can mount the MK3/4 heater unit with the normal printed retainer plate from the printruder.

I created a new tool setting in the machines.xml in the Replicator G folder, so the new extruder is recognized as an extruder sporting a stepper motor.

I’m also able to test drive the extruder from within the Replicator G control panel:

What I didn’t get to work yet is to actually use the new extruder for a print job. There seem to be more changes necessary, either in the firmware, the gcode or Replicator G, to make this work. I hope it is possible at all…

Any hints on this are highly appreciated!

I finally finished a first prototype of an extruder, using a NEMA 17 stepper motor. I cannibalized the stepper motor from an old scanner lately (see “Schlachtfest“). As replacement for...