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Here goes. First print using the new
Compact Extruder with the
2engineers 50:1 motor.
It's got a fifty-to-one
ratio gearbox
in the metal box there, and
it's turning a "Raptor" gear
which has a little groove in it
and pushes the filament down very well and seems to
hold it really well. Right now it's doing the first layer of a little endstop,
and I don't have the fan running because
it's just the first layer, so it'll probably start up on the second layer.
But yeah...
It took a long time to get
just the right
settings for this extruder
because I kept getting the path off for the
weird gear that i'm using, which is
called a "Raptor" and it's got like
a 10 1/2 millimeter diameter groove in it,
even though it's like an 11 1/2 or 12mm diameter gear to start with.
But the grooves actually are nice.
They're cut in such a way that it really pushes the filament down,
and if you go pushing it down, it actually
lets it through a little bit, so it's kinda neat.
I guess that's why it's called a "Raptor"
It's got these teeth.
But I just built this piece here...
which on the bottom
you can see holding it in (which is a typical thing for me),
A little thing to hold the hot end in and
a mount for
the extruder,
and that holds it onto the
inverted-T x-carriage.
which is kind of
the way of preferring it, because it gives me more vertical space.
You can see the nozzle is right at the bottom of the bottom [rod],
just below the bottom of the x-carriage, so it gets very little clearance.
Right now I'm printing a y endstop mount.
You can see the taped up one in the back there... mumble... mumble...
...get it all printed because I'm almost out of filament!
That's the last of it,
after
so many attempts
at printing this piece...
I really did a lot of trial and error
and not only that but also
the bottom parts as well, because each time I had to print one I figured I should print the others.
But I should have just printed this piece,
the extruder itself, the block, and then
just tested that. It's pushing well.
It's got the
typical 608 bearing and four bolts to hold it in.
(...25sec of muffled iPad microphone...)
The carriage is much lighter. It's a little more top-heavy maybe. Well maybe not so much "heavy."
Yeah I think it's gonna end up being a little—
It's going to do a lot cleaner printing than the old extruder...
which is around here somewhere...
There it is, right there.
Yeah, the old extruder,
big, heavy,
NEMA 17
was just very, very...
overkill really.
This other one's going to do much better.
So there you go, brand new extruder,
running, working, printing!
Unbelievable. All right.
Much more like a Prusa i3's supposed to be, a bit lighter.
(Notice the filament has stopped extruding... Next!)