Cheap(ish) Lightweight Direct Drive Option
Posted Nov 4, 2022, 11:28 PM UTC
913
I should have waited. I ordered the e-fit extruder because I saw that feral engineer made a mount for it. Yesterday I realized that he made it for linear rails so, now I guess I have to learn to to use fusion360. Been meaning to tinker with it anyway
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Good excuse to learn!
... Or install linear rails 😄
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If you do will you share?
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Of course, sharing stuff I made would be like %75 of the fun. Downloaded fusion360 yesterday, but it might be a while before I have something worth distributing...
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Noob question... What's gonna improve?
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I bought the Neptune3 to print rc planes that are very touchy to print well. A direct drive extruder removes the 'slop' of a Bowden tube and lets you run much lower retractions.
As for why the Sherpa Mini? I have two other printers with them and like em. It is a lot lighter than just repurposing the stock extruder stepper too.
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That's nice... Thanks for the clarification!!!
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Have you noticed any ringing or other issues? And on that note have you ordered it from Aliexpress or somewhere else?
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that reverse bowden ?
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Yes, I wanted to leave the filament sensor in the stock location for now and it seemed easier to keep the filament constrained until reaching the extruder.
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This is an Annex Engineering Sherpa Mini extruder. You can pick them up for ~$35 on AliExpress or ~$45 on Amazon. You can also buy nice internals from BondTech, a 'good' stepper, and print the rest of the bits if you want to spend a lot more.
Mount and other bits are up on Printables.
TL;DR - Adds ~140g to the x-carriage but that's better than ~400g for the stock unit.
I was considering doing this but ordered a Biqu H2 k stead, this is awesome looking! How does it print?
Prints great. My use case is (mostly) single wall prints for rc planes and going direct drive has resolved a lot of the surface imperfections caused by wonky extrusion due to retractions.