A different way of mounting an extruder

General discussion of 3D printers

A different way of mounting an extruder

Postby tmccafferty » Fri May 24, 2013 4:17 am

I am building a large printer and have been thinking about the extruders and how I want to mount them. I am going to use a pair of EZStruders with 1.75 j-heads. The extruders mount on the Y rail. I have a miniature linear slide with two bearing blocks. An extruder mounts on each block. I am going to couple the two extruders together by integrating magnets into their design. I am keeping the extruders separable for the following reasons. They would be close coupled for normal two head printing. They could be separated and the unused one parked to the side when not in use. I have a large bed. I am thinking for multiple prints, it would be handy to separate the heads with a linkage and let them print the same thing, creating two prints at a time.

I was kicking around an idea that gets rid of fussing with z zero adjustment. It involves making each extruder mount so it can be "unlocked" and slid vertically; say 10 mm. The zeroing process would be as follows. Unlock and position the extruder at the highest position. Home the machine. While the table is at its z zero location, unlock the extruder and let it slide down onto whatever thickness shim stock you like. Lock it in place. Zero would be set at exactly the desired height above the bed. Also, with two extruders, it gives you the ability to independently set their zeros or position an unused extruder high.

On my ordbot, I fabricated a new extruder mounting plate. It is pretty much like the original without the right angle shelf. I mounted my extruder by purchasing longer through bolts for the stepper and simply bolting the stepper to the plate through four holes. For the new design, I am thinking of two plates that slide vertically relative to each other and can be locked. One plate would mount to the motor as described with longer bolts. The other plate would mount to the linear bearing block. The mechanism that locks the plates together would have to be such that it doesn't put any vertical force on the adjustment.

I hope you can understand what I am trying to describe.

Any thoughts?
tmccafferty
 
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Re: A different way of mounting an extruder

Postby blah_59 » Fri May 24, 2013 6:50 pm

The idea of a vertically adjustable carriage for Z positioning is pure genius, hat tip.

Would love to see it when you're done.
blah_59
 
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