Can you provide an stl for just the idler? I would like to print the 10mm hotend derivative version.

Has anyone managed to get this extruder to print good quality with 3mm filament?

Im using the 3mm version of this extruder with a makerbot mk7 drive gear and a J-Head hot end (0.35mm nozzle). I have been using this for a while now and the prints that it produces are very accurate (holes etc are exactly the correct size) but it stops extruding randomly, missing whole sections
out and ruining muli-hour prints which is very frustrating..

The stepper motor does get very hot, which i suspect is why it fails, but i have upgraded the fans - even to the point of having 2 fans either side of the motor (tried both blowing onto the motor/one blowing, one sucking etc), but i just
dont think that this setup is able to feed the filament with enough pressure to extrude correctly. I was previously using a wades extruder which work flawlessly up to 100mm/s, although the prints it produced were not very good accuracy wise (holes etc were always about 1mm too small!).

Does anyon
e have any ideas about this, because i love the design of this extruder and id love to get it working well.. I was hoping that is would be able to print faster than the wades i was using as it is much lighter but so far i havn't had much luck! :-(

Just saying thanks- this thing is printing some freeken amazing quality stuff.

Where's the best place to find the motor (link if poss), also the driVe gear.. does blddk haVe a site? this looks great! I am itching to get away from the geared extruder.......

wildBill, the Mini hyena you are designing for is it the 11x5?

Thx,

This is an extruder I was looking for! Needed one with motor aligned along the x-axis, not perpendicular to it as other designs.

I took a liberty and modified it to work with mini-hyena 5x8 and one small drive bearing 5x8x2.5.

Will get back here once I have it working.

With v1.1 you can also mount the motor 180* for more z clearance. I'm going to reprint this today just for more clearance. :)

Awesome, gonna print this out and give it a try. Not real happy with the Trinity labs one, and this one re-uses the vitamins I already have. Very nice design.

mounting the toggle bolts in reverse from the drawing may be easier for maintnenance.

Update 1.1 will be out tomorrow with many minor fixes for small annoyances and compatibility with mk7 drive wheel.

I got my I on this 8-)

Nice! Two ideas:

1) over-center tension lever?
2) mirrored version for dual extruder applications?

8-)