Again, about extruders, which are more properly called "feeders"...

3D Printing
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Again, about extruders, which are more properly called “feeders”…

This started as I had fabricated a filament-out sensor, but felt this should be an integrated part of the filament feeder. Also I am starting to suspect the Bowden feeder on my printer with a 0.8mm nozzle on a V6 hotend might just be running out of torque.

(And I have not yet added the “Volcano” kit.)

So I need a better feeder, with an integrated filament-out sensor.

If you are buying stuff off the shelf, buy a Bondwell “extruder” and just deal with the not-integrated filament sensor.

My interest is in something better.

Digging back, I found two interesting examples.

J-Max
http://www.j-max.fr/?p=632

B2B Extruder

In both cases, a belted (geared) feeder, that could potentially generate a lot of torque with a smaller (and lighter) motor.

Wondering if I can design something more compact, using the existing examples as inspiration…

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What I don’t like about belt approaches is how much hardware is required. Pulleys, shafts, shaft bearings, etc etc. Might work fine for one-off experimental designs, but community uptake of complicated designs with large BOMs tends to be low.

My thinking these days is to just shell out a little more money for a planetary geared stepper, and you don’t need to worry about torque. That eliminates a lot of reliability issues and design complexity.

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Check the blackbox printer (hackaday.io) I think it’s geared and bondtech goodness and more compact (would require a lot of redesign for your usage. But it might be some inspiration)http://hackaday.io