Whats your extruder style?

Whats your extruder style? Share your experience

Got me two of those mk8 extruders for future chimerastuff. Still cant decide if bowden or direct for that. Its only 1.75mm with chimera so id rather go with direct cause flexible filament

I have about 50/50 on my printers but vastly prefer direct drive. Mechanically simpler and much easier to tune.

Have used both. Bowden giving no trouble to me since i have started using that violet extruder. Its first china thing i have used and i am blown away

what violet extruder do you mean?

It depends on the kind of printer setup you have. A Kossel doesn’t like too much weight on the printing head unit. :slight_smile:

Delta style printers are more likely to have bowden style extruders than direct drive extruders because weight causes problems for that style of printer. Cartesian style printers are more likely to use direct drive extruders, but some people have their printer moving so fast that they want to reducehe weight of the moving parts and switch to bowden tubes for that reason.

Direct drive and Direct are different things, just FYI.

You can have a direct drive bowden extruder (like the one pictured)

@Taylor_Landry That terminology isn’t universally agreed on. Personally I think “ungeared” is a hell of a lot more clear than “direct drive” when the meaning is “no gears between the rotor and hob.”

Direct drive is opposed to geared. Said differently, the drive pulley is mounted directly on the shaft of the motor.

Different communities use slightly different and overlapping terminology for extruders. It’s a pain.

Distinction #1, arrangement of cold end and hot end:
A) “Bowden” drive: the filament runs through a flexible tube between the filament-pushing mechanism and the hot end.
B) “Direct” drive: the filament-pushing mechanism feeds directly into the hot end.

Distinction #2, transfer of power to pinch wheel:
A) Transmission or geared drive: something exchanges torque/speed between the motor and pinch wheel / hob.
B) “Direct drive” or ungeared: the pinch wheel / hob is coupled directly to the rotor.

Trying to split hairs over “direct” versus “direct drive” comes off as pedantry. It’s an annoying and confusing distinction. >90% of the community means “not bowden” when they say “direct” OR “direct drive.”

Let’s use unambiguous terminology. Call them geared vs ungeared extruders to describe power conversion, and bowden drive vs direct drive extruders to describe motor location, please.

I guess we can agree to disagree. “Bowden drive” is a meaningless phrase. Nothing about the Bowden tube has to do with the drive mechanism. It’s also in conflict with other fields with similar mechanical components. “Direct drive” has meaning outside of 3D printing.

If you have a Bondtech configured as a direct, then your terminology would call it a geared direct drive extruder. Sorry, but that’s confusing.

It’s pretty easy to understand Direct vs Bowden. Theres no need to add “drive” to the phrasing for this exact reason.

Yes, because “geared direct drive” is self referentially incoherent.

@Taylor_Landry “Geared direct drive” is what most people would call the Bondtech when you don’t have a Bowden tube, yes. We’re hobbyists – the correct terminology is whatever is in common use and understandable to the largest number of people.

The entire world of 3D printer extruder terminology is divorced from other fields of engineering. Nobody outside of 3d printer hobbyists would consider pushing filament feedstock through a tube to be any more than superficially related to a proper Bowden cable. The terms “hot end” and “cold end” and “pinch gear” are all completely made up.

These terms go in and out of fashion, too. For example, “cold end” has largely become “feeder.” Language changes.

If you want to be pedantic about terminology matching non-hobbyist uses, we all need to start calling hot ends “liquefiers” and pinch gears “feed rollers” and so on, to conform with all the Stratasys terminology that pre-dated RepRaps by about 20 years. It’s all in public domain patent literature for anybody to go learn. But nobody cares what we’re “supposed” to call this stuff.

This isn’t even the worst thing hobbyists have mis-named. Don’t get me started on how stupid the name “jerk” is.

As I said, agree to disagree. Sorry you feel it’s pedantic. I don’t mean it that way. Specificity of terms is important and I see it differently than you. We can leave it at that.

@Taylor_Landry I do agree with your general argument here, I just think it’s generally better go to with the flow and let the hobbyist community decide to use dumb terminology if it wants to.

Sidenote, when I write Volume 2 of my 3d printer design book, I’ll try to establish consistent terminology for extruders. Non-confusing names that are generally compatible with other fields of engineering are the chief goal. No promises though. That’s probably 2-3 years away from publishing in any case.
I’m working on terminology consistency right now (literally tonight) for stepper motors in Volume 1. (V1 is on Motion Mechanism Design.) Hoping to get that out early next year.

This debate is really boring and has been done time and time again. I advise renaming the labels “without bowden tube” and “with bowden tube” respectively. There were no gears or pulleys in either picture anyways.

@NathanielStenzel I don’t think Bowden should be the default term. Outside of deltas, way more printers are non-Bowden than Bowden by a pretty big margin. How about we call them “normal extruder” and “extruder that needs a stupid tube because your printer is floppy” ?

@Ryan_Carlyle I said “with bowden tube”. It has a bowden tube. I do not think anyone can debate otherwise. I do not care what people call the stuff as long as it is clear what is meant. “Normal” is opinion based and not clear at all. I much prefer bulky clear wording than foggy short wording.

@NathanielStenzel It was mostly a joke. Our terminology is all over the place. For example, the Flex3drive flexible shaft extruder by Mutley is arguably also a Bowden mechanism but nobody would call it that because it would be confusing.