Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Thoughts on an Extruder Barrel assembly

Well I made what I thought would be the hard part of my extruder, though I haven't tested it yet, but now I need to make the barrel assembly. I have a few ideas at the moment...the first is to use a design similar to Forrest's (thats a hyperlink by the way), but that requires a bit of brazing, and 3mm ID copper pipe, something that is not available at any of my 3 local hardware stores (yes its crazy 2 of them are about 3 minutes from each other). So I can either order copper sheet metal and copper tube from mcmaster, braze them and hope it works...or I could just buy all the parts for the extruder barrel assembly from maker bot. From mcmaster I would need copper tube, copper sheet, a ptfe tube, and a .5mm drill bit, totaling $11.70. Or I could order the mk3 heater barrel, thermal barrier, and nozzle for about $20. I haven't decided which way to go yet.
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5 comments:

  1. UnknownAugust 26, 2009 at 11:03 PM

    I've spent quite a bit of time fiddling with extruder nozzles. :-)

    I'd definitely go for the mk3 - it's tried, tested, and it works, Many of the other designs (like mine) are not quite as developed, and although they generally work, there are sometimes issues with starting/stopping.

    Drilling small holes is also really quite tricky - it's easy to snap the drill, it's so thin.
    To make sure, I'd get 5+ small drill bits so you've got some spares. You might need to experiment and make more than 1 extruder, or practice a bit to get it built right.

    I ended up using a lot of screw threads (made with taps and dies) to join the nozzle/pipe/heater/ptfe together. They are under a lot of force, so it's sometimes difficult to keep it together and attached to the filament drive/pinch wheel.

    N.B. I found aluminium and copper small diameter tube at a local model shop (selling airfix models/railway models/radio control cars). one of the imperial tubes has an internal diameter of 3.1mm - perfect for filament.

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  2. pingiscoolestAugust 29, 2009 at 9:03 AM

    Yes that is probably a good idea. I think I will just buy the MK3 extruder parts. Thanks!

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  3. pingiscoolestAugust 29, 2009 at 9:06 AM

    What the heck I had to fill out a CAPTCHA for that post. Its my blog! I'm not trying to spam it lol. What?! I have to fill one out for this post too...

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  4. PingiscoolestAugust 29, 2009 at 9:08 AM

    wait haha I was signed into the wrong account whoops.

    ReplyDelete
  5. AnonymousJune 21, 2012 at 10:05 PM

    still working on this??

    ReplyDelete

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