New extruder design on indiegogo

I saw this extruder and I thought I should share it with you guys.

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-kraken-the-first-dual-independent-pinch-wheel-extruder-for-3d-printers

It's called the Kraken extruder and it uses dual steppers to drive filament. Seems like a pretty good idea, has anyone else built something similar?

I'm not clear how it works, is it a dual extruder or dual drive or what?

$350 seems to be way too expensive, can't see that being funded.

From what I understand you can use it as a dual drive for higher print speeds or two single drives for a dual print head.

I'm with you that I think they are priced high. If they were in the $100-150 range I would be all over this.

From the design it looks like the filament can only be driven in one direction so retraction operations are not possible.

However, he does claim that you can extrude the filament much cooler to have ooze free prints.

Where is all the video footage of the tests to back the claims?

Here's another extruder campaign:
[www.kickstarter.com]

Looks like it's still a work in progress and no 3d printing demonstration yet. Seems that retraction operations is not possible with this extruder also.

This extruder requires special firmware to operate, I'm not really a fan of that.

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/24/2013 06:01PM by Airtripper.

Extruding cooler also means modified layer adhesion. Black PLA from plastic2print will delaminate relatively easy when printed at 180°C, but yield very strong parts when printed at 210°C.

Two things I like about the design, though: the use of smaller motors also means more compact printers overall and the worm gear helps in this regard. Too bad that worm gears are rather hard to find with fitting bores...

uGen Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Extruding cooler also means modified layer
> adhesion. Black PLA from plastic2print will
> delaminate relatively easy when printed at 180°C,
> but yield very strong parts when printed at
> 210°C.
>
> Two things I like about the design, though: the
> use of smaller motors also means more compact
> printers overall and the worm gear helps in this
> regard. Too bad that worm gears are rather hard to
> find with fitting bores...

here's a supplier in the UK with bore sizes to fit. About GBP 100.00 a set. So the price of the Kraken extruder looks about right, since it uses two sets.

[www.rpmechatronics.co.uk]

is it my imagination or is the entire extruder assembly riding on 1xlm8uu per shaft, if thats the case it'll wobble all over the place after a short time, if not straight away

---

-=( blog )=- -=( thingiverse )=- -=( 3Dindustries )=- -=( Aluhotend - mostly metal hotend)=--=( Facebook )=-

I had a similar idea, but i never pursued it. The major thing about it would be that if the filament became stripped on one drive gear, the other would take over and continue to push it through. It would create a redundancy of sorts.

This guys shirt is going to give me nightmares.

I think its a pretty decent idea and would like to see a bit more, like printing in action. I just think $350 for the base model is far to expensive for pretty much 2 steppers, 2 worm gears and 2 fancy geared pins. Especially since you are going to have to do some serious tinkering to get it to fit on any 3d printer that isn't the maker's.

It is good to see some new extruder designs. I have recently been pretty keen on setting up a dual extruder on my machine so I can print support with PVA.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/24/2013 11:48PM by giddyup.

Well, the price of these worm gears pretty much defeat the benefits. Another UK supplier, Belting Online has got cheaper worm gears (with wrong bore diameters). There are some steppers like NEMA 8 (maybe too weak?) or those cheaper tin-can ones with different shaft diameters. Maybe, if one is lucky, there is another solution than the bigger stepper motors we always use. Probably a matter of thinking outside of the box a little bit more.