What's the difference between the wades extruders?

I've been wanting to upgrade some parts on my prusa i3 for quite some time (planning on hephestos with a Greg wades adapter). However, I don't know which extruder is best.
It seems every time I try to search for Greg wades extruder, several different types of extruders are shown and it gets confusing. It'd be nice to know which is the most recent model, or the best performing one out of all of them. I was even considering switching to direct drive, but it seems that type of extruder has several different variations too. Someone please help!

Usually they are just variations of the original base design that have been tweaked for a particular application, convenience, or to make them "better" in the eyes of the tweaker. I've seen different designs that have the idler hinged while others have 4 tension screws. The filament may pass through a hole in the idler bracket, others fit into a slot. Some have tension screws that can tilt up allowing the idler to release without completely unscrewing the screws to allow the hobbed bolt to be cleaned, others don't. Some the motor is square to the extruder, other's it's rotated/off angle slightly. Some may have different mounts for hot ends. Others may be flipped/mirror image in order to print with a particular printer design. Some have different sized gears, or gears with herringbone teeth.

What I'm saying is that one particular instance of a wade extruder may not be the best for you while it was for someone else.

This is the extruder I used that has multiple "enhancements" applied that others came up with...just not all in the same design. It's worked well for me on my Mendel90 after my original extruder had an unfortunate meltdown and I wanted something a little easier to use loading and unloading.

Greg's Wade's Geared Extruder is a variant of the original Wade's Geared Extruder, which was originally documented in the reprap.org wiki something like 5 years ago.

Unfortunately, Greg's Wade's Geared Extruder is not directly documented in the wiki. I have been trying to determine the history/genealogy of this extruder but it takes a lot of time to put all the information together.

In any case, Greg's Wade's Geared Extruder has itself evolved, the latest versions (as far as I know) are available on Thingiverse, a quick search will get you there.

The Prusa i3 Hephestos includes its own extruder, is there a reason for you to want to switch from it? In any case, I think you'll have to also use a new X-carriage if you want to use a Greg's Wade's Geared Extruder.

Check my designs on Thingiverse, there is a universal X-carriage that should come in handy in your case.

Cheers,
Andrew

At some point in the evolution, I released this version which is still my favorite. Note the enlarged opening at the top. This give much easier access to the hobb which allows you to see if it has chewed a bit of plastic off which can cause intermittent slippage. With the widened opening, you can just get a needle in and scrape the clogged tooth clear without disassembling anything. Unfortunately this feature doesn't seem to have been picked up by anyone doing subsequent iterations.

[www.thingiverse.com]

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/03/2015 06:07AM by Greg Frost.

Hi Greg,

Really nice to see you jumping in this thread!

I am going to try to trace the genealogy of your extruder designs back from 2011 till now and I'll create a page in the wiki detailing what I have found (BTW I already have a page similar to that, but about the history of some Prusa i3 printed part designs for the X-axis motor end).

One thing is quite certain, Wade's original design and your modifications to it have spawned a very large number of derivatives and probably have become the single most popular extruder design in the world of 3D printing nowadays in 2015. A fascinating phenomenon!

Cheers,

Andrew

Im trying to find the variation that had a bit of extra plastic under the hobbed bolt to stop flexible filaments from kinking in the extruder.
Ive seen it once but didnt need it at the time and havnt found it since.

Greg, great work on the extruders.

Gordon

Page created, now I just need to fill it in! ;-)

[reprap.org]

Wow guys, thanks for the replies!

Greg Frost, it is an honor that you responded to my post; I am in the process of printing off a variation of your extruder right now.

Andrew, I look forward to seeing your timeline; I feel like it will help clear up some of the confusion when selecting an extruder model.

The main reason I am asking this is because I have been dealing with a "wobble" on my x carriage. This results in "echoes" of holes on the prints. I traced it back to my bearings and it seems a tiny gap between the bearing and rod. People have suggested that I should turn down the acceleration, but I feel like that's just putting a band-aid on the real problem. I was thinking a lighter extruder would help out with reducing the "echoes" (faint traces of holes next to holes). This got me looking into printing an extruder head, and that led be here. The real problem might just be the x carriage and/or bearings; we'll see after the experiments. =D

Hi,

I am more or less 80% done with the page: [reprap.org]

Cheers,
Andrew

Quote
cdru
Usually they are just variations of the original base design that have been tweaked for a particular application, convenience, or to make them "better" in the eyes of the tweaker. I've seen different designs that have the idler hinged while others have 4 tension screws. The filament may pass through a hole in the idler bracket, others fit into a slot. Some have tension screws that can tilt up allowing the idler to release without completely unscrewing the screws to allow the hobbed bolt to be cleaned, others don't. Some the motor is square to the extruder, other's it's rotated/off angle slightly. Some may have different mounts for hot ends. Others may be flipped/mirror image in order to print with a particular printer design. Some have different sized gears, or gears with herringbone teeth.

What I'm saying is that one particular instance of a wade extruder may not be the best for you while it was for someone else.

This is the extruder I used that has multiple "enhancements" applied that others came up with...just not all in the same design. It's worked well for me on my Mendel90 after my original extruder had an unfortunate meltdown and I wanted something a little easier to use loading and unloading.

I'm curious..I'd like to make one of these for my Mendel90 "sturdy", but it looks like the extruder you linked to is "backwards" - shouldn't the gears face towards the back of the machine? Also, doesn't the tilted motor interfere with motion in the "X"? Nophead's modified extruder that is included in the Mendel90 files has the motor sitting flat, and the gears toward the back.

Nice wiki page on the extruder history! The renders are great -- Although I think the 3rd gen render is not quite right - it's missing the hole for the hobbed bolt to go through - maybe an undefined variable in there that is defaulting differently under newer version of openscad. I know one of the gregs versions has references to both layer_thickness and layer_height, but only one of those is defined, as I was playing with it in openscad the other day.

@ Lenbok

Thanks for pointing that out, I'll take a closer look at the OpenSCAD source code when I have some time. In any case, the idea for the renders is more to give the reader a visual means of checking the evolution of the extruder, as in this case a picture is really worth one thousand words!

Cheers,
Andrew