What's the canonical extruder now?

I've been getting Folger 2020 kits and printing greg extruders so I can throw an e3d v6 on there.

But recently it dawned on me that the greg extruder is obsolete.

So assuming just a standard x carriage, ie:

[www.thingiverse.com]

or close to it, what's the extruder that everyone is using now that can take a standard hot end, ie, j head or e3d v6?

I'm assuming that everyone moved away from greg extruders due to the weight and bulk?

v6, mosquito, dragon is a V6 up top, the micro swiss is still popular. the mosquito I think is less popular because it is super expensive and also newer.

the V6 mount is probably the industry standard mount at the top so if you want standard just do that. the mosquito is pretty new on the market compared to the older and cheaper V6. bondtech is making extruders that mount to the mosquito directly now. so you could argue that that is the second most popular mounting standard. the micro swiss doesn't have anything to mount to directly overhead. you will need to mount the micro swiss to a backing plate instead. most people with mirco swiss will never have a direct extruder but it is possible. don't forget there is also the hemera which is a complete package. the mounting bracket for that is very different from all the others. you need to bolt it in from the back. probably with the bracket off the machine.

The Bondtech BMG is pretty good.

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Ultra MegaMax Dominator 3D printer: [drmrehorst.blogspot.com]

woops I didn't even answer the question. for some reason I rambled on about hotends. its been a long day. if you look at the BMG-M or the hermera, or to a lesser extent the titan. they are so highly integrated at this point, that I think maybe the better question is what combo is popular. the BMG clone + V6 clone are probably the most popular.

I'm not a fan of the e3d V6 hotend. Too many problems- the mount has no antirotation features so it can rotate in the extruder unless it clamps very tightly- the Titan doesn't, the BMG does. The fan mount is a piece of plastic that can rotate on the heatsink and it invariably does, and at some point it comes into contact with the heater block and melts. Worst of all, there is no way to secure the heatbreak in the heatsink so it comes loose during printing and starts to wobble, ruining print quality. The neck of the heatbreak is very thin and fragile, and a headcrash will bend it. I use a $15 XCR3D hot-end that has been working flawlessly for two years in my printer. It uses the same round mount that E3D does, but the BMG extruder clamps it tightly enough that it won't rotate. My printer has a separate hot-end clamp that holds it tightly (see photo below). The fan is mounted on a metal bracket that is screwed to the heatsink so it never rotates and the fan/mount never comes into contact with the heater block. Best of all, the heatbreak is held in the heatsink with set screws, so you can mount it securely and it never loosens during a print. The throat of the heatbreak is larger than the E3D V6, too, so unlike the E3D V6, a head-crash won't bend it. Here's the link- down to $10 now
The fan that comes with it is trash (so is the fan that comes with the E3D V6) - buy a Sunon fan for $7 from digikey and you're good to go. The XCR3D hot-end uses the E3D type nozzles.

See: [drmrehorst.blogspot.com] It's an old article, when I was still using a Titan extruder...

My current setup, which hasn't changed for about 2 years (?):



The pink plastic piece is the front of the hot-end clamp, printed ABS. The extension to the right is a flag for the X axis optical endstop.

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Ultra MegaMax Dominator 3D printer: [drmrehorst.blogspot.com]

Quote
the_digital_dentist
buy a Sunon fan for $7 from digikey and you're good to go.

Did you find a 30mm sunon fan? I didn't find one at digikey or mouser. Did you use a 40mm fan and print an adapter to the 30mm bracket that comes with the XCR3D hot end, or just make a new bracket? (Sorry if you blogged it and I forgot; I'm now at the stage of needing to replace the fan that came with my XCR3D hot end... ☺)

Thanks!

I got two 30 mm Sunon fans from digikey, and put one on my printer and the other on a printer at the makerspace. I'll check the part number tomorrow.

They were 12V fans with the maglev bearings, so I added buck converters to the printers to power them. Someone claimed that the maglev bearings don't work well if you're going to use PWM to control speed/noise. Apparently the rotor has to spin above a certain speed or the maglev bearings don't work right. I have the fans set up with thermostatic control. When the hot end is over 45C, the fan runs full tilt, and below 45C it is off. They are pretty quiet anyway, even at full speed.

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Ultra MegaMax Dominator 3D printer: [drmrehorst.blogspot.com]

MatterHackers sells a Bondtech / Slice Engineering Mosquito combo. the Mosquito hot end is all metal and U can change the nozzle with just one hand. the Mosquito hot end simply bolts to the BMG extruder as the BMG is specifically designed for the Mosquito hot end (No rotational problems). The BMG extruder appears to be superior to any thing I have come across, because of the weight and compactness + being dual drive and geared. I have used the cloned BMG's with an E3d on another machine (Lower Cost) and have had no issues, although I prefer the Mosquito hot end to anything else. Slice engineering (Mosquito Hot end) does make an E3D type adapter if you want to mount to an extruder that uses an E3D type mount.



This is just my experience and my success with the BMG extruder.

This is the Sunion fan I used: [drive.google.com]

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Ultra MegaMax Dominator 3D printer: [drmrehorst.blogspot.com]

Thank you! I was assuming 24V and wasn't thinking about a buck converter, silly of me!

Yeah, and it's Sunon, not Sunion....

The buck converters are super cheap and very useful to add lights, fans, etc. to all sorts of projects. I keep a bunch of them in my parts box for just-in-case.

I used this type of buck converter: [www.amazon.com]

Install is easy- first connect the converter input to the printer power supply (24V) and adjust the output for about 12V, then put a big piece of heatshrink tubing over it a wire it to the fan and to the fan output on the controller board. Shrink the tubing to over the buck converter and lash it in place with a zip tie. If you're using a Duet controller, set the fan to turn on/off when the temperature of the hot-end hits 45C. Alternative is to wire it directly to the power supply and let the fan run any time the printer is turned on. In UMMD I put the buck converter in the electronic housing on top of the printer. In SoM I strapped it to the extruder carriage.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/25/2020 08:38AM by the_digital_dentist.

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Ultra MegaMax Dominator 3D printer: [drmrehorst.blogspot.com]

Yeah, I also keep buck converters in the parts bin. I was just focused on 24V. Myopic thinking on my part.

Because I already had 40mm fans, I decided to try designing an adapter before ordering 30mm 12V fans. It's kind of ugly, but compact, and it's working. Took me three iterations to get a part cooling fan adapter bracket design working well, but now it's working just fine.

[gitlab.com]

I'll probably get better fans at some point, but at this point it works well enough that I'm inclined to wait to worry about that until either these fans die or I build an enclosure.

if you use the buck convert do you lose the PWM? this is why I use 24v fans.

You don't really want or need PWM on a hot-end fan, and a lot of quality fans like the Sunons and Noctuas aren't available for 24V operation.
Some firmwares allow thermostatic fan control so the hot-end fan will only operate when the temperature is above XX degrees.

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Ultra MegaMax Dominator 3D printer: [drmrehorst.blogspot.com]

Some of the fans have brushless DC motors with integrated ESC and have 3 or 4 leads. Typically:

1. Supply voltage (+5, +12, +24V typical)
2. PWM input (5V typical)
3. Actual speed output (PPR, 5V typical, present on most brushless motor fans)
4. Ground

For these, you would want to reduce 12V to 5V for the PWM input.

Not generally useful for hotend cooling, other than I guess the ability to report speed so you know if they die (and there are versions that report speed without PWM input to slow them down). Useful for part cooling, and they should work across the PWM duty cycle range, unlike two-wire DC fans that typically don't start turning until somewhere around 30% duty cycle.

Noctua sells their fans with a "noise reducer" that just runs them at lower than full speed; if you don't actually need full speed, that should reduce noise and vibration.