2020 Bowden Drive extruder

Any chance there is anyone here who has made, found, or can make an extruder drive body for use with the E3D Bowden hotend that also utilizes the geared stepper extruder as shown in the attached picture. (What a run on sentence!) I plan on mounting on the 2020 aluminum extrusions on a 3DR Delta Printer.



Ive been using a direct drive stepper, which works great, but i wanted to get a little more fine control. Really hope someone might chime in.

Ive made a few sad attempts, so i figured it was time to see what else is out there.

Thanks for looking!

Just saw this picture HaDe posted on his flickr account:


Anyone know where to find the source? Looks about right!

Hi... glad you like it - I already mentioned the details in the comments for an earlier photo of the same Flickr album:

[flic.kr]

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It originates from Johann's Mini Kossel:
[reprap.org]
[github.com]
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In fact this extruder works fast & reliably and without any need for maintainance for several months now. The drawbacks are:

- planetary gearbox not cheap (ordered mine from the UK: [www.active-robots.com])
- even more so for the spur gear which drives the filament (luckily found the last one a local gear specialist had in stock, see the linked Wiki entry for possible sources)
- filament change takes longer and is less convenient than with the usual extruders (you can't just lift off the idler manually but have to command the extruder motor by PC or printer UI)

Thanks HaDe! Not sure how i missed that. I looked into it a bit, but i cant find info on suggested material to print parts in. Is ABS prefered, or is PLA sturdy enough? Did you print your own? What settings did you use and have success with?

The site builda3dprinter.eu shows 50% and 0.2mm z height for there kits. The printed bend joint is my biggest concern. Thanks for the info!

I printed mine in PLA but don't remember the exact settings (50% - 0.2Z is what would use, too). I wouldn't worry about durability of the flex hinge too much, it will only be adjusted once and barely move during operation (provided your filament diameter remains fairly constant :-)