Cold End made from hardware store parts and printer recycle

I just made My 1St prototype based off of the mk7 minimalist style. The main pinch bearing arm is from a scraped Epson lazer printer. I still need to tweak a few things but I wanted to see what you all thought so far. My goal is to build a totally recycled hot end as well as this cold end. I can't decide if I want to add another gear for resolution or just use it directly mounted to the motor. The stepper you can't see is a men's 17 salvaged from another printer as well. Any constructive criticism is greatly appreciated. I just want to try and give people an option that don't have access to printed parts or very much money. Thanks

I did some additional work on the cold end it works really well and has quite a bit of pulling force. I will do some tests and post the results. The new version works great. It is fully adjustable.

Very interesting! Nice creative use of parts. Your pinch gear looks plastic though and quite large diameter. I'm not sure:
A ) That is will last that long, or dig that well into filament. Filament can be quite hard.
B ) That the force will be enough, you really need quite substantial force, like 50N, does your stepper realistically output 75N.cm (estimated that the radius of the gear is 1.5 cm)

It will be interesting to hear if it works well when the hotend is fitted If it doesn't work, brass model boat coupling inserts do the job ok. They are very small in diameter so you more effectively use the torque from your motor.

example insert

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/20/2013 08:50AM by konwiddak.

I do have a boat coupling. I haven't measured exactly pulling force yet but using non exact methods it works suprizinly well. The pinch force is completely adjustable. I have two other models I'm working on. I also have a aluminum gear that I'm thinking about making a groove in to help keep everything in It's exact location.

Are you planning on using 1.75mm filament? I can see that working.

Yes I am. I'm also trying to engineer a way to swap off the main gear and a few quick items to set it up for for larger sizes. I want it to be a recycled totally adjustable kind of Swiss army knife of cold ends.

This is kind of off topic but for a hot end. What about using a " fuser " from a laser printer as a Heating element. They definitely get hot enough and you can adjust the temp quite easy. Thanks

NEW ADDITION. ( I added a light to My cold end. The brighter it is the higher the temp of the " hot end" is. WorK's great.***** CHECK OUT THE NEW PICS******

I love the light concept, where did you connected it to in order to produce different light intensity? I would like to try to put it on my repstrep.

I setup a program through My arduino. It's pretty easy to setup and there are lots of tutorials and sketches online. Thanks for your interest.