A classic revisited: the Ultimate Greg's Wade's Geared Extruder

First things first: sorry for the flashy name!

Next, where to find: Ultimate Greg's Wade's Geared Extruder and remixes.

So, what is this about and why am I posting about it in the Developers forum?

Well, this is actually just my small contribution at properly "curating" Greg's Wade's Geared Extruder design, by bringing some OpenSCAD source code commonality to the large number of versions scattered all over the Internet for this classic design.

I have also written a page which can be found in the wiki, which is my attempt at explaining the history of this extruder design, which imho is one of the cornerstones of RepRap design : Genealogy / Archeology of the Greg's Wade's Geared Extruder

As a developer, the situation I have found when looking for a geared extruder is that there are dozens of available designs on Thingiverse, GitHub and other websites, many if not most are derived from Greg's and Wade 's work. It is difficult to choose one derived work over another, it's even difficult to determine any specific criteria on which this choice should be made! Another problem is that many developers decided that they did not want to use OpenSCAD and directly edited the STL's from earlier versions of Greg's Wade's Geared Extruder, breaking what I call the OpenSCAD development chain and making their derived works non-parametric, hence hampering further development based on their work. Also, effectively this is not complying with the original license of Greg's and Wade's work, which is the GPL. As you can see, I am not quite comfortable with such practices...

So what do I mean by "curating" this design? Basically, this involves:
- Source code maintenance.
- Documentation.
- Updating the design with the latest enhancements.
- Bringing as much commonality of code as possible between different versions.
- Bringing this latest version to the attention of other RepRap developers (the reason for this post here).
- And testing... and this is where I would need and appreciate some help.

If you have the time, please print this design, assemble it and use it to print a kg or so of filament, and provide some feedback on how it works for you.

Thanks all!

Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 08/13/2015 09:24AM by AndrewBCN.

Thanks Andrew. I've often looked at the many GW variants and felt completely overwhelmed.

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JamesK
Thanks Andrew. I've often looked at the many GW variants and felt completely overwhelmed.

Exactly my feeling too, "Which one of a dozen or so different versions should I print for my 3D printer?" is the question! It's difficult to tell the various versions apart, which ones are derived from which, what are the advantages/disadvantages of each version, etc...

Thanks for the write up Andrew; I've been out of the loop for a few years, but I'm building a new printer now and was curious about the state of the art in extenders. Things have certainly improved in the meantime! It's good to have a nice overview of what's available.

Wade

Thank you Wade, and also thank you for having started the design of this most reliable piece of 3D printing hardware.