Chinese built Extruders

has anyone done a build with a Chinese built Extruder the type mostly found on eBay , if so how good are they

I would highly recommend you don't waste your time on anything that looks like it has been pieced together. Go straight for a j-head. hotends.com is the original. The one at makerfarm.com prob isn't bad either.

Edit: No I don't work for either company. I spent the first half of my printer calibration dealing with issues caused by one of the cheap pieced together hot end.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/22/2013 05:07PM by appdev007.

If you are talking about the Chinese extruder/hotend combination then see this.
They even sell a version with thermistor now for users without thermocouple support (sanguinololu etc.)
Be preprared to do some work on it! You wont regret it once finished. Besides the filament loading there is no better popular hotend in my opinion. This one is all metal and will not degrade due to wear, melt, jam or need periodic maintance.

repsac, that looks like a lot of weight. Does your Z axis get along OK with that? Have you tried using the lift function of your slicer to lift the head when passing over the infill of the print so it doen't mark them? Wonder if your Z whould have trouble keeping up with this.

The weight is no problem (a wade extruder has about the same weight). You can also trim some of the weight by replacing the L-shaped alu block with a printed version. The bottom alu block that connects to the extruder isn't big so that one doesn't weigh much (and cannot be replaced as it gets hot).