Best printable Direct Drive extruder for DIY i3 MK2S?

Hi all, so, I've bought an i3 MK2S frame last year for a small price including the printed frame parts, sourced a heated bed from elsewhere and am planning to reuse my Ramps 1.4 and TMC2208 drivers to be used in this machine together with a full graphics display. Maybe eventually I'll upgrade it to an skr 1.4 but for now reusing the old electronics is the number one priority.

I'm currently almost done, the only parts I have to finish designing are the PSU case (I am using a different PSU so I need an adapter plate to mount it how the original was mounted) for the free working like new PSU I found in the thrift store. This will all work out fine, but. But. I am in need of some advice for what's the best extruder here.

Available extruder hardware:
12v E3D v6 hotend
M8 inductive probe
12v radial and axial fans (I have 3010 4010 5010 etc, all sizes)
Optional: piezo sensor for hotend mount leveling but I think I'll go for the inductive probe


Now, for the extruder, I once bought this kit for the Prusa I3 MK3S extruder:
[www.aliexpress.com]

It includes almost all parts except for a few longer bolts, but I ordered those separately. It has all magnets, bearing ball, filament sensor (does this sensor work with a Ramps 1.4 anyway??).

I'm about ready to start printing an extruder and was wondering if the MK3S extruder design is any good. It looks well designed, but has a lot of moving parts and I don't like to complicate things. Basically what I'm asking is:
Is the MK3S extruder good enough or are there better designs that use direct drive and that use the same parts as the MK3S extruder?

Before I go out and print an extruder that doesn't work that well.. This might save me some time and filament waste.

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 09/05/2020 06:15AM by Ohmarinus.

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http://www.marinusdebeer.nl/

Have you seen my MK2 power supply case? [www.thingiverse.com] Its the prusa one but in scad so you can edit it to fit your supply (presuming its a rectangle)

Yes that filament runout sensor works on any 5v controller.

The standard mk3s extruder works well...

Check the length of that runour sensor cable. A lot of these clones parts are being supplied with 160mm cables, but needs longer in real mk3s's. 175mm. But yours is custom.. so who knows...

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/06/2020 03:31AM by Dust.

Quote
Dust
Have you seen my MK2 power supply case? [www.thingiverse.com] Its the prusa one but in scad so you can edit it to fit your supply (presuming its a rectangle)

Yes that filament runout sensor works on any 5v controller.

The standard mk3s extruder works well...

Check the length of that runour sensor cable. A lot of these clones parts are being supplied with 160mm cables, but needs longer in real mk3s's. 175mm. But yours is custom.. so who knows...

Thanks for your reply. I'm not that familiar with using existing machines but I'm not in the mood of redesigning yet another extruder while Prusa clearly seems to do well so I will print out the parts for the X-carriage and extruder in black PETG and smash this new machine together.

For the PSU box, I already made a design so I'll be using my own. Because I'm also using a 3-pin power cord and use a special connector for that with a switch and fuse. Before drawing that out I had to redesign the entire frame in Fusion360 because I couldn't find the correct files anywhere except when digging deep I found some DXF.

Just have to find some time in between other projects to print out the pieces as some of them take over 3 hours to print and the last batch I ran turned out to have issues with delamination. I believe this is down to the low-quality filament I'm using that I got for free from a colleague. So I'll be using new filament this time.

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http://www.marinusdebeer.nl/

Quote
Dust
Have you seen my MK2 power supply case? [www.thingiverse.com] Its the prusa one but in scad so you can edit it to fit your supply (presuming its a rectangle)

Yes that filament runout sensor works on any 5v controller.

The standard mk3s extruder works well...

Check the length of that runour sensor cable. A lot of these clones parts are being supplied with 160mm cables, but needs longer in real mk3s's. 175mm. But yours is custom.. so who knows...

So, I finally printed everything, a new PSU case and it's all just putting it back together now





The only thing left is to print a good Ramps 1.4 case because I'm reusing the Ramps board from my MendelMax!

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http://www.marinusdebeer.nl/