Saturday, March 26, 2016

Building a second 3D-printer - arms, hot end and extruder

I have created and mounted the arms, the hot end and the extruder motor.


Printer after mounting the arms, hotend and extruder motor
The arms
Six arms are needed. The arms consist of carbon tubes and tie rod ends on both sides.

Tie rod ends and carbon tubes


Rod inserted on both ends during curing of the glue to make sure all arms have the same length
I have used Bison two component epoxy glue to glue the parts together. It is important that all arms are exactly the same length. That is why I inserted a rod during curing the of glue on both ends.

Parts for the arms:

The end effector is the part in the middle, on which the hot end will be mounted.

Hot end


Parts for the hotend
I have chosen a 1.75 mm E3D-v6 bowden hot end with vulcano heater block and 0.4 mm (for precision) and 0.8 mm (for speed) nozzles. With 24 volt fan and heater cartridge. I followed these assembly instructions: E3D-v6 Assembly.

Parts for the hot end:


Extruder motor



Extruder motor mounted to the frame
I designed and printed a part to mount the extruder motor to the printer frame. This extruder motor has a gearbox for extra power. The bowden extruder head is attached on top of the gearbox.

Parts for the extuder motor: