Extruder Assembly

I was originally planning on designing and building my own extruder. The company I work for allows me some unique opportunities as they have done heated barrels for numerous other applications and this would be relatively easy in comparison. However, my impatience got the better of me.

I already had a set of plastic for a Wade's geared extruder, so all I needed was the hardware and a hot end. I wasn't thinking about this when I ordered all the hardware for the rest of the machine, but the BOM does not include hardware for the extruder as this is really a separate entity with a whole lot of options. Fortunately a Wade's extruder doesn't need a whole lot. The only unusual part is the hobbed bolt. I decided to buy one from an ebay seller since I didn't have an easy way to do the hobbing, and it was just so cheap I didn't feel it was worth the effort. Other than that, just need four long bolt, springs, and nuts (I went with wing nuts) to hold the idler block on, three more 608 bearings for the hobbed bolt and pinch wheel, screws for the stepper, and a bunch of washers for spacing the big gear and bolt properly. I just got most of this at a local hardware store. I really hate how they rip you off when you only need a handful of pieces.

Wooden mount for Wade's and GrooveMount

I did a bit of research before deciding what to do with the hot end. My goal was to do something that was easy to assemble and maintain and relatively short so as not to cut too much travel out of my Z axis.  I really liked the aluminum block heater with a resistor that I saw first I think on nophead's blog. Just seemed very compact and easy to put together. I was prepared to make the pieces myself when I discovered that Makergear was selling exactly what I wanted at what I thought was a very reasonable price. I really liked the look of their V3 Hybrid GrooveMount assembly as well. So I got those along with the wooden mounting plates for Wade's extruder, a 36mm barrel, and the 0.35mm Mini Bighead nozzle all from Makergear (mmmm, chocolate too).

Assembled hot end

It all went together very easily once I figure out how it was meant to be wired. All the PTFE sleeving kind of threw me off. Also the heating resistor was much bigger on one end than the other, so I had to do some graduated reaming to get it to fit in nicely. I didn't originally use anything to hold it in the block other than the set screw, but I've since noticed it seems to have shrunk a little with use and I'll probably add some UV curable high temp stuff we have at work to secure it more thoroughly.

Ready for software. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel! Is that a train whistle I hear?

Completed extruder, mounted and ready to go!