RepRap: Blog

RepRap Geared Extruder from Adrian Bowyer on Vimeo.

I wanted to design a single extruder driver that could

1. Be bolted to the X carriage of Mendel and run as a normal extruder,
2. Be mounted somewhere at the side and drive a Bowden extruder, and
3. Be mounted somewhere at the side and drive a Bowden paste extruder, as outlined here.

This is my first hack at a solution.

This design was inspired by Wade's neat geared extruder that you can find here.

Features:

1. 55:11 gear ratio means that the motor runs on very low current
2. No hobbing or knurling needed to make the filament driver
3. Torque transmitted using a wing nut, giving low stress on reprapped gears
4. Uses the same 624 bearings as the rest of RepRap Mendel
5. Designed to work at higher extrude speeds than the standard Mendel extruder, giving shorter build times (I hope...)

Though I say it myself, it does run very smoothly...

Details are on the RepRap Wiki here.

Labels: extruder, geared