3D Printing Forum

That kit looks very well designed I have to say!

It is surprising that they went for such a large and heavy motor though.
It weight 250 grams compared to about 400 grams for "normal" steppers and 50 grams for the one I use.

Still a nice design though, although I would prefer higher gear ratio and the 50 gram motor.

Yes indeed I found it really nice, but too heavy for Ultimaker's gantry...

Actually it seems someone is using it on a UMO gantry with a flat nema: https://www.youmagine.com/designs/titan ... ma-stepper

So, I actually had a few hours and some inspiration to redesign my direct feeder the other night when taking care of our daughter.
Probably the only thing I got done regarding 3D-printing last month, but family has to come first

The intention was to explore how to make a stable mount that is easy to remove and not too heavy.
It looks quite simple on the outside but it has a lot of hidden features I am not sure how if the torque will be enough too, so that is another thing that I have to test. For ninjaflex it appears to work but that is the only filament tested so far.
The whole unit including all components and the short PTFE tube is about 100 grams now, one might be able to reduce that a bit by optimizing the design. I will probably do other changes first though, in particular to increase the feeding force.

I saw this little feeder in person last friday at the opening of 3DVerkstan's new "3D Meetup Center" (http://3dmc.se), and it truly is a quite nice design, and it really is lightweight!

Sorry everyone for disappearing a few months, I have been terribly busy.
Anyway, I did a retraction test with the latest iteration of the pancake feeder today, and it passed Retraction speed 30 mm/s and retraction length 0.85 mm certainly speeds up things
I think it printed in about 12 hours compared to the 17 hours predicted by Cura

So when can I buy it then?

Superb!!!

Woah
Can't wait to be able to buy one too!

Very nice! Could you maybe share that stl, I'd like to print one myself and compare the results

reibuehl wrote:So when can I buy it then?

Unfortunately, product development is not that quick, just testing the concept still

MTVDNA wrote:Very nice! Could you maybe share that stl, I'd like to print one myself and compare the results

I can send you the stl-files, but you will have difficulties finding a knurled bolt since I found mine among random things from scrapped equipment at home.
Tried commercial feeder wheels but they are too large and the pattern on the common types is not that suitable really.

Current version works okay for ABS, but for a commercial version I would like a quite different design.

I'm sorry, I haven't made myself quite clear. I recently installed a flex3drive on my printer and I'd like to see how it compares to your pancake stepper. I meant to ask for the model of Yoda. I found one on thingiverse but it seemed to not be the same as yours.

Ok
It is the first Yoda here: https://www.youmagine.com/designs/oh-no ... y-dizingof

That reminds me by the way that I have a flex3drive kit at home that I never installed, maybe I should test it at least

It was a little bit tricky to get the first layer right, had to drop the model a mm or so because the bottom wasn't really flat. I'll post some pictures tomorrow when it's done.


About the flex3drive, I've had mine for a couple weeks now and I definitely like it a lot. Fixes a lot of issues I had with the stock feeder. When I have some time I'll make a post about my experiences with it.

Hmm, S3D estimated a printing time of about 13:30 hours, but it was off by a lot. It has been printing for about 20h now, but it's still only 2/3 done. It's looking pretty good so far though:



There's are a few tiny hairs in some places, but nothing that a quick blast from a hot air gun won't fix. If you look closely on the right side on the inside of the ear, there's some strings hanging there. That is due to an error in the model, it has an overhanging piece that could never be printed without supports:




Edit:

The print was finished this morning:


I'm quite pleased with the result. The top of the head came out a lot better than I had expected. The bridges at the very top sagged a little bit on the bottom, but you have to know it's there to really notice it.

The overhangs did also sag a bit here and there. Those probably would have turned out a little bit better if I had set the print order to inside out. I used outside in because the first layer required it, as there were many single dots of infill that would not stick properly without laying the outline first.

I printed it in Makerpoint Pearl Gold PLA at 185° C, 50mm/s, 0.15mm layer height.